House GOP sounds the alarm on Q4 fundraising
With less than 10 days to go until the Q4 filing deadline, House Republicans appear to be preparing for some bleak news. NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer sounded the alarm last week while speaking at a Ripon Society breakfast. “I will put up a red flag,” Emmer said in the speech. “Our members need to get their act together and raise more money. The individual campaigns need to raise more money. They cannot expect somebody else is going to do it for them. And they’re going to hear that from me when we come back after the break, and we see all the final numbers.”
The vast majority of Republican candidates have yet to release their fourth-quarter fundraising, but those who have are reporting totals far below that of House Democratic incumbents. In NY-11, Republican state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis raised $306,000, while Democratic Rep. Max Rose brought in $1.2 million — and he started 2020 with over three times more in the bank. In SC-01, state Rep. Nancy Mace raised $373,000 to Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham’s $900,000 — and Mace will have to spend some of that in a primary. While it’s true that that incumbents typically raise more than challengers, Republicans privately admit Democrats’ financial advantage in some key seats could soon become insurmountable.
So far, a whopping nine Frontliners have announced 2020 warchests of over $2 million. That’s a staggering sum, particularly because some of them, like Rep. Antonio Delgado in NY-19, have yet to attract a serious challenger. This class is shaping up to be unprecedentedly well-funded. At the end of the last off-year, not a single one of the 30 GOP incumbents who were ousted in the midterms had more than $2 million in the bank. (Though then-Reps. Bruce Poliquin of Maine and Jeff Denham of California had $1.9 million and lost anyway.)
The biggest problem for Republicans is that they’re struggling to adjust to a new normal. A $400,000 quarter used to be impressive, but it’s not anymore, when the Democratic incumbent is pulling in $1 million. They also can’t expect much help from the party committee. Emmer openly bemoaned the fact that the DCCC outraised the NRCC by $40 million in 2019, bringing in $125 million to the NRCC’s $85 million. That’s a huge gap. In the 2017 off-year, the DCCC bested the NRCC by $20 million.
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