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GOP small donors fizzle, Gaza war draws big bucks, and other FEC report takeaways

THE NEWS

Every three months, we get a serious gut check across the entire world of campaigns: Every federal candidate has to submit donations, receipts and spending for the quarter. If they double-counted or overhyped their funding, their FEC reports will reveal that. If they stopped raising money — maybe there’s a crisis, maybe they’re retiring — we find out. Here’s what we spotted on the scoreboard this month, after the latest numbers rolled out.

DAVID’S VIEW

Small donors still aren’t excited about the presidential race. On Monday, Nikki Haley’s campaign reported its best month of fundraising ($16.5 million) after its best-ever fundraising quarter ($17.3 million). As the field shrunk, as she became the only game in town for Trump-skeptical donors, she was raising enough to fund a campaign through Super Tuesday.

Those numbers also represented a sharp drop from 2020, when a dozen Democrats were seeking the nomination and the first results — in Iowa and New Hampshire — shrunk the field. Haley raised about as much last quarter as Andrew Yang did four years earlier.

In the first month of primary voting (which started in February, not January, for the 2020 Democrats), four candidates who lost the nomination raised more than Haley did last month: Bernie Sanders ($47.7 million, Elizabeth Warren ($29.5 million), Amy Klobuchar ($18.7 million), and Pete Buttigieg ($18.6 million). A fifth, Mike Bloomberg, largely self-funded his campaign, and only sought donations to qualify for debates.

This has become a theme of the quarterly reports. Big donors aren’t being cheap, super PACs are getting everything they need, but conservative small donors are less engaged with this race than liberal small donors were with the last one. That’s hurt the Republican National Committee’s bottom line, and helped the president build a cash lead over Donald Trump; the Republican front-runner ended 2023 with $33 million on hand, $13 million less than Joe Biden and a third as much as he had at the start of the 2020 campaign.

There’s more money than in prior cycles for third-party candidates, but it’s been spent quickly — a function of the work they need to do to get onto primary ballots. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. raised more than $7 million in his first full quarter as an independent candidate after closing down his Democratic primary campaign. He spent more than that, drawing on prior funds, and ended the year with $5.4 million. Cornel West raised a bit less than $317,000 over the quarter, and ended it with less than $87,000.

Democrats outraised Republicans in Senate races, House Republicans held them off. Just two Senate Democrats are seeking re-election in states won by Donald Trump — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Montana Sen. Jon Tester. Both outraised their opponents, including potential challengers who can draw on personal wealth to narrow the gap. Brown collected $6.4 million, and the three Republicans seeking their nomination raised a bit less than a third of that, combined. Tester raised $5.4 million, and National Republican Senatorial Committee recruit Tim Sheehy raised $1.5 million, not counting another $450,000 he loaned to the campaign.

Money dried up for the two incumbents, elected as Democrats six years ago, who the party wants to get rid of. In Arizona, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema raised just $379,090, after refunding nearly $45,000; in New Jersey, Sen. Bob Menendez refunded more ($16,200) to donors than he raised ($15,795). Both were handily outraised by Democrats – Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego with $3.3 million, New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy with $3.2 million, and New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim with $1.7 million.

The Senate is becoming the preferred battleground for Republican donors who don’t want a Trump restoration but don’t think Nikki Haley can stop it, so the Democratic cash advantage is going to get erased. There are green shoots for Republicans in the House, too. Texas Rep. Vicente González, who dispatched ex-Rep. Mayra Flores last year, has more cash on hand, but Flores’s reach — she won a high-profile special election for an open seat in 2022 — helped her out-raise him all year. The humiliating departure of Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year didn’t hurt the Republicans who hold Biden-won seats in California, and most had blockbuster quarters.

Democrats did better in New York, where they expect a new set of House maps to create more competitive races. The number of competitive seats across the country is still shrinking, and none of their races are under-funded. Democrats out-raised Republicans in eight of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s 17 “Red to Blue” races – 16 swing districts where Republicans won competitive 2020 and 2022 elections, and the Michigan district being vacated by Rep. Elissa Slotkin as she runs for U.S. Senate.

Two “Squad” members are in trouble — and the Israel lobby is loaded. The Israel-Gaza war broke out just a week into the final fundraising quarter. It took no time for the most left-wing members of the House to call for an immediate ceasefire, and no time for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel groups to target them for defeat in primaries.

United Democracy PAC, created by AIPAC to fund its independent expenditures, raised $35.5 million from the start of the war to the end of 2023; it came into 2024 with $40.8 million on hand. Already, it’s been putting money into California Rep. Katie Porter’s Orange County seat to help a more pro-Israel Democrat in the March 5 primary. But most of the “Squad” — four left-wing Democratic women elected in 2018, and four members who’ve joined them since — have no serious competition and raised a ton of cash.

Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, led the group with an astounding $3.6 million quarter — a 2400% increase from her June-September fundraising. Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee raised over $987,000, a five-fold increase from the previous quarter. Tlaib’s the highest-profile ceasefire advocate in the House, and Lee built her donor list by taking on AIPAC, twice, in 2022. Tlaib hasn’t drawn a serious challenger yet, while Lee’s raised about a third as much last quarter, and made some unwelcome local news by telling donors that she wanted pro-Israel conservatives to switch parties and support her.

Who is in danger? New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Missouri Rep. Cori Bush were both outraised by their challengers, who entered the race after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Westchester County Executive George Latimer doubled Bowman’s fundraising (more than $1.4 million to around $725,000) and started the year with twice as much cash ($1.3 million to around $630,000); Bush and Bell raised roughly the same amount of money, but Bell started 2024 with nearly $409,000 and Bush started it with $216,000. And both got gifts from the news cycle — Bowman’s censure for pulling a House office fire alarm came right before the end of the quarter, and a DOJ probe into Bush started right after.

Democrats have a huge cash advantage in the George Santos special. If Democrats lose next week’s special election on Long Island, it won’t be for lack of spending. Ex-Rep. Tom Suozzi, who local Democrats nominated on Dec. 7, raised $4.5 million in just three weeks, ending January with $2.2 million. Mazi Pilip, who the GOP nominated on Dec. 14, raised $1.3 million, spending half of it, and entering the final stretch with less than $630,000. Suozzi had a decades-long rolodex to draw from, and Pilip didn’t. They raised a similar amount of money from donors who gave less than $200 apiece — a bit more than $520,000 for the Democrat, and a bit more than $380,000 for the Republican. Overall, it’s far more than the major party candidates raised in the last big New York special election, a 2022 race in the Hudson Valley, but a similar relative gap between team red and team blue.

Will it matter? We’ll find out in one week.

NOTABLE

• In the New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher trace the cash that’s going from donors to the Trump legal defense.
• In Politico, Steven Shepard and Jessica Piper pull apart the Biden “money machine.”
• In The Lever, Amos Barshad looks at internal AIPAC documents to get the full story of its fundraising surge.

South Carolina. Joe Biden won Saturday’s Democratic primary with 96% of the vote, taking more than 126,000 of 131,000 total ballots cast. The Biden campaign celebrated that as a landslide endorsement from Black voters, and of the president’s support for moving the state to the top of the party primary calendar. “Black voters turned out in South Carolina because they understand that Joe Biden has kept his promises,” Biden communications director Michael Tyler said on CNN.

But turnout was low, a fraction of the nearly 1.8 million registered voters who can show up for either major party’s primary. Black voters made up 76% of the electorate, up from 56% in the 2020 Democratic primary — meaning hundreds of thousands of white moderates and liberals didn’t show up. That could help Nikki Haley, who’s run strongest with non-Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Democratic turnout was incredibly low, so it doesn’t have a significant impact on us,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney told Semafor on a Monday morning campaign update call. Robert Schwartz, whose Primary Pivot organization has been contacting less conservative voters and urging them to pull a Republican ballot, said that he “could not really have hoped for better results” — a weak 2% of the vote for Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and plenty of potential votes for Haley. “Many probably dislike Haley and will stay home,” he said, “but at least we’ve got voters still in the game.”

Nevada. The GOP’s two-part presidential contest is underway right now; polls in the non-binding primary close at 7 p.m. local time, 10 p.m. eastern. As Republicans spent three confusing months informing their often-surprised voters, candidates could either file for the Feb. 8 party-run caucus, which will assign delegates, or the Feb. 6 state-mandated primary, which won’t.

Media outlets are tracking the results tonight anyway, where Haley faces a collection of fringe candidates, two candidates who’ve quit the race (Mike Pence and Tim Scott), and a “none of these candidates” option that’s endorsed by Gov. Joe Lombardo. The “none” option, which Nevada has offered since 1975, typically gets between 2% and 4% of the vote. Tonight, “none” will be a partial stand-in for Donald Trump; he’s on Thursday’s caucus ballot with Ryan Binkley and another set of ex-candidates. Democrats are assigning delegates based on today’s primary results: President Biden faces Marianne Williamson and a group of fringe candidates.

House Majority PAC, “Same Story.” George Santos is the reason for next week’s special election on Long Island, but Democrats didn’t feature him in most of their advertising. Until now. The House Democrats’ super PAC, which has gone after GOP nominee Mazi Pilip for evading most media, combines that criticism with questions about her taxes and businesses: a potential “ethical nightmare,” they say, just like Santos.

NRCC/Mazi for Congress, “100 Percent.” Republican ads in the New York special have stayed focused on one topic: Immigration, illustrated by videos of migrants at the border and in the city. This spot combines that footage with Suozzi, in July 2021, saying he “supports the president’s agenda 100%.” The topic at that time was the Build Back Better economic package; here, it looks like Suozzi will go along with anything Biden does on the border.

School Freedom Fund, “Problem.” Pennsylvania Republican donor Jeff Yass has poured millions into campaigns for school vouchers, and for candidates that support them. He’s funded both Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and this Club for Growth affiliate, which is spending against Republicans who killed Abbott’s voucher bill. The hit on state Rep. Travis Clardy is based on a November interview he gave on why he opposed the bill, explaining that “we don’t have a problem out here with woke teachers in rural east Texas.” The ad’s rebuttal: Clardy represents a school district that brought thinkLaw founder Colin Seale in for a talk, and because Seale has talked about a “racial justice agenda” in gifted classes, he was teaching “critical race theory.”

The Democratic theory of 2024 is simple: If voters consider what a second Trump administration would try to accomplish, they’ll recoil, and vote for Joe Biden again. This poll question tests that theory, and finds most Americans expect Trump to attempt every item on this list. Mass deportation is much more popular than it was during the 2016 or 2020 campaigns. The rest of the agenda isn’t, and only Republican voters who already support Trump are on board for a self-pardon or DOJ investigations of the Biden family.

Democrats spent last year predicting that a turnaround in voters’ views of the economy would move the president’s numbers as inflation faded into the rearview mirror and still-hot jobs and growth numbers became the bigger story. We’ve seen a small shift in attitudes about the economy since Christmas, but it hasn’t helped the president. Republicans are completely sour on the economy, while independents and Democrats are more likely to say that the worst is over. Just a handful expect things to get better.

In the dying days of his presidential campaign, warned of a new electoral threat to Republicans. If they nominated Donald Trump, COVID skeptics might vote for Robert F. Kennedy; if they nominated DeSantis, those voters would stick with the GOP. DeSantis never got to prove that, but this is the first state poll that’s found a significant, moveable anti-establishment vote that’s dependent on the right Republican nominee. Kennedy grabs 6% of the Republican vote if Trump is the nominee, and 22% if it’s Haley.

White House. Donald Trump’s personal lobbying moved Republicans away from the Senate immigration compromise, and created fresh problems for RNC chair Ronna McDaniel — right after a party meeting in Las Vegas that ended with no threat to her leadership.

Trump gave vague answers about his problems with McDaniel to two friendly interviewers, Maria Bartiromo on Fox News and Rob Schmitt on Newsmax. On Sunday, Trump told Bartiromo that there’d “be some changes made” in the RNC after he secures the nomination; on Monday, he told Schmitt that McDaniel “understands” that she might have to go. (“RNC has become the student government from hell,” muttered one RNC member.)

On Tuesday, RNC chief of staff Mike Reed left the committee. McDaniel said in a statement that she would miss his “calm and steady hand,” and Reed’s exit email, obtained by Politico, acknowledged that it “comes as many rumors in the press swirl and we prepare to merge with the presumptive nominee.” The committee, he wrote, was in “an incredibly strong position.” Trump advisors told CNN that he might seek a new chair to replace McDaniel, or add their own campaign staff to the organization.

In the Newsmax interview, and in a Monday call-in to Dan Bongino’s radio show, Trump demanded that Republicans kill the border bill, calling it “lunacy” and speculating that it would hurt Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford’s career (He told Bongino, falsely, that he had not endorsed Lankford; he did in 2022.) Nikki Haley, campaigning in Spartanburg’s Indigo Hall on Monday, said she agreed with parts of the bill (“they strengthen the asylum laws”) and wanted something to get passed.

“Here you have President Trump telling Congress — don’t pass anything until after the election. We can’t wait,” she said. “We need them to do something now.”

Senate. The immigration compromise might not last the week, but it got quick endorsements from the most endangered Democrats seeking re-election — Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, plus Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen. Every Republican candidate who commented on the bill opposed it. “It allows 4,000 migrants to cross every day,” tweeted Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick, misstating a part of the bill that stops asylum claims if thousands of migrants are apprehended.

House. The bill roiled the race to replace George Santos, too, with Democrat Tom Suozzi endorsing it and Republican Mazi Pilip saying “it simply puts into law the invasion currently happening at our southern border.” Suozzi called that “appalling,” accusing Pilip of genuflecting to “Republican extremists in her party who are following former President Trump.” The two candidates will meet for their only debate, in a town hall format, on Thursday.

• two days until the Republican caucuses in Nevada
• seven days until the special election to replace George Santos
• 18 days until the South Carolina Republican primary
• 28 days until Super Tuesday
• 279 days until the 2024 presidential election