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WASHINGTON – Republicans are starting to catch up with Democrats in online fundraising, creating, for the first time in modern history, a political landscape where both parties are largely funded by small donations, for better – or some say the worst.
Democrats have dominated online fundraising since the early days of the internet and touted the billions they raise in small donations as proof that they are the people’s party, less dependent on wealthy donors and vested interests. commercial than the GOP.
Republicans have spent years catching up, most of the time without success. But now, just in time for the mid-terms of 2022, they’re starting to do well, thanks in large part to former President Donald Trump and his army of online enthusiasts.
“It’s harvesting the seeds of the digital infrastructure that Republicans have been planting for years,” said Matt Gorman, a GOP strategist who worked for the party’s campaign arm in Congress in the last mid-election. mandate. “That’s why you see things like freshmen of the House raising over a million dollars (in a single quarter). In 2018, we begged people to collect a fifth. “
Even out of office, Trump himself continues to raise massive sums of money, much of it online, announcing on Saturday that his political groups raised nearly $ 82 million in the first half of the year, giving him a prize pool of over $ 102 million.
During the last quarter, the three main party committees of the GOP raised almost identical sums to their Democratic counterparts through small donations.
The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senate Committee, and the Congressional Republican National Committee raised $ 77.65 million in donations below $ 200 each in the quarter ending June 30, compared to $ 77.7 million for the Democrats for their corresponding groups.
Each sum represented an identical 57% share of individual donor committees, according to an NBC News analysis of campaign finance reports.
Level the playing field
The fundraising totals are in part thanks to WinRed, which was created by Republicans in 2019 and is their version of ActBlue of the Democrats.
Like an Amazon for causes and candidates, these platforms streamline the donation process by backing up donor credit card information to enable one-click contributions, providing a central hub for all party and groups. allies.
ActBlue has processed nearly $ 8.9 billion in donations since its founding in 2004. Republicans have fought for years among themselves over how to create an alternative and who would lead it. It finally happened two years ago, when President Trump and his allies pressured the party boss to rally behind a platform ahead of his re-election campaign.
Building on Trump’s unusual success in raising funds online, WinRed has now helped raise $ 2.3 billion for GOP candidates since launch, with an average contribution of around $ 50.
“Republicans would always lose small donations. Now we are winning, or we are doing very well, because we are the American Workers’ Party, and we are beating the Democrats at their own game, ”Trump said in April. “We learned from the Liberal ActBlue – and now we’re better than them! “
Or as Gerrit Lansing, president of WinRed, told Fox News, “The good guys leveled the playing field for online fundraising.
That money could be essential midway through next year – and beyond.
Small donors are especially valuable to the GOP as they attempt to fill the void left by traditional GOP allies in US business after multiple companies announced they would withhold their contributions from Republicans who voted against certification of the election of President Joe Biden on January 6.
Meanwhile, as the GOP has grown increasingly populist under Trump’s leadership, it has grown more hostile to corporate power, so once staunch allies like the US Chamber of Commerce began to hedge their bets. by supporting Democrats and Republicans.
Campaign finance laws provide the advantage of collecting many small donations instead of large checks from high net worth individuals, as donations are capped at $ 2,900. And while wealthy donors can write big checks outside of groups like super PACs, these groups have to pay hefty prices for TV advertising, usually the biggest expense of any campaign, diluting the power of every dollar.
Democrats still have the edge, having spent nearly two decades cultivating a culture of giving online. ActBlue collected $ 289 million last quarter, compared to $ 131 million for WinRed.
“Small donors are deepening their investments and pushing local movements forward like we’ve never seen before,” said Erin Hill, Executive Director of ActBlue.
“Polarization lights”
For the first time, both parties are now increasingly funded and accountable to their online base.
While small dollars tend to be romanticized – the Democrats’ voting rights bill includes a provision to encourage such donations by matching $ 6 in public funds for every $ 1 in small donations – some see a big one. downside to empowering small donors, who tend to be the most ideological and online.
“The same dynamic that fuels virality on social media in general also applies to fundraising from small donors,” said Rick Pildes, professor of constitutional law and leading democracy scholar at New York University. .
“The most extreme calls, the most extreme candidates, the candidates who have the highest profiles because they are dominant presences on social media or on cable news, tend to attract and rely on the most. small donors, ”he said. “There is a real risk that increased fundraising from small donors will add fuel to the polarization fires that burn so fiercely.”
Research has shown that people who donate online are more ideological than the general public, and more ideologically extreme lawmakers collect more of their campaign coffers from individual donors.
In the first quarter of this year, for example, the congressman who raised the most money from small donors was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., According to transparency group Open Secrets, thanks to a flood of donations around when she was kicked out of its congressional committees for inflammatory and conspiratorial rhetoric, including on fictitious Jewish space lasers.
The second best House candidate among small donors was Lightning Rod Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y. Also on the top ten list were Republican Representatives Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan and Dan Crenshaw, some of Trump’s most flamboyant allies on Capitol Hill who excel at courting controversy.
“It’s the rise of politics as performance instead of governance or legislation,” Pildes said. “Candidates know that if they succeed in fueling this culture of outrage, it risks opening the tap for small donations.”
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