First-year Democrats make money to protect the House

The most vulnerable Democrats in the House are quickly starting to defend their seats – and the new fragile majority of their party.

Nearly three dozen Democratic students in battlefield districts have raised more than $ 300,000 for their campaigns in the first three months of 2019 – a barometer of the initial momentum of seats that could determine control of the House in the 2020 elections.

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Faced with a crowded Democratic presidential field and well-known Senate races, the new class of Democrats responsible for overthrowing the House's control have fought to support the torrent of campaign funds, most of them from Small donors, allowing candidates to spend more than candidates up at the GOP in most contested home runs last year. Today, as incumbents, these impressive figures could help repel the GOP challengers as Democrats try to retain their majority while waging war against President Donald Trump on several fronts.

The Democrats currently hold a 19-seat majority in the House, which they recovered in the mid-term elections last year, after eight years in the minority.

According to an analysis of POLITICO, of the 43 beginner Democrats targeted by Republicans by 2020, only eight had figures below $ 300,000. No Democratic freshman candidate has been criticized by Republican challengers who have declared themselves at this stage, although many others are expected to appear later in the year.

First-year student representative Josh Harder (California) earned the highest number of targeted front-line Democrats, with a total of $ 874,000 – more than triple the average of all candidates in the House .

The following representatives are Antonio Delgado (N.Y.), Joe Cunningham (S.C.), Katie Hill (California), Max Rose (N.Y.) and Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (Texas), who each raised more than half a million dollars.

"Our supporters and voters of all kinds realize that these are not seats that will just stay safe," said Hill, who beat a Republican serving in a district in Southern California and reported 608 000 dollars so far this year, said the first – quarterly fundraising campaign. "We all know that we are ready for a long fight."

"It was a question mark for many of us – that was," Will we be able to keep this energy? And I feel like it's definitely the case, "Hill said of the 2018 blue wave that marked his story. class of manufacture.

Hill is already facing two challengers, but they have declared themselves after the fundraising round and will not report their contributions until July.

In fact, the first set of statistics on fundraising – still at the beginning of the cycle – offers more insight into existing candidates than the strength of potential challengers. But on the handful of Republican challengers declared at other seats, three raised significant sums in the first quarter.

This includes Nicole Malliotakis, a member of the New York Assembly, who challenges Rose for a district based in Staten Island, New York. Malliotakis, who received contributions from Kevin McCarthy, leader of the minority, and New Elevate PAC of New York Republican Elise Stefanik, raised $ 300,000 in two months. But Rose has raised $ 603,000 – an exceptionally high figure in the country's most expensive media market.

Democrats say that they are not only defending, and that the strategy of the Chamber of Deputies includes including the elimination of districts that Republicans occupied very closely in 2018. Of the 31 GOP party holders targeted by the Democrats, only 15 raised more than $ 300,000, which could show a potential weakness for 2020 And House GOP leaders have sought to fill this gap.

"Candidates and Republican candidates will have the resources to effectively defend the socialist policies arising from the Nancy Pelosi conference, such as the Green New Deal and the elimination of private health insurance," said the NRCC spokesman Michael McAdams.

Frontline Democrats can also count on national support. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised a record amount for the first quarter of the year, raising $ 32.5 million, the majority of which came from contributions of less than $ 200.

"This is your first reelection, it's your toughest," said Representative Cheri Bustos (Ill.), Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in an interview. "The people who helped bring these members here are now invested."

In a speech to his colleagues at the Democratic Retreat in Virginia last week, Bustos told the caucus that they must control "our energy, our focus, and our determination to lock up our majority."

"We can not rent these neighborhoods for the next two years," Bustos said. "We must own them."

After seeing Democrats collect millions of dollars through ActBlue, a small-scale online fundraising platform created in 2004 but having acquired new power in 2018, Republicans realized they needed a platform to fight against the influx of money Democrat. The new Patriot Pass platform is still under construction.

In addition to the online deluge of Democratic money, Republicans are wary of mega-donors like the former mayor of New York City. Michael Bloomberg, who spent more than $ 100 million in 2018 to help Democrats overthrow the House, including $ 11 million in the last two weeks of the California election alone.

"Michael Bloomberg alone is responsible in many respects for the margin of the majority of Democrats," said Chris Grant, GOP consultant. "Republicans of [Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy] on the bottom were laser focused on that. The chef took this on his shoulders. "

In general, Democratic leaders are beginning to accumulate the necessary liquidity to defend their seats, although the results have been weaker than expected. Freshman representative Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.) Raised only $ 121,000 in a disputed district in South Jersey. First-year representative Dean Phillips (D-Min.) Also raised less than $ 200,000 in the Twin Cities suburbs, although he completed his 2018 campaign with self-financing funding.

So far, three Republican candidates have been nominated by Democratic candidates, including two in California, where Democrats are trying to eliminate the remaining red districts of the state. Representative Duncan Hunter, who was charged with misusing campaign funds, raised only $ 93,000. It's only a quarter of the $ 350,000 his opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar has collected – the best of all Democratic opponents to date.

Representative Doug LaMalfa (Calif.) – who sits in a more reliable GOP seat – reported only $ 87.00 for a rematch against his Democratic opponent last year, Audrey Denney, who has already collected 253 $ 000.

The other Republican who has been mobilized is New York representative Chris Collins, who only cashed $ 5,200 after being charged with insider trading last year. Almost all of his campaign money came from PAC groups aligned with the government, but not a dollar from an individual donor.

Iowa 's controversial representative, Steve King, who was nearly beaten by a Democratic challenger last year, reported only $ 62,000 in the first quarter. King's $ 18,000 in cash is less than the funds of three of his major competitors, including Senator Randy Feenstra, who had $ 240,000 in cash.

Until now, two Democrats in office have been raised by candidates from their own party, including Representative Dan Lipinski (Ill.), One of the last representatives of the party against abortion. Representative Stephen Lynch (Mass.), Who has spent nearly 20 years in the House, faces a major challenge in his diverse district south of Boston. His opponent, Mohammad Dar, collected $ 180,106, nearly three times more than Lynch's totals.

Another sign of continued enthusiasm, Democrats hold an important fundraising advantage ahead of this year's high-profile elections in the 9th Congressional District of North Carolina.

Dan McCready – the only Democratic nominee – announced a $ 1.6 million fundraiser, more than three times the amount that all of his Republican competitors gathered before their GOP primaries in May.

House leaders continued to make money in the first quarter, as did some MPs who saw their public profile grow during the Trump era. Minority whip Steve Scalise (La.) Raised more than $ 4.3 million, while minority leader Kevin McCarthy raised $ 5.4 million. Take PAC, the ruling party of the GOP, reported $ 16.5 million. And Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) – a senior member of the House's Intelligence Committee – raised $ 1.2 million and has close to $ 5 million.

That amounts to about $ 4.6 million transported by President Nancy Pelosi (California) and an additional $ 1.8 million by the next chairman of the Democratic Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Frequently Targeted by Trump . Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD) raised $ 651,000 for his campaign and raised $ 756,000 for other Democrats in the House.