Trump Looms Large in Wallets of GOP Voters

With the midterm elections fast approaching, Republicans are being forced to pick their battles — such as pumping millions of dollars into Ohio while cutting ad buys in other competitive states — while President Trump and Governor DeSantis sit atop mountains of cash.As the Sun has reported, Republican Senate hopefuls are being out-fundraised by large margins by their Democratic opponents. Now, the effects of that funding gap are beginning to be felt.Congressional Republicans cut back on TV ad buys earlier this week in three competitive states, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. They also did so in Nevada earlier this month.For the National Republicans Senatorial Committee, the organization responsible for these ads, this represents $13.5 million in cuts to ad spending since the beginning of the month. The moves signal financial concerns ahead of the unofficial beginning of election season, on Labor Day. Although the National Republican Senatorial Committee raised an impressive $173 million this cycle, it has already spent some $159 million, according to Federal Elections Commission data.The Republican Party, then, is being forced to pick its battles, and it looks like one of those battles is Ohio. The GOP Senate Leadership Fund announced on August 18 that it would be putting $28 million into its efforts to win the Senate seat in Ohio.While GOP Senate hopefuls struggle to keep their ads on the air, two 2024 headliners are still raking in cash more than two years ahead of the next presidential election.Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC has raised more than $103 million over the course of the 2022 election cycle and has posted some $31 million spending. A mere $435,000 of that was sent to candidates, mostly in sums of $5,000 per candidate.This PAC was the subject of scrutiny relating to monthly credit card charges that donors claimed they didn’t know they were agreeing to. Mr. Trump is allowed to use money raised through this PAC for a variety of non-personal purposes, including legal fees, which are allowed on a case-by-case basis.Meanwhile Mr. DeSantis has taken in more than $140 million in donations this cycle, much of it coming from outside Florida. Even after campaign expenditures for his 2022 re-election bid, he still has more than $120 million in the bank.An associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, John Coleman, argues that Mr. Trump’s 2024 jockeying has sucked all the air out of the midterms.“Trump does a good job of turning out Republicans when he’s on the ballot himself,” he tells the Sun. “When Trump is off the ballot as in 2018 he can be a real pain for Republicans — especially from a strategic perspective.”He argues that the president has had an outsized influence in securing nominations for candidates who have since failed to fundraise, and that he is also pulling attention away from the midterms and toward the 2024 presidential campaign.While this early attention has been a boon for the coffers of favorites like Messrs. Trump and DeSantis, it may have come at the expense of donations to Senate and House nominees, who are seeing funds dry up early this year.There are, however, dissenting opinions. A Washington University in Saint Louis data scientist, Liberty Vittert, argues that the GOP’s financial woes mostly come down to Democrats simply raising more money this cycle.The Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, Senator Scott, has signaled that some of the early spending this year came from efforts to keep up with Democrats, who have had an unusually large budget this year.Mr. Coleman, for his part, argues that this increase in Democratic funding is also a legacy of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and one that has only been boosted by the Dobbs v. Jackson decision.“From the Trump era, Democrats have really built up this reservoir of donors who want to give to their party to score points against Trump and the Republicans,” he tells the Sun. “On the other side you have Trump and his allies hogging their candidates’ funds.”While money isn’t everything, it does look like the GOP’s chances are starting to slip in at least two of the states in which they’ve recently cut ad buys.New polling from Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin shows the Democratic nominee, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, leading Senator Johnson by seven points and outperforming the Democratic nominee for governor there by six points.In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the situation has gone to worse from bad for the GOP. New polling from Public Opinion Strategies found that in the Senate race, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman leads TV personality Mehmet Oz by a 51 percent to 33 percent margin. In the gubernatorial competition, it found Attorney General Josh Shapiro leading state Senator Douglass Mastriano 50 percent to 35 percent.Even taken in the context of polling averages, it’s clear that the Democrats are pulling ahead in the Senate races in these states, and it looks like the GOP could be running out of money for efforts to change the direction.

Trump Looms Large in Wallets of GOP Voters

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