The Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump face significant challenges in financing a win in the 2024 elections.
The RNC’s final Federal Election Commission filing for 2023 revealed the committee ended the year raising $87.2 million, spending $93.5 million, accruing $1.8 million in debts, and having just $8 million in cash on hand, marking its worst fundraising haul since 2013. Adjusted for inflation, the RNC’s total is its poorest since 1993.
On the other hand, the Democratic National Committee raised $120 million in 2023, spent $129.5 million, had $319,355.42 in debts, and ended the year with $21 million available cash. The DNC was quick to tout its stronger fundraising and deeper war chest, with Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd calling the RNC’s filing a “financial disaster.”
The fundraising results for the Republican Party set off alarm bells for some already dissatisfied with the RNC’s leadership and lack of performance in past elections.
Arizona Republican Committeeman and Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer said, “The RNC has barely been keeping their head above water,” noting that “we have to raise money for a convention.” The Republican National Convention will take place July 15-18 in Milwaukee and is expected to cost several million dollars, he predicted.
According to him, the state of the party’s finances are “dire.”
Bowyer was one of the party members who sought to replace RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniels during the leadership election last year when he supported California Republican Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon’s bid for the chair. His organization, TP Action, hosted a “Restoring National Confidence” summit earlier this week, which overlapped with the RNC’s winter meeting. Both events took place in Las Vegas. According to the group, between 50 and 70 committeemen and women attended the “alternate RNC” meeting.
However, Iowa Republican Committeeman Steve Scheffler justified the 2023 fundraising data. He pointed to Republicans not in power at the White House and expressed confidence in a fundraising uptick once a presumptive nominee emerges. According to the Iowa committeeman, big donors tend to want to contribute to candidates directly during a primary campaign cycle before giving to the RNC later on.
“They’re in as good a shape as they’ve been in years past when we have not held the White House,” Scheffler, who did not fault RNC leadership for the fundraising numbers, said. “Once we get that presumptive nominee in place, fundraising will take off like a rocket.”
Republican strategist Michael Duncan also attributed some of the deflated finances to donors giving to candidates directly. “If you support Trump, you’re donating directly to him. If you supported DeSantis, Nikki, et al., you donate to them or the super PACs,” he said. And Trump, he continued, “has the largest fundraising list in politics.”
Across his campaign and various other entities fundraising on his behalf, Trump managed to pull in a combined $188 million last year. The campaign alone ended 2023 with $33 million in cash on hand.
The 2023 data are “probably a combination of Trump fundraising for himself and nobody spending any time fundraising for the RNC,” agreed Republican strategist John Feehery.
Still, “the RNC has spent more than it raised in each of the last three years now,” California political analyst Rob Pyers explained. He noted that $422.4 million had been raised by the party since 2021, while a much larger sum of $494.9 million has been spent. “And I don’t think anyone is going to argue that $8 million on hand and $1.8 million in debt before an election year is ideal,” he added.
Bowyer pointed out that the fundraising total for the RNC was ultimately its worst in 30 years when adjusted for inflation.
“In the Obama years, for example, they were doing pretty well raising actually a pretty substantial amount of money because there was a Democrat in the White House,” he said. Bowyer claimed 2023 “should have been an easier year to raise money” given Biden’s “idiotic” and “detestable” nature.
According to him, the issue stems from McDaniel, whose approach is offputting. He referenced former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s account of his experience with the RNC chairwoman, wherein she allegedly would not accept any responsibility for election losses. “I mean, that’s been really what she’s done to everyone,” Bowyer said.
Fortunately for the committee, there may be time still time to catch up. “It’s possible the RNC can make up ground,” Pyers claimed.
The RNC did see a glimmer of hope for its finances in the new year, raising nearly $12 million in January. The committee’s total for last month was larger than any single month of 2023.
And despite Bowyer’s disappointment with the totals, he doesn’t believe it will be a problem in the 2024 general election. “I think the Trump campaign is going to kind of take hold of all this with the RNC obviously. It’s basically a merger that happens,” he explained.
Trump’s status as “the most prolific grassroots attractor and small-dollar fundraiser that we’ve ever seen the Republican Party” will serve to “bandaid a lot of these problems,” he said.
However, not everyone is so sure it won’t cause problems for Republicans in November. The fundraising totals this close to a general election “could be a bad sign,” Feehery said.
Trump is poised to go up against Biden’s massive haul of available cash. Last year, the Biden campaign and his allied groups maintained a war chest of $140 million going into the election season.
Meanwhile, Trump-supporting organizations are also footing the legal bills for the former president across his various court cases, spending roughly $48 million in legal fees.
Trump’s campaign telegraphed confidence in its ability to keep up fundraising, however. “President Trump’s campaign is fueled by small-dollar donors across the country from every background who are sick and tired of Crooked Joe Biden’s record-high inflation, wide open border, crime, and chaos,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
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“President Trump continues to dominate Biden in every single battleground poll, and we are more confident than ever that he will take back the White House in November,” she added.
Further, the campaign revealed that its entire $33 million stash of cash on hand is earmarked for the primary season, which allows the Trump campaign to return to the same donors for additional contributions for the general election.
