The midterms aren’t until 2022, but fundraising for the election is already moving at a breakneck pace.
In the first three quarters of 2021, the six major Democratic and Republican committees raised a combined total of close to $600 million, a staggering sum that speaks to the high stakes and narrow lanes for victory in what’s sure to be a hotly contested off-year contest.
The two parties are close when it comes to total dollars raised, though Republicans have a total advantage, $294.7 million to $287.2 million. The GOP’s national ($122.9 million to $121.5 million) and Senate committees ($76.2 million to $63.6 million) outraised the Democrats, while Democrats had a strong advantage in the House ($89.1 million to $60.1 million).
The sums are a strong indication that the fight over control of both chambers of Congress is going to be intense. Democrats hold tight majorities in both, with an eight-seat advantage in the House and tie-breaker Vice President Kamala Harris in the Senate.
Republicans are already making their strategy clear: Elect us as a check on President Joe Biden’s “radical, reckless, socialist agenda,” as NRSC Chair Sen. Rick Scott put it. It’s a tactic that typically works for the minority party in the midterms; voters of the party that won the presidential election are generally more complacent, while those that lost are fired up from the defeat. Biden is “our best asset,” Scott said Monday.
In fact, though, Democratic donors show no signs of complacency. Quite the contrary: Judging by the impressive fundraising totals for Democratic committees, these donors remain highly mobilized going into 2022. Other evidence that Democratic donors remain on high alert has come recently from California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom raised more than $70 million to fight a recall effort, and from Virginia, where Terry McAuliffe has raised at least $45 million to win the governorship. In both contests, Democrats have offered up a gusher of donations in the face of the possibility that a Trumpist candidate could win power in a key state.
Statewide races with the potential to shape the latter two years of Biden’s first term also showed Democrats with commanding funding totals. In Florida, Rep. Val Demings, who is angling to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, took in $8.4 million in the third quarter to Rubio’s $6 million; in Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Governor and Senate hopeful John Fetterman took in $2.7 million; and in Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan, running for Senate, raised $2.5 million.
The momentum behind Democratic fundraising runs counter to the narrative of plummeting morale across the party, including key groups of voters dismayed by a lack of action in Washington.
The party’s attempts to capitalize on control of the White House and Congress to further even a scaled-back version of the Biden agenda have run into roadblock after roadblock almost entirely of the party’s own creation. In the Senate, it’s two Democrats—Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin—who are gumming up the works, halting an already pared-down reconciliation bill over concerns about spending and taxes.
Meanwhile, polling shows that voters of color, long a reliable Democratic voting bloc, are growing increasingly disenchanted with the party’s behavior and resentful that their ballots are taken for granted. Political consulting firm Way to Win, in a white paper published this month, warns that if the party doesn’t unify around a compelling message and policy priorities, voters may drift away into non-voting or to the GOP.
“To expand the Democratic base with a durable coalition of individual voters, high-potential voters—people who are eligible but do not consistently turn out to vote—must be invited to become more habitual voters who more consistently break for Democrats,” Way to Win advises.
Progressives and party attaches are already sounding the alarm over the party’s prospects if the policy that comes out of Democratic rule is lacking. “It was never going to be easy or anything,” a Democratic congressional aide told The Hill. “It was always kind of contingent on what got done.”
Again, though, while the turgid pace of legislation coming out of DC is frustrating outspoken Democrats online and in opinion pages, it’s not necessarily translating to donors. Democrats took in $35.9 million in the third quarter for the DCCC, more than the GOP counterpart, and $20.7 million for the DSCC, just behind the NRSC’s $25 million.
That speaks to party enthusiasm, Democratic consultant Martha McKenna told Bloomberg.
“Strong fundraising in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania challenger races is a solid indicator that Democratic grassroots donors are fired up,” McKenna said.