Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
The Republican National Committee pulled in a huge haul last month, raising $14.6 million, the vast majority of which, nearly $9 million, came from donors who gave less than $200, according to a new FEC filing.
It was the RNC’s best February for fundraising since 2004, and its best election off-year February ever.
ADVERTISEMENT
The committee’s net income for the month, while still significant, was far smaller—at just $2.3 million, indicating that the RNC is pouring money into fundraising early in the cycle in the hopes of building a self-sustaining finance infrastructure heading into President Trump’s re-election contest. Simply put, in February, the RNC spent a lot of money to make a lot of money.
The committee reported paying $3 million to Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s digital firm for “fundraising services.” It spent nearly $4 million on direct-mail-related expenses such as postage and mail production, about $750,000 on telemarketing, $180,000 on acquiring email lists, and $113,000 buying “mementos” for donors. All told, that’s about $8 million, or more than half of the committee’s actual fundraising haul.
It’s a high cost for donor acquisition in the near term, but the RNC and the Trump campaign likely hope that this push to raise early small-dollar donations will establish a baseline of grassroots financial support going forward, particularly in the form of recurring contributions.
A product of this strategy has been the explosion of early Trump campaign Facebook ads noted this week by Axios, which reported that the campaign has spent more advertising on the social-media platform than all potential Democratic challengers combined.
There are plenty of deep pockets on the other side, though, and they’re going after the precise demographics that the RNC and the Trump campaign likely hope will provide the grassroots support it needs. On Thursday, Democratic super PAC American Bridge announced a $50 million paid-advertising campaign targeting Trump’s “core supporters”: white working-class voters in the Midwest. And the day before, Priorities USA, another Democratic super PAC, unveiled a $100 million campaign aimed at just Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Get the data:
