Republicans raise more than Democrats as battle for Senate heats up

While a number of the Democrats running for the Senate are resonating with donors, the party committee tasked with helping those candidates is struggling to raise cash.

For the first time since 2011, the National Republican Senate Committee is outpacing the Democrats in an off year. The NRSC has raised nearly $7 million more than the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee through June of 2019, according to Federal Election Commission filings. 

The Democrats will need the additional fundraising given the difficult map they face in 2020. Republicans currently control the Senate by a six seat margin, so Democrats would need to pick up three seats if President Trump loses reelection and four seats if he wins in order to flip control. 

Twenty-two of the 34 seats up for grabs next year are held by Republicans, but only two of those are held in states Hillary Clinton won in 2016: Colorado and Maine. The GOP also hopes it can knock off some vulnerable Democratic senators, such as Alabama’s Doug Jones. 

Several Democratic candidates — like Democratic National Committee member Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Maine’s Speaker of the House Sara Gideon — are raking in millions of dollars for their campaigns. But of the Democrats eyeing seats held by Republicans, only former astronaut Mark Kelly is out-raising the incumbent he’s looking to replace, Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona. 

The Center for Responsive Politics has found that, across the board, Democratic supporters are giving more to specific candidates rather than committees like the DSCC and the DNC, according to the Center’s outreach manager Brendan Quinn. 

“Voters know how important winning back the Senate is in 2020, and the support from our grassroots is boosting resources for must-win Senate races,” DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss told CBS News.

The longer the party goes without a nominee in some of these races, the harder it will be for committees to raise money. For example, in the race to unseat Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, there are at least 11 different Democratic candidates vying for Democratic donors’ dollars, and two of them have raised over $1 million.

The DSCC isn’t the only party committee having trouble keeping up with Republicans. The DNC’s filing with the FEC in July shows the committee has just $9.3 million on hand while the Republican National Committee has over $43 million.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is benefitting from having incumbent officials like Mr. Trump and the 22 Republican Senators up for reelection. Without the burden of competitive primaries, GOP candidates can raise vast sums of money that they will only have to spend in the general election. 

Like the RNC, the NRSC is breaking records so far this year. The committee raised $6.6 million more in 2019 from January to June than it did in the same period in 2017 and has raised $1.5 million more from January to June than it did in the 2018 election year, according to FEC filings. 

The DSCC has not had success in winning the Senate since 2014 despite significantly out-raising the NRSC the first half of almost every year since. In 2018, the NRSC out-raised the Democrats in the first half of the year, but only by a relatively paltry sum. 

In addition to underperforming in fundraising, the DSCC is also dealing with a substantial amount of debt. In their July filing with the FEC, the committee posted $16 million in debt whereas the NRSC has decreased their debt from $11 million to just under $5 million within the previous two years.