Why Republicans are raising double the money in down-ballot races
Republicans maintain a cash advantage over Democrats in one key area: state legislative races. This resource gap is now rearing its head in battleground states
Joan E Greve
Tue 17 Sep 2024 13.00 CEST
Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid in July, Democrats have showered her campaign with cash. Last month alone, the vice-president raised $361m, tripling Donald Trump’s fundraising haul of $130m for the month. According to Harris’s campaign, she brought in $540m in the six weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.
Democratic congressional candidates appear to be benefiting from this financial windfall as well, as Republicans sound the alarm about their fundraising deficit in key races that will determine control of the House and Senate in November.
But in one crucial area, Republicans maintain a substantial cash advantage over Democrats: state legislative races. In recent years, Republicans have controlled more state legislative chambers than Democrats, giving them more power over those states’ budgets, election laws and abortion policies.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which supports the party’s state legislative candidates, has raised $35m between the start of 2023 and the end of this June, the committee told the Guardian. In comparison, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which invests in an array of state-level campaigns, like supreme court races, in addition to legislative campaigns – has raised $62m in the same time period.
That resource gap is now rearing its head in key battleground states, the DLCC says. In Pennsylvania, a crucial state for the presidential and congressional maps, Republican state legislative candidates have spent $4.5m on paid advertisements, compared to $1.4m for Democratic candidates.
“When we think about the context of what’s at stake, we think about more than 65 million people being covered by our target map this year,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC. “And that means that the rights of all those people will be determined by who’s in power the day after the election.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -elections 