Over the last couple years, several local Republican Party chapters have fallen into financial ruin, in many cases after squandering their money promoting Donald Trump’s bogus allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
Now the former president’s new fundraising arrangement with the Republican National Committee could worsen the GOP’s financial woes at the local level, according to NBC News:
But this year, donations to Trump 47 will first be disbursed to the Trump campaign, followed by the Save America PAC once a donor hits the maximum campaign contribution limit. After an individual’s donations hit the limit for both the campaign and the Save America PAC, the Republican National Committee will receive funds, followed by individual state Republican parties.
So state parties will be last in line to receive funding. And that’s bad news for the many state-level GOP chapters — including several in potential swing states — that have struggled to get their finances in order and looked to the RNC for help ever since 2020. Those include the Michigan GOP, the Arizona GOP, the Colorado GOP and the Minnesota GOP, just to name a few.
On Thursday’s episode of “The ReidOut with Joy Reid,” political strategist Juanita Tolliver explained how this might affect Republicans’ chances of retaining the House and flipping the Senate.
She said:
“[The arrangement] also impacts other candidates who are running for Senate, who are running for House, who will not get these resources if all of the money is first prioritized for Trump’s legal fees. And that is something that is attractive to Democrats. They don’t mind if Republican House candidates don’t get aid when Democrats are trying to take control of the House. They don’t mind that Senate candidates across the country aren’t getting support from the RNC when we know Democrats are facing an uphill battle in terms of retaining control of the Senate. So, hey, this is bad news for Republicans, not just Trump’s bank account, but I’m talking Republicans on the ballot across the country.
I also think the arrangement stands to make the Republican Party even more servile to Trump, because it will likely force local GOP chapters to compete, in a sense, for the pool of funds that are made available to them by the RNC. Trump tried to extort a foreign government into doing political favors for him. It’s easy to imagine the Trump-branded RNC refusing to finance state GOP chapters unless they agree to go along with all of his dubious political strategies and stunts.
Looking into my crystal ball, I see chaos and infighting ahead for the Republican Party under Trump’s control.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.