Cantor raised nearly $5.5M, but lost to a man with a $200,000 shoestring budget. How Big Money failed Cantor

Big money couldn’t save Eric Cantor.

The darling of big Wall Street donors, the K Street business types and the Republican establishment went down in flames Tuesday, all the while crushing his no-name opponent with a 26-to-1 cash advantage in the money race.


Cantor, the House majority leader, raised nearly $5.5 million during the cycle, bolstered by investments from the American Chemistry Council, the American College of Radiology, the National Rifle Association, and the National Association of Realtors.

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He lost to Dave Brat, a college professor with a $200,000 shoestring budget.

The result should be a wakeup call that with a fickle Republican primary electorate in an anti-incumbent, anti-Washington mood, no fundraising advantage can guarantee victory. Brat’s win is all the more stunning because like-minded outside groups didn’t buy TV ads, focusing on other prizes like GOP Senate primaries in Kentucky and Mississippi.

Cantor never lacked for cash, with a donor roll that read like a who’s who of Beltway power players. Once seen as a top contender for House speaker, he had the support of 377 political action committees representing almost every major corporate and special interest from all sectors of the economy, including airlines, telecom, energy, food, and manufacturing groups.

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“This should send shockwaves through the establishment. They can have all the millions of dollars that the Chamber of Commerce can pump in,” said L. Brent Bozell, a conservative activist and president of the conservative groups ForAmerica and Media Research Center.

Bozell and other conservative leaders like David Bossie of Citizens United and Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots were all gathered at a Tuesday dinner at Bozell’s Virginia home when the news broke.

“It is not less than shocking — even for all of the top professionals that are sitting at this table for dinner,” Bossie told POLITICO. “We are all in awe of what Dave Brat was able to pull off.”

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The decision to invest tea party money, energy and resources elsewhere — primarily in Chris McDaniel’s Mississippi Senate bid and Matt Bevin’s Kentucky race — was not without some dissent. Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation wrote a little-noticed op-ed in the Washington Times in March — pleading with fellow conservatives to make a serious investment in the Cantor-Brat primary race.

“I tried to get a number of tea party groups to endorse him and put money in the race, but I just don’t think they thought Dave Brat could do what he did. I live in the district, so I knew what was going on,” Phillips said Tuesday.

“The funny thing is I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls and texts from those groups congratulating me,” he added. “But I think it sends a more powerful message that he won without the influence of outside money.”

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Instead, Brat ran a shoestring campaign helmed by a 23-year old campaign manager who graduated from college in 2013.

The Brat campaign had just two paid staffers, according to its last campaign finance report. Cantor, meanwhile, had 23 paid staff in the same time period, as well as several consulting firms. Brat spent $75,000 in April and May. Cantor spent just over $1 million.

Instead, Brat’s victory was driven by conservative talk radio and the grassroots opposition to immigration reform that was the talk of both conservative and mainstream media.

“Every newscast was talking about his support for immigration,” said Scottie Nell Hughes of the Tea Party News Network about Cantor. “Dollars can’t buy an advertisement like that.”

His opponent, Brat, never got a single PAC donation over the course of the race, according to FEC records.

Cantor’s top five campaign contributors were Blackstone Group, Scoggin Capital Management, Goldman Sachs, Altria Group and Charmer Sunbelt Group, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which takes into account both political action committee donations and employee contributions.

The Chemistry Council — a major lobbying organization representing chemical interests — invested more than $300,000, or more than Brat raised the entire cycle, behind Cantor in the final weeks of the race. As of the end of May, Cantor was sitting on a war chest of about $1.5 million — reserved for either the general election, Republican Party building in 2014 or a future campaign.

Yet Cantor allies failed to get any inkling that the majority leader might be facing a contested race. The campaign’s internal polling showed Cantor up by more than 30 points — a breezy victory that didn’t require their help.

Cantor allies in the business community and on K Street said that the sense was the majority leader was taking his race seriously — especially after Cantor’s choice for Henrico County GOP chair was defeated by tea party forces in May. GOP downtowners say that the majority leader seemed to be investing the resources he needed to win and that it was total shock that his campaign fell short Tuesday night

“Washington was asleep at the wheel. Why waste your money for or against someone when everyone thought Cantor was going to win anyway?” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “If Cantor had indicated to outside groups that the majority leader was in trouble, it would have likely sparked a spending war in the district.”

His defeat is also raising concerns about potential impact on fundraising for House Republicans overall. Cantor, a prolific fundraiser, spent a considerable amount of time traveling the country to raise money on behalf of the party.

But in the age of outside money, he could be even more useful after he leaves Congress. Cantor is already affiliated with the YG Network, a politically-active nonprofit that also has a super PAC arm.

“He could be much more powerful as a fundraiser on the outside because he could start or assume control of a super PAC,” Bonjean said. “He’d be very helpful and raise millions more than he could as majority leader.”