Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis' fundraising was outpaced by more than two-to-one from July to September, wiping out his early money advantage. | Jeff Roberson/AP Photo Elections Money troubles: The GOP’s problem with cash The gaping cash disparity in the midterms has Republicans worried about 2020.

Mitch McConnell stood before a roomful of Republican donors on Wednesday night to thank them for their help in the midterms. But the Senate leader also issued a dire warning: Democrats had just thumped them in the all-important online donor game, and the GOP badly needs to catch up.

The heart of the problem, McConnell said at the event at party headquarters on Capitol Hill, is ActBlue. The Democratic fundraising tool funneled over $700 million in small donations to House and Senate candidates over the course of the 2018 campaign. The GOP leader said Republicans were getting swamped in the hunt for online givers and that he has charged his political team with coming up with a solution to enable them to compete in 2020.


McConnell’s push underscores the urgency confronting Republicans. In race after race, turbocharged liberal donors pumped cash into Democratic coffers — much of it through ActBlue, an easy-to-use site that allows givers to plug in their credit card information and send contributions to their candidate of choice with a click. Republicans have no such centralized fundraising platform.

With the next campaign already on the horizon, Republicans view their online donor deficit — particularly acute in House races, but significant in Senate contests, too — as a primary obstacle. Josh Holmes, a top McConnell political adviser, has begun making calls to senior Republicans, and a group of party figures is expected to convene after Thanksgiving. An ActBlue counterweight, he said, would require buy-in across the splintered Republican Party apparatus.

Republicans have long acknowledged the shortcoming and spoken out about the need to fix it, to no avail. But this year's gaping money disparity between the two parties has snapped the GOP to attention.

“I think everybody acknowledges we have a helluva problem,” said Holmes. “The question is whether we can get everybody to set egos and business considerations aside to solve it. I’d certainly like to try.”

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The concern comes after a 2018 campaign in which the party was outraised by historic proportions. During the third quarter, 92 House GOP incumbents collected less money than their Democratic challengers, and 51 of those Republicans raised less than half the amount taken in by their rivals.

The fundraising challenge imperiled Republicans across the map. In Illinois, GOP Rep. Rodney Davis, who was once thought to be safe, was outpaced more than 2-to-1 from July through September, wiping out his early money advantage. Davis managed to hang on, but only barely.

Something “has to be done to combat what the Democrats put together," the three-term congressman told POLITICO. “There’s no reason why small-dollar GOP donors in Wyoming, Texas, Montana, or Florida can’t help vulnerable members in tough districts."

Republican Senate candidates, meanwhile, were outraised in nearly every key race — and in some states, such as Montana and Nevada, the deficits were glaring.

The thirst for an ActBlue-like platform has become a central point of discussion as Republicans plot out a road map to win back the House majority and select their new leadership. During a House Republican conference call on Thursday, Arkansas Rep. French Hill complained that the party didn’t raise enough small donations and should have its own version of ActBlue. Hill, who fended off a stiff challenge despite being outraised in the third quarter, said he would support only a candidate to lead the House GOP campaign arm who is committed to creating such a platform.

Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), who is locked in a close race for reelection that has yet to be called, said she has had conversations with an array of House lawmakers since last week’s elections and found widespread agreement that the party needs to address its online donor problem.

“They’re very concerned about being able to compete with ActBlue, and it has to be a top priority,” she said.

Among the lessons Republicans say they learned this year is that the party can no longer just rely on a few billionaire megadonors like Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife, Miriam, contributed over $100 million to GOP-aligned super PACs over the course of the campaign.

While the 85-year-old Adelson remains a crucial source of funding, Republicans concede their advantage in billionaire giving has narrowed considerably. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and San Francisco hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer each plowed more than $100 million into campaigns for Democrats, investments that stretched the 2018 map and put Republicans on defense in races once thought to be beyond reach for the opposing party.

Just as important, Republicans say they’ve come to fully recognize the limitations of billionaire-funded outside groups. Because super PACs must pay a higher rate to air TV commercials than individual candidates, those candidate-raised dollars go further.

Democrats, who’ve come to see ActBlue as the secret weapon that powered their House takeover, express skepticism that Republicans will succeed in creating a rival.

“Republicans have tried to build a long-lasting small-dollar giving platform before but have never really been able to do it,” said Caleb Cade, an ActBlue spokesman. “They've relied for so long on money from the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson that they have not invested the necessary time and energy to create sustainable infrastructure that powers small-dollar giving. I'm not so sure they'll be able to close that gap in just one cycle, if ever.”

Republicans concede that establishing their own platform won’t be easy. In 2017, National Republican Congressional Committee officials quietly undertook a project to examine how ActBlue functioned and whether it could be replicated. ActBlue fundraising became a constant topic of discussion in committee meetings, but the team determined that reproducing it would be difficult in a short period of time.

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The lack of a singular Republican online donation platform partly reflects the fractious nature of the GOP ecosystem — a world filled with competing forces who jockey for attention, contracts and dollars. Republicans have several online fundraising platforms, including Revv, Victory Passport and Anedot. Yet the party has not consolidated around any of them the way Democrats have with ActBlue, which boasts that it has raised over $3 billion since its founding in 2004.

Holmes said is interested not in creating a new platform but, rather, in getting Republicans to work together in a way that replicates the centralized nature of ActBlue.

Yet other Republicans say the problem goes deeper. Zac Moffatt, who was digital director on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said Democrats had succeeded in devising a playbook that guaranteed a constant stream of online donations. The party, he said, had invested heavily to develop data files on supporters, with whom they kept in touch throughout the campaign.

Republicans, he said, often spent less on list-building and waited until later in the election season to engage.

“Focusing on ActBlue as the issue," Moffatt said, "is missing the forest for the trees.”

Some Republicans, however, see reason for optimism. In July, the Republican Jewish Coalition, an organization partly funded by Adelson, launched an ActBlue-like portal inviting supporters to give small donations to a list of endorsed candidates. The effort generated about $400,000 in contributions, an indication to its proponents that conservative small donors could be drawn to such a platform.

Others are just relieved that online giving has finally become a priority for the party.

“I’m glad everyone has woken up to this,” said Gerrit Lansing, Revv’s co-founder and a former Republican National Committee top digital strategist. “This is a five-alarm fire.”

Rachel Bade contributed to this report.