“Starting now, any local mayor, statehouse candidate, statewide race, or anyone running for dogcatcher has access to the same platform and tools the president of the United States does,” said Gerrit Lansing, WinRed’s president.

Democratic online donors swamped Republican candidates around the country in the 2018 midterm elections, demonstrating the decisive role digital fundraising can play in elections. ActBlue, the platform founded in 2004 and favored by Democrats for years, is used by most Democratic candidates for Congress and the presidency, and it processed more than half a billion dollars in contributions for the first three months of 2020 alone.

Online donors gave Republicans $130 million via WinRed in the first quarter of 2020, according to the group’s latest campaign finance disclosure. President Donald Trump was the biggest beneficiary, but six Republican senators up for reelection this fall raised at least $1 million through WinRed from January through March, as did the House and Senate GOP campaign arms.

Now, the WinRed platform will expand beyond the federal level, navigating different state campaign finance laws across the country.

“This could not come at a more important time,” said Austin Chambers, the RSLC president. “We’re going into a redistricting cycle. ... Control of state legislatures matters more than ever. It’s not just policy in the states, but what the congressional maps look like.”

Chambers said last year’s state legislative elections in Virginia, which saw both chambers flip to Democratic control for the past two years of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s term, illustrate why he believes it’s critical to get WinRed involved all the way up and down the ballot.

“Republicans were outspent in Virginia by $15.2 million [in last year’s state legislative races]. ActBlue raised $17.2 million for candidates in Virginia,” Chambers said. “So the single explanation for why Republicans were outspent was ActBlue.”

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But Lansing and Chambers noted that WinRed is a fundraising tool, not an automatic cash haul. Republican candidates and groups still need to put in the work to build large email lists and other resources that drive online fundraising.

“We now have all the right tech and platforms that everyone in the party needs. But that’s only half the battle,” Lansing said.

“What this does is remove any excuse,” Chambers said. “You can no longer just sit there and just complain and say, ‘ActBlue is kicking our ass.’ Now we have the tool to fix it — but it still requires the committees and caucuses and campaigns and parties to work for it. We’ve got to fight that misconception that you just sign up, and then money flows in."