The DNC, DSCC, and DCCC raised a total of $129 million through July of this year. | REUTERS In money race, it's advantage Dems

Republicans seem positively gleeful these days about their prospects headed into 2012, buoyed by a new Gallup Poll showing a handful of Republican presidential hopefuls within striking distance of President Barack Obama as well as some recent predictions that the GOP will hold the House and could take the Senate.

Yet despite all the apparent momentum, the three national party committees tasked with ushering Republicans to victory trail their Democratic counterparts in raising money for 2012, and the disparity is causing some Republicans to fret privately about whether their party committees could dim an otherwise bright outlook.


Even with a slowdown in fundraising during the debt ceiling debate last month, Democratic Party committees have raised $24 million more this year than their Republican counterparts — a money gap more than twice as large as the Democratic advantages at similar points in either of the previous two election cycles.

Through July, according to reports filed last weekend with the Federal Election Commission, the three groups that make up the national GOP’s official infrastructure — the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — had raised a combined $105 million this year.

That compares with the $129 million raised in that same period by their Democratic counterparts – the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Raising money is no longer as centralized as it used to be, with fundraising now spread among not only the parties and committees of individual candidates, but also the increasingly prominent independent groups that can take unlimited donations to candidates the party committees cannot.

But the party committees still play a major role, in part because they are allowed to coordinate directly with their candidates’ campaigns, which the independent groups are prohibited from doing.

Most of the Democratic Party committee fundraising superiority — $22 million worth — comes from the DNC’s advantage over the RNC, which is largely the result of Obama’s fundraising prowess. With the debt ceiling debate raging in July, the DNC’s fundraising lagged at least partly because it canceled 10 events that were to have featured the president.

The official Republican Party explanation for the disparity is that the Democrats’ control of the White House gives them a huge campaign cash advantage — that plus the fact that Obama’s fundraising activities significantly outpaced those of the previous five presidents during their first terms.

Republicans argue that even coming close to the Democrats in party committee fundraising is an achievement — and they point out that they are staying much closer than Democrats did during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“Considering the DSCC outraised the NRSC by $70 million in the 2008 cycle, and their party now controls the White House, it certainly has to concern Senate Democrats to see their fundraising advantage dramatically eroded over the last 24 months,” said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh.

DSCC spokesman Matt Canter argued that simply comparing party committee totals does not reflect the actual advantage Democrats enjoy if fundraising by their Senate incumbents and challengers is taken into account.

“Not only has the DSCC raised more money month after month than our counterpart, but Senate Democrats already have more than $70 million on hand to wage campaigns this cycle,” he said, asserting Republican candidates had less.

Some Republican finance types expressed optimism that party fundraising will pick up once the party selects its presidential nominee. But others wondered why the congressional committees aren’t doing better.

Of particular concern was the DCCC’s slight fundraising edge over the NRCC through the first seven months of the year — $37.7 million to $37.4 million.

“With the majority in the House of Representatives, we should be kicking their butts in fundraising if there is strong leadership,” said a former GOP finance official, who didn’t want to be identified expressing concern about the party’s financial preparations for 2012. “For them to be trailing, I find that to be astounding.”

To be sure, the NRCC actually finished the month with slightly more money in the bank and less debt than the DCCC. And NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) called the NRCC’s fundraising “strong” in a statement, adding “Americans all across this nation know that every dollar to the NRCC diminishes Democrats’ drive to make Nancy Pelosi speaker again.”

Others Republicans say party committee fundraising has been weakened by the deep-pocketed GOP-allied outside groups that were empowered by a January 2010 Supreme Court decision and have assumed some of the advertising functions of the parties.

The most notable among them are American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which were conceived by Bush-era GOP operatives.

“Karl Rove and his crew — Ed Gillespie and a sitting member of the (Republican National Committee), former Chairman Mike Duncan — form American Crossroads, and where are they going to go to get money?” asked Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman.

“They are going to go to the donors who they’ve cultivated for the last 15 or 20 years, and that largely rests in the base of the RNC,” said Steele, who told POLITICO that during his chairmanship, which ended in January, major donors told him they were urged by Crossroads fundraisers not to give to the RNC.

He stressed, though, that the GOP outside groups can’t replace the functions of the party committees, generally, and the RNC, specifically.

“At the end of the day, there is only one organization that is going to put the boots on the ground to win an election and that’s the RNC — period,” Steele said. “So everybody should be concerned about making sure that the party gets as much of that $30,800 per individual (the maximum party committee donation) it can get in the door to lay down the ground game, to get the resources and the phone systems in the offices in place.”

Under Steele, in the first seven months of 2009, the RNC raised $52 million, $5 million more than the DNC raised during that period.

By contrast, during the first seven months of 2011, the RNC, under Steele’s replacement, Reince Priebus, raised $43 million — or $22 million less than the DNC, though under Priebus there appears to have been a spike in maximum $30,800 contributions from wealthy donors.

And Priebus noted in a statement that the RNC has spent less money on fundraising since he became chairman than it did under Steele.

“Our success raising money more efficiently has allowed us to engage voters in key battleground states while making investments in our ground game that are already paying dividends as we prepare for 2012,” Preibus said, pointing out that the RNC has paid down more than $7 million of the $24 million in debt left over from Steele’s tenure.

That left the RNC with $17 million in debt and $7.6 on hand at the end of last month, compared with the DNC’s $20 million in the bank and $11 million in debt. The DCCC ended last month with $8 million on hand and $4 million in debt, while the NRCC had $11 million in the bank and $3 million in debt.

And the DSCC had $9 million in the bank, with $2 million in debt, versus the NRSC’s $4 million in the bank, with no debt.

Party committees often take on significant debt in the heat of election cycles to free up cash to help candidates, and the party that controls the White House typically enjoys a big fundraising edge.

That was certainly true for Republicans at this point in the election cycle during Bush’s first term. Through the first seven months of 2003, the RNC, NRCC and NRSC combined to raise $132 million, according to a POLITICO analysis of data provided by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

That was a staggering $80 million more than the combined DNC, DCCC and DSCC haul.

“George W. Bush was phenomenal at raising money,” said Steele. “Now that he’s not there, the party has to build a new reserve, a new resource of major donors. And we need to look at donors who are in new industries and who are younger, so they can be with us longer, and a lot of them will come out of this presidential election cycle and the 2016 election cycle, but it’s a transition.”