Lucylastic
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Donald Trump continues to find new ways to sabotage the Republican candidates below him.
The Trump campaign’s May FEC filing released Monday sent shockwaves across Washington -- no small feat in a political cycle where it feels like nothing can truly surprise anymore.
The candidate who has made bragging about his wealth a trademark of his campaign is kicking off the summer with only $1.3 million in cash on hand -- compared to Hillary Clinton’s $41 million plus. In the month since emerging as the presumptive GOP nominee, Trump has raised only $3.1 million.
The dismal numbers are more than just the latest piece of evidence that Trump’s campaign is in a free-fall. It has a cascading effect on the Senate and House races down the ballot.
“My sense is that it is like an epic disaster that is going to get worse," said Rob Jesmer, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is charged with electing Republicans to the Senate and keeping them there. “It is highly problematic for people running up and down the ballot.”
As the Republican National Committee -- which also saw a drop in its May fundraising compared to 2012 -- is forced to prop up Trump's rickety campaign apparatus, it means less money will be passed down to congressional committees and to state parties. It also means less money to finance the party's crucial but costly get-out-the-vote efforts.
Contrast Trump’s pathetic $3.1 million fundraising haul in May with Mitt Romney’s efforts in May 2012, $23.4 million, and that raised by John McCain in May 2008, $21.5 million.
This creates an assortment of complications for GOP Senate and congressional candidates who, even before Trump, had the electoral map working against them and since his emergence, have had to answer for every bomb he's thrown.
Typically, a Senate candidate relies a lot on his party's presidential campaign infrastructure to get out the vote and target voters. For instance, Jesmer said Romney's campaign was very generous with sharing donor information. But if Trump can’t finance the collection of voter information, that is going to fall more and more to down ballot candidates. The same issues emerge when it comes to running field offices, knocking on doors, and dialing for dollars.
"Overall, in terms of resources, the GOP may not be competitive with respect to get out the vote activities. The RNC may not have enough resources available to invest in this effort,” Al Cardenas, a GOP operative who fundraised for Jeb Bush's primary campaign, said in an email to TPM. “But during primary season, GOP voters were far more energized than Dems without the GOTV assistance."
Even without direct collaboration, usually, a down-the-ballot candidate can piggy-back off the broader themes and messaging being pushed on airwaves and through other platforms by the top of the ticket, according to Andy Barr, a Democratic political consultant who has worked on campaigns in Arizona, where McCain is facing a tough re-election battle.
“Whatever the top testing positive argument is for Donald Trump, whether it’s the economy or immigration or whatever, they’re not going to be able to broadcast that, and that means that they’re not going to have a lot of control over encouraging Trump folks to get out," Barr told TPM.
A GOP operative working on key Senate battleground races said the Republican candidates could definitely have benefited from certain aspects of Trump’s message and energy, but Trump undermined his own success by being a disappointing fundraiser.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/donald-trump-down-the-ballot-fundraising
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