July 5 (Reuters) – Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been a top donor to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more.
Weiser, a former party president, has stopped its funding, citing concerns about the organization’s management. He says he disagrees with Republicans promoting falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ridiculous” to claim that Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state.
“I wonder if the state party has the experience to spend the money well,” he said.
The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the high price Republicans in the states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their full support of former President Trump and his baseless claims that he stole the 2020 election.
Both parties have been hemorrhaging money in recent years, undermining Republican efforts to win back ultra-competitive states that could determine who wins the White House and control of the U.S. Congress in next November’s elections, according to a Reuters review of the financial presentations, plus interviews with six major donors and three election campaign experts.
The Arizona Republican Party had less than $50,000 in cash reserves in its state and federal bank accounts as of March 31 to spend on general expenses such as rent, payroll and political campaign operations, filings show . At the same time four years ago, he had nearly $770,000.
The Michigan party’s federal account had about $116,000 as of March 31, down from nearly $867,000 two years ago. It has not yet disclosed updated financial information from its state account this year.
Both parties have “shockingly low cash reserves,” said Seth Masket, director of the nonpartisan Center for American Politics at the University of Denver, adding that state parties play a key electoral role, helping to promote candidates, fund get out… get out the vote efforts, pay for ads and recruit volunteers.
“Their ability to help candidates is very limited right now.”
The Arizona party spent more than $300,000 on “legal consulting” fees last year, according to its federal filings, which do not specify the type of legal work paid for.
In that period, legal fees were paid to a firm that had filed lawsuits to overturn Trump’s loss in Arizona, according to separate campaign and legal disclosures. Money was also paid to lawyers who represented Kelli Ward, the former party chairwoman when the Justice Department subpoenaed her for her part in a scheme to falsely certify to Congress that Trump, and not Democratic President Joe Biden, had won arizona, plus when a congress. the committee subpoenaed his phone records.
Last year, more than $500,000 was also spent in Arizona on an election night party and a bus tour for Trump-backed candidates across the state, financial filings show. All of those candidates, who backed the former president’s election-rigging claims, lost in last November’s midterms.
Weiser isn’t the only one who has had enough.
Five other Republican donors to parties in Arizona or Michigan, who have given tens of thousands of dollars over the past six years, told Reuters they had also stopped giving money, citing pushes by state leaders to overturn the election. of 2020, its support to the loss. candidates who support the Trump election conspiracy and what they see as extreme positions on issues like abortion.
“It’s a shame that we’re letting the right wing of our party take over operations,” said Jim Click, whose family has long been a top Republican donor in Arizona. He and other donors said they would give money directly to candidates or support them through other political fundraising groups.
Kristina Karamo, Michigan state party chairwoman, did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Campaigning for office, he said he wanted to sever ties with established donors, accusing them of exploiting the party for their own benefit, and that he wanted to rely more on rank-and-file members.
Ward, who stepped down as Arizona party chair in January after four years at the helm, told Reuters that she and her team had always had income to cover departures and had left her successor with at least three months of expenses operations plus a “robust fundraising operation.” .”
Dajana Zlaticanin, a spokeswoman for new president Jeff DeWit, said that when he took over, “cash reserves were extremely low and the old bills kept coming in.” Contributions are on the rise, he said, with more than $40,000 raised in May.
The Republican National Committee, which oversees Republican political operations nationwide, did not respond to a request for comment on the finances of the two state parties.
“I DON’T SEE THE SUN RISING”
Arizona and Michigan, both won by Biden in 2020, are among only a handful of swing states that will likely decide the race for the presidency in November 2024.
Not every GOP has done as badly financially as Arizona and Michigan. For example, the swing state of North Carolina, where Republican leaders have not focused as much on the fight to steal Trump’s election, ended 2022 with nearly $800,000 in its federal accounts, according to the documents .
However, it is difficult to get a full picture of the parties’ finances, given the delays in disclosures and because not all of their accounts are subject to reporting requirements.
In addition, state parties do not rely solely on individual donors, but also receive money from national party organizations, outside groups, and political action committees.
Michigan was a hotbed of conspiracy theories after Trump lost the 2020 election, and this month Karamo was fined by a county judge for filing a lawsuit that made unsubstantiated claims about voting irregularities in Detroit.
Tensions over transparency have begun to boil over.
Last week, former state party budget chairman Matt Johnson launched a barrage against Karamo, two days after she removed him from her post, accusing her of keeping her committee in the dark about the party’s finances .
“From the fragmentary information we received, the party’s fundraising had been extremely meager, and the expenditure was so disproportionate to the income that it put us on the road to bankruptcy,” he said.
Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said the financial numbers released so far by the party underscore the difficult task of supporting operations without financial support from major donors.
“They are indeed broke and I don’t see the clouds parting and the sun rising on their fundraising abilities,” he said.
“DETRIMENTAL FOR CAMPAIGNS”
A review of the filings of both state GOP parties shows that a near-shutdown of the donor spigot is contributing to their financial woes.
The Michigan party’s federal account took in $51,000 in the first three months of this year, putting it on pace to raise less than a quarter of what it raised in the first half of 2019, the same period of the last cycle of the presidential elections.
In March, Karamo told a meeting of local officials that the party had $460,000 in liabilities after the 2022 midterm elections. While not unusually large, the debt would normally be covered by new fundraising.
Meanwhile, the Arizona party raised roughly $139,000 in the first three months of this year, according to state and federal filings. In the comparable period of 2019, in the months following the 2018 midterm elections, he raised more than $330,000.
New Arizona Speaker DeWit, who was NASA’s chief financial officer in the Trump administration, is working to make the party attractive to donors again by focusing on winning elections, spokesman Zlaticanin said.
Some Michigan donors said they had begun talking to each other about how best to bypass the state party and support individual Republican candidates. But the state party’s organizational heft will be hard to replicate, said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party.
“You have to have boots on the ground, and you can’t build that kind of infrastructure fast enough to win the 2024 election,” Timmer said.
Jonathan Lines, who preceded Ward as Arizona party chairman until 2019, said he expected the new money from donors to go mostly to political action committees and other groups that finance campaigns, rather than the state party .
“But not having a well-funded state party is detrimental to many Republican campaigns next year,” he added.
Reporting by Tim Reid and Nathan Layne, editing by Ross Colvin and Pravin Char
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