Republicans Fear They've Blown All Their Campaign Cash Before Midterms

Republican senators are reportedly concerned that their major campaign arm has blown through a record haul of cash and that could create difficulties in the closing months of the midterm elections.

Reports from CNN and The New York Times in the past week have said that the Senate GOP is worried about the operations of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NSRC), headed by Sen. Rick Scott.

Those concerns come amid a reported rift between Scott and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as Republicans' chances of retaking the Senate have diminished based on recent polling.

The NRSC raised $181.5 million through the end of July but had $23.2 million on hand heading into August. By contrast, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $173.1 million but had $54.1 million on hand.

The New York Times reported on September 3 that the NRSC had spent 95 percent of what it raised and much of that was spent on digital advertising aimed at recruiting small-dollar donors rather than boosting GOP candidates. That effort appears to have yielded disappointing results.

So much spending early in the campaign season has Senate Republicans worried that the NRSC won't be able to afford to play its part in funding direct mail to voters to encourage turnout in November.

During the 2020 election cycle, the NRSC set up a fundraising committee that sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to GOP state party committees as part of efforts to get voters to the polls.

That committee raised over $18 million at the time. A new fundraising committee for the 2022 election cycle, set up for the same purpose, has raised $1.2 million between April 2021 and June of this year

McConnell, who has been closely involved with the NRSC in previous election cycles, has reportedly been focused on the super PAC he's aligned with, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), and he's been calling major donors in recent for several weeks to make sure SLF has money to fund TV ads in battleground states, according to a CNN report on Wednesday.

That report cited "multiple GOP sources" who told the network that senators were working to help fund candidates directly and go around the NRSC.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who is a member of McConnell's leadership team and considered close to him, told CNN that the NRSC's spending concerned him.

"The Democrats are going to vastly outspend Republicans across the board. But as long as we have enough money to tell our story and to defend our opposition, I think we'll be fine," said Cornyn, who is also a former NRSC chairman.

NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline told Newsweek in a statement on Wednesday: "It's pretty simple. We went into this cycle with a clear strategy. We were going to spend early to define the Democrats and support our candidates to keep them in the ballgame during the wave of Democrat spending that we knew was coming over the Spring and Summer."

"We told everyone what we were going to do, we did it and it's working. We're in a great position to win in every one of our target states. If we hadn't spent what we did when we did, that wouldn't be the case. And that's just a fact," Hartline said.

"Rick Scott doesn't do things the same way they've always been done. That's just not how he operates," he added. "And Washington has a tough time dealing with that. Tough. We are winning. We're going to win. And the Washington Republicans giving anonymous quotes to liberal media outlets to hurt and our candidates and hurt our chances of winning will just have to deal with that."

Hartline has also defended the NRSC and Scott's leadership over the past week, telling CNN: "We're in a better position in every one of our target states than we were at the beginning of the summer, largely because the NRSC has been spending early and heavily to support our candidates and define the Democrats."

"He told everyone what he was going to do, he did it, and it's working," Hartline said of Scott. "If anyone is surprised, they haven't been paying attention."

Nonetheless, polls have shown that Republicans may struggle to take back the Senate in November. Poll tracker FiveThirtyEight rates Democrats as "slightly favored" to win the chamber. The GOP had been favored to win in the same analysis as recently as July 25.

Concerns about the NRSC come amid what appears to be a wider feud between McConnell and Scott, with the former previously warning about the "quality" of some GOP candidates.

Scott wrote an op-ed in The Washington Examiner on September 1 where he criticized unnamed Republicans for "trash-talking our Republican candidates" but later said he was not taking aim at McConnell.

It remains to be seen if Republicans will retake the Senate amid several closely contested races.

Newsweek has Mitch McConnell's office for comment.