The Senate GOP’s political arm says that, thanks in part to a novel new spending strategy, it has funded a massive ad campaign that has brought Republicans to the brink of winning a majority.
But some Senate Republicans say that is drastically overstating what the National Republican Senatorial Committee has actually done.
GOP strategists told NOTUS that the party’s nominees in major Senate races have had to do more fundraising themselves on behalf of the NRSC than in the past but haven’t benefited from a corresponding level of financial support from the committee itself. The arrangement has left strategists baffled over the process and worried that the party could have spent more in marquee contests like the ones in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“Candidates are being forced to raise their own funds just to get NRSC support — like having to dig the well and pay for the water,” said one GOP strategist familiar with the arrangement describing the grumbling from campaigns.
At the heart of the issue are three pools of fundraising cash that are usually jointly funded by the candidate and party committee: 441a(d) coordinated expenditures, so-called “hybrid ads” and joint fundraising committees. The NRSC in recent weeks has funneled all of its money through these spending mechanisms instead of using a traditional independent expenditure program, a decision officials say could save the committee tens of millions of dollars on TV ads.
But according to five Republican strategists familiar with the situation, the NRSC’s default position this election has been that it’s up to the party’s nominees to raise almost all of the money themselves, even if they are asking donors to send checks to the committee.
“Fundraising is the one reason committees exist in the first place,” the operative added.
The sources cautioned that only officials at the NRSC know if every competitive campaign this year was subject to the same demands. But that means at least in some key races, the committee is hardly contributing any of its own cash to the ad spending efforts, the sources said.
“The vast majority of the hybrid money was also raised by the campaigns into the NRSC,” said a second Republican operative familiar with the process, granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive party matter.
The situation has left some Republicans confused about the NRSC’s role in the home stretch of this election, unsure of what the committee is doing to support the party if candidates are fundraising themselves.
Another Republican strategist who works on House and Senate races told NOTUS: “This is more than typical consultant handwringing. Candidates are being forced to carry the fundraising load while the money never makes it back to their races. It has everyone wondering where the money is being spent.”
An NRSC official forcefully pushed back on the criticism in a statement to NOTUS, saying that the committee has always urged candidates to prioritize their own fundraising before they help raise money for the committee. The committee’s overall approach, the official added, has helped the GOP match the better-funded Democrats on air for the first time in a decade and is proof the NRSC is spending money where it matters most.
“This criticism is clearly being made in bad faith as this information is all easily searchable in the FEC,” said NRSC spokesperson Mike Berg. “NRSC’s money is primarily going toward television ads, state parties and ground game. Right now, Republican Senate candidates are at or near parity in every Senate race across the country in large part because of NRSC’s investments. The NRSC’s investments account for the largest share of weight of message since the advent of the super PAC.”
The NRSC’s combined ad efforts, including hybrid ads and joint fundraising committees, account for more than half of the GOP ad campaigns in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada since early September, according to data supplied by the committee. And they amount to nearly half of the total ad campaign in Michigan, per the data.
“Anonymous critics of this approach are more interested in enriching themselves with outrageous super PAC media commissions than spending donor dollars efficiently and winning Senate races,” Berg said.
Republicans need to gain two Senate seats in November to ensure majority control of the chamber next year, a feat party operatives think is within reach thanks to an open-seat race in deep red West Virginia and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester’s increasingly tenuous position in Montana.
But the party also has opportunities to win Democratic-held seats in purple states that also feature prominently in the presidential contest, including in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona, the kind of favorable map some GOP operatives think gives them a rare opportunity to expand their ranks well beyond 51 members.
Many of the NRSC’s critics emphasize that they think, on balance, the committee has performed well this election, praising it for its handling of normally contentious primaries and the way it managed its relationship with former President Donald Trump. They also say the committee’s decision to use more “hybrid ads” and joint fundraising committees — the widespread use of which is new this year and, according to Democrats, legally dubious — was a successful gambit, helping the committee air more TV ads than it would have with a traditional independent expenditure operation.
“Chairman Daines and the committee have been incredible in their efforts to help Republicans regain a Senate majority this cycle,” said John Ashbrook, a veteran GOP strategist. “They’ve earned broad confidence among Senate Republicans by generating huge fundraising numbers and executing creative advertising strategies.”
Other Republican strategists, however, say that although their frustrations have intensified with the increased use of hybrid ads and joint fundraising committees, they started earlier in the cycle when campaigns were told they would need to raise their own 441a(d) money, commonly known as coordinated expenditures.
Coordinated money is a relatively small pool of cash (the limit varies according to the size of the state and can sometimes be less than $1 million) that battleground campaigns have traditionally assumed would be supplied by the committee’s own fundraising. To many of them, the cash influx is the minimum investment the committee will make in any even semi-competitive race; cash that can help a campaign get going early in a race or help fill a late spending gap.
Forcing candidates to raise the money themselves through the NRSC was a point of contention, according to seven Republican strategists, although many candidates did it.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for instance, received a roughly $950,000 coordinated expenditure from the committee, according to Federal Election Commission records. A source familiar with the Cruz expenditure said the NRSC kept its commitment to the senator, plunging the money he had raised for the committee back into the race.
“It is no secret that Democrats have a huge financial advantage over Republicans at the candidate level,” Berg said. “That is why the NRSC’s top priority for donors is that they max out to each campaign. Once that is exhausted, the NRSC is the natural next place to give because of our various ways to spend money efficiently.”
Even if they’re frustrated by the arrangement, candidates still have an incentive to raise money for the NRSC and joint fundraising committees. Those committees are able to raise much larger amounts than candidates can for their individual campaign accounts, which are subject to strict FEC limits on how much they can raise from individual donors.
Politico reported that in late July, the GOP started leveraging joint fundraising committees — which include multiple fundraising entities joined into one super committee — by using them as a vehicle to air political ads. (Democrats have alleged that the scheme is illegal and have sued in federal court to try to stop the practice.)
Along with “hybrid ads,” the two entities let Republicans buy ads at the cheaper rate made available to political candidates rather than the more expensive rate offered to party committees when they use an independent expenditure arm.
Republicans frustrated with the NRSC also grumble about what they perceive as an escalating payroll at the committee this election cycle. Even if the total salary is ultimately small change compared to the tens of millions of dollars spent on TV ads, every last thousand dollars could help in races they expect might be decided by just thousands of votes.
A NOTUS review of FEC filings found total NRSC payroll expenditure has reached more than $9 million through September of this cycle, excluding payments related to retirement or taxes. That’s about a 23.6% increase from the same point in the 2022 cycle, when payroll totaled about $7.3 million, a NOTUS analysis of FEC data found.
And while pay inevitably goes up every cycle, this cycle’s increase outpaces prior payroll hikes. There was an approximately 5.1% increase of payroll costs in 2022 relative to 2020 — the small figure likely related to financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic — but 2020’s payroll costs, about $6.9 million, was about 19.6% higher than 2018’s.
But NRSC officials say they have paid staff differently this election cycle, bringing some key positions — like finance director and an independent expenditure director — in house rather than paying them through a consultancy.
In the 2022 and 2020 cycles, the NRSC’s financial director was not paid via standard payroll disbursements, unlike this cycle. But their consultancies — Drucker Lawhon and Socko Strategies — received disbursements from the NRSC. The independent expenditure director was paid through Compel LLC in 2022.
With those salaries factored in, 2024 payroll is about 7.4% higher than the $8.4 million spent in 2022.
“We brought our senior strategists in house for full-time roles to increase transparency and reduce conflicts of interest,” Berg said. “When you account for that, the amount NRSC is paying in salary is approximately the same as past cycles. However, the difference between bringing senior positions in-house versus paying vendors is that in-house staff do not have conflicts of interest where double dipping can occur through backroom deals.”
—
Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS. Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.