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Spooked by anti-billionaire talk from the Democratic Party base, ultrawealthy donors are backing Republicans this cycle. That confronts the Democrats with a choice they’ve spent years avoiding: chase big money or build mass politics.
Billionaire donors are abandoning Democrats because the party’s base is turning against them. That leaves Democratic leaders with a stark choice: chase the donors or run on the economic populism that drove them out. (Michael Kovac / Getty Images)
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Democrats enter this year’s midterms with a host of political advantages: a deeply unpopular Republican president, a faltering economy, and a fired-up base. But Republicans hold a clear edge in at least one crucial area. With Election Day less than three months out, fundraising data shows the GOP with vastly more cash on hand. That financial advantage stems entirely from well-funded Republican super PACs and party committees, which together hold over a billion dollars — nearly three times the reserves of comparable Democratic groups.
The GOP’s enormous war chest has been filled primarily by corporate and billionaire donors, who overwhelmingly favor Republicans this cycle. An analysis by reporters at the Washington Post found that this year’s top fifty donors have already contributed around $1.6 billion, with more than a billion of that going to pro-Republican groups and another quarter billion funding “bipartisan” special interest groups. Another report published in March by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness found that roughly 80 percent of all spending by the fifty biggest billionaire families has gone to Republican candidates and causes.
Meanwhile, at the battered Democratic National Committee (DNC), big donors have “gone on strike,” as a recent Wall Street Journal headline put it. The latest numbers from July show the Republican National Committee sitting on $130 million compared to $16 million at the DNC, which is also $18 million in debt.
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