Report: Rick Scott Blew It

The National Republican Senatorial Committee had an astounding run of fundraising. But the money is nearly all gone now and with few returns.

Senator Rick Scott speaks during CPAC Texas 2022 conference at Hilton Anatole in Dallas on August 5, 2022. Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images

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Over the last two years, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has had an astounding run of fundraising, raking in millions of dollars. And just as midterms approach, it appears they’ve blown nearly all of it. The committee has spent nearly all the money—as a deeply-reported new New York Times story details—while receiving virtually nothing in return for the cash that was frittered away. Even worse, they have possibly burned donors who might be gone for good, according to the Times.

Through the end of July—the latest numbers available—the NRSC, which is supposed to be the fundraising bulwark that pulls together disparate individual Senate campaigns and propels the party to a victory in the Senate, has raised $181.5 million. In 2018, the last midterm election year, the committee raised just $151.5 million in the full two years—$30 million less, and the NRSC this year hasn’t hit the intense final months before the election that usually yields huge fundraising numbers. But the NRSC, which is led by Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, has also spent $172.7 million. That leaves a net of just $8.8 million.

Of course, a political action committee isn’t a business, so the net haul isn’t the true metric that its success should be measured by—if that committee has spent the money to lay down a withering barrage of television ads, devastating waves of digital attacks and driven voters to the right, it might be fine that the NRSC is heading into the final months of the 2022 election with just over $23 million in the bank accounts. (The cash on hand reflects the fact that the NRSC started this current election cycle with some cash reserves). But, instead, the NRSC has called television stations to say that ad time it had previously reserved for the next few months should be cancelled. NRSC ads have largely evaporated from Facebook and at least in the Senate. The red tidal wave that six months ago looked unstoppable has ebbed and Democrats seem to have a real possibility of maintaining control of the Senate.

Reporter Shane Goldmacher reports that all of this isn’t just about shifting political winds. Scott has spent enormously on digital fundraising that has not amounted to much. At one point the committee was spending $100,000 a day on Facebook and Google ads, which Goldmacher said sent Democratic strategists into a panic, until they realized that it was having no effect, and now the ads have stopped. The NRSC has spent about $23.3 million on new donor development, but those new donors have contributed only $6.1 million, Goldmacher found. 

While the NRSC defended itself by saying these donor prospecting efforts have bolstered the committee’s file of potential donors, Goldmacher also describes how a major tactic the committee used to drum up donations from potential donors was so aggressive it borders on fraudulent. The committee would send text messages that didn’t say who they were from, but simply said: “This is URGENT! Do YOU support Trump? Reply YES to donate $25.” Users who replied yes, had their credit cards charged (thanks to their numbers being on file with payment processing company WinRed), and that was it. 

Not surprisingly, Goldmacher notes that the amount the committee has had to refund has quadrupled since 2020. 

Goldmacher’s full explanation of how the “Reply YES to donate $25” gambit works—and burns donors—and how Scott’s fellow GOPers are turning on the NRSC is worth a read.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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