In advance of Labor Day and the full-fledged start of the campaign season, here is a look into the money situation for the 2006 campaigns
- Party Committees. The latest FEC reports on party committees have some in. Here is the cash on hand breakdown:
- Democratic Party: $95,189,180 -- Republican Party: $134,140,387
- DNC: $11,312,588 -- RNC:$43,622,105
- DCCC: $33,046,326 -- NRCC: $34,147,575
- DSCC: $35,091,284 -- NRSC: $20,570,361
- DGA: $3,000,322 -- RGA: $10,915,046
- DLCC: $1,010,258 -- RSLC: $1,905,311
Figures for the Governors and State Legislature committees can be found here. Since no cash on cash info was available, I simply subtracted expenditures this cycle from receipts this cycle. Also, as grim s most of these numbers may seem, they actually are a big improvement on previous cycles.
- Candidates. When it comes in individual candidate, Democrats have made substantial advances on Republicans form 2004:
House campaigns raised $544 million (up 18% from 2004 levels) and spent $325.5 million (17% above the previous cycle). They reported a cash balance of $367 million as of June 30. Receipts by Republican House candidates increased 12% with increases for incumbent candidates (23%) and open seat candidates (15%) but a decline in overall receipts for Republican House challengers of 34% when compared with 2004. Democratic candidates' receipts were 26% higher than in the last cycle with a small increase for incumbents (4%) and larger increases for both open seat candidates (46%) and challengers, whose fundraising more than doubled when compared with 2004.
According to Taegan Goddard, Democratic challengers have raised about 60% of what their opponents have, compared to about 42% in 2004.
- PACs: Last month, for my own benefit, I tracked donations of Political Action Committees to congressional candidates (you can do it yourself here). At that time, Republican candidates held a large edge in donations from PACs, $119,777,035 to $93,325,062, or 56.2% of PAC money going to Republicans. This was actually up slightly from 2004, when Republicans received 55.5% of PAC money for the entire cycle, and held an edge of $33M in PAC donations on Democrats. The situation would actually have been worse without the infusion of over $7.2 M to Democratic candidates this cycle via Act Blue. That is nine times what Act Blue provided in 2004. Traditional PACs are giving more heavily to Republican candidates in 2006 than they did in 2004, and Act Blue is the only thing keeping the balance where it was in 2004.
- 527s. This is a much murkier area than the others. I spent some time this morning trying to go through the various 527 committees listed at Open Secrets. But basically I have no idea what sort of cash on hand each committee has, and how much each committee can reasonably spend in the remaining ten weeks of the election. Generally speaking, there seem to be more major progressive oriented 527s than conservative oriented 527s. However, I have no idea what the actual difference is. My general sense is that it might be enough to overcome the gaps we face in terms of party committee money, but not enough to overcome the gaps we face in terms of challenger vs. incumbent money.
Overall, it looks like we have managed improvements pretty much across the board, or at least held even. This will mute the ability of Republicans to close well, but it will not eliminate that ability. We clearly face a structural deficit in terms of fundraising, but we are closing the gap. Of course,
as the New Politics Institute tells us, it isn't necessarily how much money you have, but how well you use that money. Also, since the country is in such a mood for change, Democrats may not need as much money as Republicans this time around (I hope).
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