Top outside group backing Senate Republicans hauls in over $94M in fundraising last year
The McConnell aligned Senate Leadership Fund and its allied groups set an off-election year fundraising record
EXCLUSIVE: The leading outside group backing Senate Republicans as they try to regain control of the Senate in November's midterm elections says that it set a new fundraising record last year.
Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) – a super PAC aligned with longtime Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell – is reporting that along with its allied nonprofit advocacy group One Nation, it brought in a combined $94.4 million in fundraising in 2021.
SLF, which shared its fundraising figures first with Fox News on Wednesday, touted that its 2021 haul was an off-election year record. By comparison, the two groups combined raised $68.3 million by the end of 2019, at the same point in the previous election cycle.
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Officials with the Senate Leadership Fund say that the group, along with One Nation as well as the allied American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, closed out 2021 with $87.5 million cash on hand. That's nearly $20 million more than the groups had in their coffers at the same point in the 2020 election cycle.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is surrounded by journalists as he walks to the Senate Chamber for a vote, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Oct. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (Associated Press)
The Senate is currently split 50-50 between the two major parties, but the Democrats have the majority thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris through her Constitutional role as president of the Senate. That means the GOP needs a net gain of just one seat to regain the majority they lost when they were narrowly swept in the Jan. 5, 2021 twin runoff elections in Georgia.
The GOP is defending 20 of the 34 seats up for grabs this year. That includes five open seats due to Republican incumbent retirements in the key battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and North Carolina and the competitive state of Ohio, as well as in Missouri and Alabama.
But Republicans see strong opportunities to flip blue seats to red in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and potentially New Hampshire, where first-term Democratic senators are running for reelection in swing states.
Part of what appears to be fueling SLF’s fundraising is an increased sense of inevitability among the Republican donor class that the GOP could win back not only the House of Representatives in November’s midterms, but also the Senate despite the difficult map.
Democrats face historical headwinds in the 2022 elections, as the party that controls the White House traditionally suffers setbacks in the ensuing midterms. To make matters worse, Democrats across the country are currently faced with a very unfavorable political environment that’s compounded by President Biden’s underwater poll numbers.
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"As President Biden’s approval rating and the country’s mood have worsened, Republican donors are realizing that both the Senate and House majorities are within reach," SLF president Steven Law told Fox News.
And Law argued that "with Democrats overwhelmingly committed to demolishing the filibuster and pushing big-government socialism, this will be a defining election for America’s future and our benefactors are gearing up for that fight."