SURGE IN ‘DON-ATIONS’
Cash is flowing for both parties
Americans either love or hate President Trump — and they’re opening their wallets to prove it.
Taking advantage of their control of Congress and the White House, Republicans have been reeling in the dough.
The House’s GOP campaign wing brought in a record $30 million during a dinner last week that Trump headlined.
Over January and February, the party’s Senate-campaign group pulled in $9.3 million, compared with $7.5 million for the Democrats, according to an analysis by Politico published Wednesday.
And online revenue for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, which works to elect GOP candidates for that body, has spiked 150 percent compared with 2015, with 99 percent of donations coming in under $200, the site reported.
On the flip side, opposition to Trump is filling Democrats’ coffers. Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate running for the Georgia congressional seat left vacant by Tom Price when Price became Trump’s secretary of health, raised more than $2 million online last month. That’s more than Price shelled out during his entire 2016 re-election campaign.
In New York, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand last month raked in small online donations — totaling around $637,000 — that were six times more than she raised in small-dollar contributions in the first quarter of 2011.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy has said he’s getting close to pulling in as many individual contributions as he did during his entire 2012 campaign, when he got 64,704. He hauled in nearly $650,000 online in February.
“Trump is the gift that keeps on giving,” said Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.). “What we’re seeing is a massive number of people who are either scared or shocked [by] somebody like Donald Trump with all his vitriolic negativity and his attacks on people.”
“As a result, they’re getting off their rear end one way or another, and a way we’re seeing it is an influx of donations,” Cardenas, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ fund-raising arm, told Politico. He said the average donation in February was $12.
A campaign fund-raiser for for- mer Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said voters are motivated at the grass-roots level. “This isn’t big donors giving Jeb Bush or a super PAC $100 million. [It’s] small donations from a lot of people who I’m sure have not given in a midterm election before. What it signals is not just money. You’re seeing more people volunteer,” Joe Trippi told Politico.