Trump is broke. That's bad news for the GOP.
President Biden, meanwhile, is loaded.
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Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump owes the state of New York $454 million for being a con man who lied about the value of his assets for years. This week he claimed he can’t pay up because no one will put up a bond to cover his fraudulent orange posterior while he tries to appeal.
If he doesn’t pony up or find another legal strategy by Monday, New York AG Letitia James has pledged to seize his assets, possibly including the Doral Golf Club, 40 Wall Street, and/or Trump Tower.
It's fun to watch Trump turn his pockets inside out and go crawling about on his belly looking for loose nickels. And the entertainment is just getting started. Trump’s money problems are deep, multifaceted, and unlikely to go away before the election. The guy who loves to boast about his wealth looks like he might have trouble keeping himself in orange face shellac.
President Biden’s weak polling doesn’t guarantee a Trump win, and Trump’s poor fundraising doesn’t ensure Democratic victory. The lack of cash does, though, put Republicans at a disadvantage in the presidential race and at even more of a disadvantage downballot.
Money isn’t everything, but you’re not going to run many ads without it.
Donald the deadbeat
There is little precedent for a presidential candidate to enter a campaign season owing close to half a billion dollars in fines. And that is only the beginning of Trump’s problems.
In the first place, Trump could well face other civil judgements. He already had to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83 million after a court ruled him liable for sexually abusing her and then repeatedly defaming her. Trump has continued to defame Carroll, which could easily result in further judgements if she decides to sue again.
Trump is also facing four criminal trials and 91 indictments for election interference, hush money payments, and improper handling of classified documents. It’s unclear whether any of these cases will get to trial before the 2024 election in November. But they are all proceeding, which means Trump has to pay a gaggle of lawyers to try to stall until he can get into the White House and put himself beyond prosecution.
All that stalling comes at a hefty price. In 2023 Trump spent $50 million in GOP donor funds on legal fees. He could well sink even more than that into his legal problems this year.
Pundits often act as if nothing Trump does can alienate his voters. But his legal troubles, and perhaps the fear that donations will simply fall into a lawyer money pit, has badly damaged his small donor fundraising.
In January, Trump reported raising $3 million from small-dollar donors. That’s a drop in the bucket next to his legal fees. It’s also puny compared to Biden’s campaign haul; the president raised $2 million in a single day on February 29 and $10 million on March 7-8, following the State of the Union speech.
Trump hasn’t done much better with big donors either. He has few wealthy fundraisers scheduled; no billionaires jumped forward to back his bond despite numerous Fox News personalities prodding them to do so. Trump also said he’d refuse donations from anyone who contributed to his primary rival Nikki Haley’s campaign. So far, most of her major donors have taken him at his word and haven’t given Trump a dime.
Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign raised $53 million last month; he’s got more cash on hand than any Democratic presidential candidate has ever had in February/March. We are looking at the possibility that Democrats will have a sweeping, overwhelming, unprecedented cash advantage in the 2024 election.
How much money does it take to win?
Presidential candidates are usually fairly evenly matched in terms of financial resources. Lots of people are invested in a presidential race, and lots of donors, big and small, want to contribute.
Still, there have been some examples of lopsided funding races. Democrat Barack Obama raised $750 million in 2008 while opting out of the public campaign funding system. His opponent, Republican John McCain, raised only $238 million, plus an $84 million public grant for a total of $322 million.
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In 2016, Democrat Hilary Clinton had a less sweeping but still substantial advantage over Trump. She raised $581 million while he raised $274 million, which, along with $66 million of his own money, got him up to $340 million.
The outcomes of these two lopsided elections were quite different. Obama used his powerful fundraising advantage to win a definitive 53 percent to 46 percent victory over McCain. But Clinton won the popular vote only narrowly — and of course lost the Electoral College to Trump.
Part of the issue in 2016 may have been that Trump spent more and somewhat equalized advertising late in the campaign thanks to big Republican donors coming home to his campaign. Trump also focused his spending in swing states like Wisconsin while an overconfident Clinton was trying to expand her map to Arizona and Texas.
Trump was also able to stay competitive in 2016 because money has a limited impact in presidential races.
“A lot of what advertising does is teach voters about the candidates,” political scientist Seth Masket of Tusk told me, “and with two presidents who have been household names for decades running against each other, there’s just not much for voters to learn.”
Having said that, we have never really had a campaign where one candidate struggled to raise funds and was faced with hundreds of millions in debts and legal fees. In addition, a lot of Trump’s money, as Masket told me, is likely to go to “things not associated with changing voters’ minds or encouraging them to turn out such as lawsuits to invalidate early voting [and] to disqualify votes.”
It’s clear that there are severely diminishing returns for presidential campaign spending once you reach a certain threshold. But what happens if a campaign doesn’t hit that threshold? We don’t really know. It’s possible we’ll find out.
Trump vs. the GOP
Fundraising has a limited effect on presidential races. But downballot is another story.
One study found that advertising had two to four times more influence on US House and Senate elections than on presidential elections; in statewide races, advertising had 10 to 19 times as much effect as in presidential races. This is, again, because most voters know relatively little about downballot candidates, and so look to advertising to inform themselves.
Trump may not need campaign funds, but Senate, House, governor, and local candidates do. And Trump’s money troubles are, unfortunately for them, their money troubles as well.
Trump has installed his daughter in law, Lara Trump, and a dittohead loyalist, Michael Whatley, as the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee. Lara, who even Trump partisans admit has no qualifications for her new position, has said that “every penny” of the money raised by the RNC would go to Trump’s campaign. Rather than spending on state parties, Lara Trump wants to use RNC funds to pay Trump’s legal fees and sue to disenfranchise voters.
If the RNC follows through on that promise, it could be a disaster for downballot Republicans. In 2020 the GOP transferred around $200 million to state parties, which was about a quarter of its total spending.
Not only will state parties get a smaller percentage of the pie, but the pie will probably be significantly smaller as well. In October, the RNC had only $9.1 million in cash; at the same point in 2020, it had $61 million. The RNC did better in January, when it raised $12 million, but that was before Lara took over in February. She and Whatley have already radically cut the RNC, firing more than 60 workers.
We don’t know yet how inexperienced leadership, severely reduced staff, and open nepotism and corruption will affect GOP donations. But it’s unlikely to balloon them.
That’s not the end of the GOP’s fundraising troubles either. When House Republicans decided in their wisdom to defenestrate their speaker, Kevin McCarthy, they tossed their most successful money man through the window at the same time.
McCarthy was a fundraising beast; he personally raised north of $40 million in the 2022 midterms. His super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, raised $350 million for the midterms as well. That’s not enough to pay Trump’s debts, but it’s still a ton of advertising in House races where spending can move the needle.
There’s already signs that McCarthy’s absence is causing problems for the GOP, especially in his home state of California. Average fundraising for representatives in swing districts like John Duarte (CA-13) and David Valadao (CA-22) are down 40 percent since McCarthy was ousted as speaker.
If you’re a House Republican, the election looks bleak — which may be part of why so many of them are retiring even though polls suggest the race for the chamber is virtually tied. GOP state governors and legislators may face an even more difficult environment. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is already eyeing potential state legislative chamber flips in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
Cash crash
Predicting the future is always difficult, and there’s not any good way to do know who’s going to win eight months before an election. Polls aren’t very predictive yet. Cash advantage may not have a huge effect on a presidential race.
It’s worth noting, though, that Biden’s fundraising advantage is much larger than Trump’s polling lead. And if you had to choose between leading in the polls and leading in cash, you’d probably prefer to be ahead in the metric you can put in the bank.
That’s it for today
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We’ll be back with more tomorrow. Until then, have a good one.
It really is most gratifying to see trump scrambling around, trying to find money. All he’s ever done is brag about how rich he is, all he’s ever told us is that he’s a billionaire, that he’s very very very very wealthy, and that he will fix everything. Now he is literally scrambling looking for money, and 30 companies have refused to post a bond for him. 30 companies! This was revealed by his lawyers to the court as they plead for more time and/or for a reduction. It must be so humiliating for trump, which I find extremely gratifying.
Excellent piece.
TFG is broke and it IS bad news forcGOP.
However, TFG is ALSO a bigger security risk.
My guess Russian Oligarch(s) will step up to indirectly finance him (and/or the Saudis). Once again: Vote in November! Biden or Dictatorship! is the choice-starkly clear.