4/18/21
As they prepare to face primary challengers, the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 raised significantly more money during the first quarter of 2021 than they did two years earlier. The group, leveraging the power of incumbency, also swamped their GOP primary opponents in almost every instance during the first round of fundraising since angering Mr. Trump with their votes, new Federal Election Commission filings show. While all the incumbents outraised challengers who filed campaign finance reports, it is still early in the two-year election cycle and money is just one factor in typically low-turnout primaries. Mr. Trump’s political-action committees could also weigh in financially on some of the contests, and his endorsements could carry significant weight with the party’s base. The PACs aren’t required to report their latest totals until July, but one of them, Save America PAC, started the year with $31 million in the bank and has continued to raise money since then. Nine of the 10 incumbents already have primary challengers, in some cases multiple ones. Some GOP strategists worry such party infighting could undermine their prospects of taking back control of Congress in 2022.
Ms. Cheney, who survived an effort by pro-Trump colleagues to remove her from her party-leadership post, had more than $1.4 million in her campaign account at the end of March after the best fundraising quarter of her political career. Some of her top donations included $10,000 apiece from the Believe in America PAC of Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) and the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, perhaps the most outspoken critic of Mr. Trump among the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment, raised more than three times what he did two years ago, pulling in around $1.1 million during the quarter for his main campaign committee. He had $2.5 million in his campaign fund at the end of the quarter. Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, arguably one of the more conservative lawmakers among the 10 who voted for impeachment, raised $405,000 during the quarter. That was up from $151,000 during the comparable time period in 2019. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio raised almost three times as much as during the first quarter of 2019.
