{"id":10086,"date":"2018-04-09T07:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10086"},"modified":"2018-04-08T15:56:20","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T19:56:20","slug":"maryland-gop-catching-up-to-democrats-in-fundraising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10086","title":{"rendered":"Maryland GOP Catching Up to Democrats in Fundraising"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maryland is a majority Democratic state.\u00a0 So one would expect that in financial competition between the two state parties, the Democrats would blow the Republicans away.\u00a0 That may have been the case a few years ago, but not anymore.<\/p>\n

In Maryland, the two state parties have two campaign accounts each: a federal account used for promoting federal candidates and a state account used for promoting state and county candidates.\u00a0 Contributions to the federal account are regulated by federal election law while contributions to the state account are regulated by state election law.\u00a0 Both federal and state money can be used for purposes like paying staff, voter registration and voter turnout so there is a bit of flexibility in use.\u00a0 There are a few local party accounts but they are dwarfed by the state parties.<\/p>\n

Below is the distribution of federal and state fundraising for the Democratic State Central Committee of Maryland.\u00a0 A few things stand out.\u00a0 First, because there are many Democratic federal elected officials, federal fundraising often exceeds state fundraising.\u00a0 Second, election year receipts are far greater than off-year receipts.\u00a0 Third, the presence of a Democratic Governor and\/or a marquee federal race (like the 2006 U.S. Senate contest between Ben Cardin and Michael Steele) is good for fundraising.\u00a0 In 2017, the first year for current Democratic Chair Kathleen Matthews, the party exceeded its off-year pace in federal money but slightly lagged its typical state fundraising.\u00a0 Still, despite not having the Governor\u2019s seat, the party did pretty well and finished 2017 with almost $800,000 in the bank.<\/p>\n

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Below is the same information for the Republican State Central Committee of Maryland.\u00a0 The GOP\u2019s federal fundraising is often puny due to its lack of federal elected officials.\u00a0 (The 2006 race involving Michael Steele was a big exception.)\u00a0 But in state money, the Republicans do better than the Democrats when they have an incumbent Governor.\u00a0 They have led the Democrats in state fundraising four years in a row and exceeded them in total money raised in 2005, 2014 and 2017.\u00a0 Their total cash on hand at the end of 2017 was about a quarter of the Democrats.<\/p>\n

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The chart below shows GOP fundraising as a percentage of the Democrats.\u00a0 Again, notice how the last four years stand out in how the Republicans have exceeded the Democrats in state-level fundraising.\u00a0 The Democrats\u2019 advantage in federal fundraising can be used for staff and voter activity but it cannot be used to directly promote the party\u2019s gubernatorial nominee in the coming election.<\/p>\n

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Governor Larry Hogan will have an enormous financial advantage against whoever wins the Democratic nomination and the two parties could be at rough parity.\u00a0 If Hogan wins, it\u2019s reasonable to assume that the GOP will continue to raise as much or more in state-level money as the Democrats during his second term.\u00a0 That would be a nice boost for the next generation of Republicans looking to succeed him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Maryland is a majority Democratic state.\u00a0 So one would expect that in financial competition between the two state parties, the Democrats would blow the Republicans away.\u00a0 That may have been the case a few years ago, but not anymore. In Maryland, the two state parties have two campaign accounts each: a federal … Continue reading Maryland GOP Catching Up to Democrats in Fundraising<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,1067,36],"tags":[1545,1674,1862],"class_list":["post-10086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-maryland-democratic-party","category-republicans","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-maryland-democratic-party","tag-maryland-republicans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2CG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10086"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10091,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086\/revisions\/10091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}