Taking advantage of a recent Supreme Court decision, the Republican National Committee is sending tens of millions of dollars to help the party’s midterm candidates. The long-awaited move adds to the G.O.P.’s considerable financial advantages, especially in Senate races, despite a tough political environment. The R.N.C., which entered September with an enormous $126 million on hand, told The New York Times that it was finishing moving more than $50 million to the groups overseeing the party’s efforts to elect House and Senate candidates.
The cash infusion, significantly larger than what Republicans have done in the past, is something that the troubled and financially struggling Democratic National Committee is incapable of doing. The R.N.C. told The Times that it had transferred more than $44 million between mid-August and mid-October to the party’s main House and Senate committees. Many of those transfers will be disclosed for the first time in a campaign-finance filing on Tuesday evening.
The cash was about evenly split between the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect House Republicans, and its Senate counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. At least $6 million more is set to be sent to those two committees by Election Day, the committee said. The spending comes as Republicans play defense across the midterm map, devoting resources to states and districts that were once thought to be safely red as President Trump’s low approval ratings weigh on the party’s candidates.
The R.N.C. has amassed its huge war chest in part thanks to an aggressive fund-raising effort by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who has led the party’s finance operation. The party said it raised $18.5 million in September.
By Oct. 14, R.N.C. officials said, its $126 million coffers had been drawn down to $76 million, a campaign-finance filing on Thursday will show. In the four most recent election cycles, the R.N.C. has transferred between $8 million and roughly $31 million to these party committees. But the shift of money goes much farther this time.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down limits on the amount of coordinated spending that party committees could do with candidates. That was a major change, probably the largest in campaign finance since the 2010 Citizens United decision, which lifted limits on corporate spending in elections. And this year’s ruling from the conservative-controlled Supreme Court stood to immediately benefit Republicans, because they have much more money in their party committees.
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