The crucial Republican swing states that could determine the 2024 presidential election are hemorrhaging money, thanks to the GOP’s continued perpetuation of the Big Lie, that Trump won the 2020 election.
According to Reuters, real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more.
Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization’s stewardship. He says he doesn’t agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ludicrous” to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state.
“I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well,” he said.
Weiser’s withdrawal is emblematic of a situation that the GOP would like to keep hushed up. It reflects the high price Republicans in the battleground states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their rabid support of former President Trump and his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Kari Lake, who ran for the gubernatorial seat in 2022, has been among those who have caused the most damage to the credibility of the Republican party as she not only pushed the Big Lie, but concocted even more outrageous conspiracy theories.
The two parties have hemorrhaged money in recent years according to a Reuters review of financial filings, plus interviews with six major donors and three election campaign experts.
Arizona’s Republican Party had less than $50,000 in cash reserves in its state and federal bank accounts as of March 31 to spend on overheads such as rent, payroll and political campaign operations, the filings show. At the same point four years ago, it had nearly $770,000.
The Michigan party’s federal account had about $116,000 on March 31, a drop from nearly $867,000 two years ago. It has yet to disclose updated financial information for its state account this year.
The two parties have “astonishingly low cash reserves,” said Seth Masket, director of the non-partisan Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, adding that state parties play a key election role, helping promote candidates, fund get-out-the-vote efforts, pay for ads and recruit volunteers.
“Their ability to help candidates is severely limited right now.”
Not only is money not coming in, but the Arizona party spent more than $300,000 on “legal consulting” fees last year, according to its federal filings, which do not specify the type of legal work paid for.
In that period, legal fees were paid to a firm that had filed lawsuits seeking to overturn Trump’s defeat in Arizona, according to separate campaign and legal disclosures. Money was also paid to attorneys who represented Kelli Ward, the former party chair when the Justice Department subpoenaed her over her involvement in a plan to falsely certify to Congress that Trump, and not Democratic President Joe Biden, had won Arizona, plus when a congressional committee subpoenaed her phone records.
More than $500,000 was also spent in Arizona on an election night party and a bus tour for statewide Trump-backed candidates last year, the financial filings show. All of those candidates, who supported the former president’s election-steal claims, lost in last November’s midterms.
Weiser is not alone in his disenchantment with the GOP, “It’s too bad we let the right wing of our party take over the operations,” said Jim Click, whose family has been a longtime major Republican donor in Arizona. He and other donors said they would give money directly to candidates or support them through other political fundraising groups.
Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said the financial figures disclosed so far by the party underscore the difficult task of supporting operations without the financial backing of big donors.
“They are effectively broke and I don’t see the clouds parting and the sun coming out on their fundraising abilities,” he said.
