I wrote earlier this year about the failure of RPV’s grassroots challenge to improve the state party’s fundraising efforts. As a response to my criticism, in addition to the personal attacks I’ve grown used to, we were told that this was only the beginning and that, given time, RPV would begin to right its fiscal ship. We were also told that the money raised by the RPV grassroots challenge wiped out RPV’s debt.
Then, when I wrote about RPV’s federal filing from January to May 31, I was again attacked with the personal attacks I’ve grown used to, and was lectured in the comments that I was cherry picking my facts, not comparing RPV with DPVA and that I was focused on the wrong report because the state report was the one that mattered the most.
I hate to say I told you so, but…
The latest fundraising numbers for the summer reporting period between April 1 and June 30 came out yesterday. You can find RPV’s here.
How did RPV do?
RPV raised a total of $68,712, excluding the in-kind donations. Of that, $50,000 was Pete Snyder’s donation for the Grassroots Challenge. From individual donors, RPV raised a total of $18,712. The Party has a total cash on hand of $11,211. All the party’s debt continues to be on the federal side, and none of it has been paid down with state-side contributions.
There were two donations of $1500, the largest other than Snyder’s, and one came from a law firm affiliated with John Whitbeck.
DPVA, on the other hand, blew RPV out of the water, raising $1,054,693 excluding the in-kinds, and their largest unaffiliated donation, $100,000, came from Democratic megadonor Phillip Munger. DPVA ends the quarter with $171,135 cash on hand.
To put it in a nutshell – DPVA outraised us 15-1 (thanks to Patrick Knightly for doing the math for me), and they have also have a 15-1 cash-on-hand advantage.
Is now the time when folks sit up and take notice, stop killing the messenger and start realizing that we’re in trouble? This is the third fundraising report in three reporting periods that has been bad. And no amount of attacking me is going to change that. So let’s hope that we don’t see yet another round of nonsense in the comments about me. RPV is not raising money, while the Democrats are. There has to be a reason for this and it’s time we start talking about.
At some point, the grassroots in the party need to step up and ask what their elected party leadership is doing, and why they seem incapable of doing what the Democrats are doing. How is RPV going to fix this? If it’s not really a problem, then why isn’t it a problem? When do the rank and file Republican Party members get to know what our elected leadership are doing?
Whatever RPV is doing, one thing we can say for sure is that they definitely aren’t raising money.
