Two of the Republican Party’s biggest contributors, Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and his medical wife, Miriam, recently made their biggest donation of the 2020 election cycle, giving a combined total of $ 25 million to the Leadership Fund of the Senate, a super PAC that works to retain the majority of the Republican Party in the chamber.
“Our donors are very concerned about the political environment and are focused on making sure we have the Senate,” Steven Law, who oversees the Senate Leadership Fund, told CNN this week. Law is a former assistant principal to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the super PAC is closely aligned with the Kentucky Republican.
“We see the Senate as the last and last firewall to defend against the left-wing Democratic policies we’ve seen fall from the candidates’ mouths,” Law said.
Chicago executive and longtime Republican donor William Kunkler does not support Trump’s re-election and believes the president “is too low right now” in the polls to win another term. But he said he hopes to join forces with Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney’s political team to conduct a virtual fundraiser in September for Republican Party incumbents in the Senate.
Kunkler donated $ 2,800 to Biden earlier this year, but said he wants to protect himself from Biden “being dragged too easily to the left” on issues like forgiving student loan debt by protecting the Republican majority in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Dan Eberhart, an oil executive and Trump supporter, said he plans to launch an independent effort in the coming weeks to help Republican first-term senator Steve Daines fend off challenge from Democratic state governor Steve Bullock in Montana.
Hard landscape
Republicans faced a difficult picture in the Senate even before the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 140,000 Americans and cost millions of people their lives. The Republican Party is defending 23 states against 12 of the Democrats. Democrats need to win only four seats to claim a majority, or three if Biden wins the presidency and his vice president breaks ties in an equally divided chamber.
Democrats have seats to protect in the states Trump won in 2016: Senator Doug Jones in deep red Alabama and Gary Peters in Michigan.
Republicans have been particularly alarmed by the success of Democrats’ fundraising with low-cost donors who have provided a financial lifeline to candidates after the coronavirus stopped in-person fundraising.
Tim Cameron, a Republican strategist and former chief digital strategist on the Senate Republican campaign arm, said the “threat” to the Senate majority has been clearly communicated to major donors, but individual Republican party senators must invest more on outreach activities for taxpayers online.
Other Republican senators who are not on the ballot in November should follow the Democrats’ model, such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and roll out their email lists to raise money for other colleagues in distress, he said.
“This is a time for everyone to step forward and make sure we can secure these seats,” said Cameron.
Stanley Hubbard, a Minnesota broadcast magnate and top Republican donor, has issued checks to dozens of Republican candidates and committees in this cycle, including the National Republican Senate Committee.
“The Senate needs to be conservative because I don’t want us to go overboard with taxes and whatnot,” he said in an interview this week.
But Hubbard said he is as committed to helping Trump win reelection as he is to rescuing the majority from the Senate.
Trump, he said, “screams when he shouldn’t,” but the president deserves a second term. “Look at the jobs. Look at the prosperity,” said Hubbard. “Everything had been going great until Covid came along. The people in charge should get credit.”
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