GOP state legislative campaign hub launches plan to turbocharge online fundraising

The Republican State Leadership Committee, the group charged with electing GOP candidates to state legislatures and a handful of other state offices, is making new investments in its grassroots fundraising program, launching a joint fundraising committee that will build infrastructure for legislative candidates and caucuses to tap.

The State Republican Victory Fund, formed by the RSLC and state legislative campaign groups in five states, will split the money it raises online among those entities to help build their in-state online programs. The arrangement will also offset the front-end costs of prospecting for individual donors — an expensive first step for digital programs that requires campaigns or committees to spend heavily on Facebook, Google and other online platforms to collect donors' email addresses or other contact information.

The fund will also share its donor file with state Republican Party organizations, legislative campaign committees and affiliated outside groups in a roster of states including Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, seeding them with valuable donor data. The details of this program, the first of its kind among Republican committees, was shared first with POLITICO.

The RSLC's move is part of a broader effort within parts of the Republican Party to improve its online fundraising, a space that Democrats have dominated for over a decade.

In 2020, the National Republican Senatorial Committee told GOP senators that they had to "adapt immediately or find a new job" if they didn't step up their online fundraising efforts, as they were being significantly out-raised by their Democratic counterparts. Earlier that year, Republicans founded WinRed, a platform that supports GOP candidates and causes — and the party's answer to ActBlue. Democrats' favored fundraising platform has helped raise more than $10 billion for candidates and causes since 2004.

During the 2019-2020 election cycle, the RSLC raised $4.6 million online in the "first two-year cycle it significantly invested in digital fundraising," according to a memo provided to POLITICO. By 2021, the group raised $7.7 million.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee does not have a comparable joint fundraising program, but it benefits from a well-developed small-dollar landscape on the left, with Democrats used to giving money online to candidates up and down the ballot.

ActBlue, for example, had helped state legislative candidates raise more than $76 million by August 2020. The DLCC, like the RSLC's victory fund, does split proceeds from joint email efforts. One from April 2021, signed by Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, whose speech about bigotry went viral, was split between the DLCC and the Michigan Democratic Senate caucus.

"We must give our allies in the states the tools to fight back against the national liberal money machine, which is why the next frontier for the RSLC is to help Republican caucuses across the country build their own digital fundraising programs," RSLC President Dee Duncan said in a statement shared with POLITICO.