New economic realities due to the COVID-19 pandemic are depleting campaign war chests of challengers who had just begun to see their political fortunes rise in their attempts to oust incumbents.
With more than 23 million unemployed amid the coronavirus spread, candidates have sought new ways to appeal to contributors on tighter budgets while complying with local social distancing rules.
Former New York Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican, is running to win back New York’s 22nd District, which she lost to Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi in 2018. Tenney, who first won the seat in 2016, has nearly 10 times as much cash on hand as her nearest primary challenger — but 5 times less than Brindisi, according to federal election campaign records.
Brindisi won the seat in 2018 by almost 2 percentage points and raised just over $1 million more than Tenney at the time. But in a central New York district where President Trump won 55% of the vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton’s 39%, Brindisi is considered one of the most vulnerable freshman Democrats.
Tenney, a former state assemblywoman, hoped to appeal again to the district’s more conservative voters by touting Trump’s economic message while arguing that Brindisi is too liberal for the needs of the rural central region of the state outside the cities of Binghamton and Utica.
But just when donations began to come in at a steady pace, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“When this whole thing started, I had a lot of fundraisers scheduled. I had various Republican celebrity types who were coming to the district,” Tenney told the Washington Examiner. “I had to cancel everything, and a lot of them were good revenue generators. And then I got concerned about asking people for money.”
With all sectors of society hit in the pocketbook, “I kind of took a pause, and I just called to check in with people and didn’t ask for money,” Tenney said. “And a lot of people were really grateful that I didn’t do that.”
Sean Parnell, a Pennsylvania Republican challenging Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb in the state’s 17th Congressional District, told the Washington Examiner a similar story. Lamb currently leads Parnell by a nearly $740,000 cash-on-hand margin, according to the latest Federal Election Commission records.
“The pandemic has thrown a wrench in our campaign in a lot of different ways, but one of them has been fundraising. Our campaign — we had so many fundraisers planned and canceled because everything was locked down pretty early here in Pennsylvania,” Parnell said.
“What I’m doing now is just spending a lot of time on the phones — doing call time to close that cash-on-hand gap. And by the way, it’s doable. He does not have that significant of a lead on us.”
Both Parnell and Tenney, like other political candidates across the country initially paralyzed by the pandemic, restrategized their campaign activities to focus on the economic impact the pandemic has had on their respective communities.
Parnell, a former Army combat veteran, had campaign volunteers launch a group called “Parnell’s Platoon,” an effort to help feed children in need who live in the Pittsburgh suburbs, while Tenney’s campaign spearheaded efforts to promote patronage of struggling local restaurants.
“I know everyone’s getting sick of getting takeout, but give it to a first responder, or senior or somebody that really needs it who can’t afford to go out to eat all the time,” Tenney said. “We’ve been doing a lot of that. I’ve been donating my meals to the late-night shifts at the hospitals.”
In addition to their charitable work, the candidates ramped up their social media and phone banking activities necessary to keep some donations coming in, but the virtual fundraising world the COVID-19 pandemic placed the candidates into still seems restrictive to them.
