Political groups loyal to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell hauled in nearly $100 million last year and entered 2022 with just shy of $90 million to spend on helping Republicans recapture the majority.
Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC, and One Nation, a political nonprofit, raised a combined $94.4 million in 2021 and, along with other affiliated groups, retained $87.5 million in the bank to spend on the midterm elections. Neither group is permitted to coordinate with McConnell or the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
But each is overseen by Republican Steven Law, a McConnell confidant, and they function as the minority leader’s political muscle in Senate races — in primaries and the general election.
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“As President Biden’s approval rating and the country’s mood have worsened, Republican donors are realizing that both the Senate and House majorities are within reach,” Law told Fox News. President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has sunk to 40.8% in the most recent RealClearPolitics average.
What strong fundraising by Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation also reveals is that wealthy GOP donors have not been discouraged from supporting the McConnell-linked groups by former President Donald Trump’s demands that the Kentucky Republican be ousted from his leadership post.
The Senate is split 50-50, with Democrats controlling the majority courtesy of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. With Biden’s job approval essentially in freefall, Republicans are on track to reclaim the majority they lost in 2020 after Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats in a pair of Jan. 5, 2021, runoff elections. Some prognosticators are predicting GOP gains could rival Republican waves in 1994, 2010, and 2014.
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Republicans are beginning to believe, in part because their fundraising in 2021 is setting records and outpacing what GOP committees and party-aligned groups collected in the last off-year, 2019. Two years ago, Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation reported raising a combined $68.3 million and a war chest of approximately the same amount.
Senate Republicans are targeting Democratic-held seats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire, and keeping an eye on contests in Colorado, Illinois, and Washington as opportunities to expand the map and oust Democrats generally considered safe.
