Vice President Kamala Harris‘s cash advantage over former President Donald Trump has become a point of concern for some Republican political operatives, who expressed worries about how that money could affect the race in Pennsylvania.
Veteran GOP campaign strategists, speaking to the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity, gave varying opinions on the degree to which Harris’s cash advantage will help her in November, but three in particular said they were concerned that Harris’s focus on Pennsylvania could be problematic.
“It’s not over if she wins Pennsylvania, but the map shrinks considerably,” one Republican strategist assessed.
“The sheer amount of resources Harris is pouring into that state shows how difficult this race is going to be,” a second GOP veteran stated, adding that he believes Trump should press for a second debate to “hammer home how out of touch” the vice president’s policies are.
“It is the key to the election,” a third strategist said bluntly. “You can’t help but be a little nervous.”
The Harris campaign brought in $190 million in August, compared to $45 million for Trump’s campaign, and spent $174 million compared to Trump’s $61 million. In total, Harris is outspending Trump by roughly $5 million per day, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
When it comes to direct ad buys, the largest expenditures for both campaigns in August, Harris again leads Trump, $137 million to $47 million. Most of Harris’s and Trump’s campaign cash is being poured directly into battleground states, but in Pennsylvania specifically, Harris maintains a significant advantage. The Harris campaign and associated PACs have booked nearly $200 million in ad buys in the Keystone State through Nov. 5, compared to just under $78 million for the Trump team, according to an analysis conducted by Business Insider.
One contributing factor to Harris’s spending advantage can be traced directly to the Republican National Committee’s decision to shutter vast parts of its state grassroots operations after Lara Trump and Michael Whatley took over leadership earlier this year. Instead, Trump and Republicans looked to essentially outsource door-knocking and other grassroots outreach to super PACs supporting the former president’s 2024 bid.
However, the GOP’s decision to cull its grassroots operations has given Harris a leg up in spending and direct oversight of ground-level operations. Harris and the Democratic National Committee had more than 1,200 staffers on its payroll in August, nearly four times as many as Trump and the RNC’s 320 staffers.
“This is entirely a problem of our own creation. We thought we were running against Basement Biden, that we could be cheap,” a veteran GOP strategist who worked on both the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns told the Washington Examiner. “It’s way too late to change course, so all we can do at this point is hope and pray for the best.”
“I don’t know what the PACs are doing,” Mark Forton, the chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, similarly expressed to the Associated Press. “I don’t know if they are going door to door.”
Trump does hold advantages over Harris when it comes to direct mail marketing and spending from independent, outside spending groups.
Groups backing Trump spent $163 million in August, compared to $104 million from groups backing Harris.
Make America Great Again Inc., the core PAC backing Trump’s run, raised $25 million last month, including $10 million from billionaire Diane Hendricks and a $5 million donation from former Trump critic Paul Singer. Billionaire Elon Musk, who stood up the pro-Trump America PAC in August, isn’t required to report its donations to the federal government until October and is reportedly pouring more than $15 million into grassroots door-knocking efforts.
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions for this story.
The vice president will likely continue her fundraising and spending advantage over Trump through November.
Harris pulled in $27 million from a New York City fundraiser this past Sunday, which was attended by the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Anne Hathaway, and she’ll likely see similar hauls from a pair of fundraisers in San Francisco and Los Angeles next weekend.
Multiple GOP strategists agreed that Harris’s numbers indicated she had effectively wiped out the enthusiasm problem plaguing Democrats when President Joe Biden was the candidate.
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“Kamala Harris might have energized Democratic voters, but she’s still hiding her policies. She’s still dodging interviews. That won’t fly with independents,” one told the Washington Examiner.
“We know Democrats are going to show up and vote, but President Trump, his campaign, and his supporters are working nonstop to prevent another four years of Comrade Kamala and her country-destroying agenda,” a second operative stated, shooting down the idea that Trump can’t counter Harris’s spending spree.