— The four Georgia Senate candidates raised a record amount of money in about two months, combining to bring in well over $300 million. — President Donald Trump continues to push Republicans to help him overturn the election results, calling on senators to step in on Jan. 6 while he mulls ways to keep his grip on the GOP. — With a bit over a week to go until the Senate runoffs, Georgia election administrators are battling fatigue, conspiracy theories and more. Good Monday morning. Today's my birthday, and I'm spending it with all my favorite people: My dear Score readers. We'll have another short week; There will be no newsletters on Thursday and Friday. Follow me on Twitter at @ZachMontellaro. Email the rest of the POLITICO Campaigns team at sshepard@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com, amutnick@politico.com and srodriguez@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @JamesArkin, @allymutnick and @sabrod123. Days until the Georgia Senate runoffs: 8 Days until the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: 309 Days until the 2022 midterm elections: 680 |
THE CASH DASH — An absolute bonkers amount of money is flowing into Georgia. The last FEC reports for candidates before the election were due on Christmas Eve, and you'd be forgiven if you weren't feverishly refreshing the FEC's website like we were. But have no fear, POLITICO Campaigns' James Arkin and I have you covered: The candidates collectively raked in over $340 million — led by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who each raised over $100 million. Ossoff led the pack in fundraising, raking in $106.8 million from Oct. 15 through Dec. 16. He spent $93.5 million in that same time period. (Here's Ossoff's filing.) Warnock, who is running in the special election, followed him at $103.4 million and spent $86.1 million ( Warnock's filing). The Republicans were massively outraised by their Democratic challengers: Sen. David Perdue brought in $68.1 million, spending $57.9 million (Perdue's filing) and appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler raised $64 million, with almost none of that coming from self-funding, with $48.6 million in expenditures ( Loeffler's filing, which was submitted on Wednesday). The explosion in online fundraising over the last four years has cost us perspective on how much money this is. It is, obviously, a lot: Even the comparatively paltry hauls posted by both Perdue and Loeffler were more than the $57.9 million Jaime Harrison raised in the third quarter of this year, which is an all-time record quarter for a Senate candidate. (And this was only two months!) Another point of comparison: Ossoff raised nearly $30 million for his unsuccessful House candidacy for the 2017 special election in GA-06, and now-former GOP Rep. Karen Handel raised $6.3 million for that race. So again, this is a lot of money. Candidate spending is only part of the picture, and we're left largely in the dark for much of the rest of it: money from outside groups. Due to a quirk in the campaign finance reporting calendar for groups that report their finances monthly (which most outside groups opt to do), the source of the vast majority of outside spending will go undisclosed until well after the election. Many outside groups, along with the DSCC and NRSC, won't have to report their fundraising until the end of January — meaning the source of money they raised from late November through the runoff won't be disclosed until well after voters have already voted. (They do, however, have to report their independent expenditures, like advertising or field work, shortly after spending the money.) |
STILL HANGING ON — With less than a month of his presidency remaining, Trump continues to lash out, while calling on Republicans to embrace his attempts to usurp the election. "Time for Republican Senators to step up and fight for the Presidency, like the Democrats would do if they had actually won," he tweeted on Saturday, while spending much of the holiday raging about his election loss by tweeting his conspiracy theories. He did, however, sign the government funding/pandemic relief bill into law on Sunday evening. Trump continuing to rage comes as his political advisers look to punish Republicans he deems disloyal. POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt : "With less than a month until Trump leaves office, his team has begun mapping out what his post-White House political infrastructure will look like. Until now, the planning has centered on deploying resources to defeat Democrats in midterm races. But advisers are now also keeping tabs on Republican incumbents. … His team is now taking more formal steps — such as tracking their public comments — with an eye toward possibly marshaling the president's political operation to replace them with more Trump-friendly figures, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations." LESSONS LEARNED — The foreign cyberattacks that election security officials feared appeared to never materialize, but there's still plenty of lessons learned from this year's elections on the security front. POLITICO Pro Cybersecurity's Eric Geller has a list of takeaways, including the importance of a paper trail and providing more money for election security. |
ON MY MIND — Georgia election administrators were already expecting a tough year, having to implement a new election system. They didn't know the half of it. With a bit over a week to go until the big day, Georgia election administrators are battling back fatigue, conspiracy theories and more ahead of the Senate runoffs, I wrote. I spoke to eight election administrators last week, and while all said they were confident they'd run a successful election next week, the burden has worn on some of them. "It doesn't even seem like Christmas to any of us," said Deidre Holden, the supervisor of elections in Paulding County, northwest of Atlanta. "But it's been difficult," she continued, praising her staff. "You are physically tired, you are mentally tired. You are basically exhausted. But we know that we have to keep going on." Relatedly: Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger endorsed efforts to roll back the state's no-excuse absentee voting program after the runoff. Raffensperger, a Republican, did not cite the unfounded fraud conspiracies in the state that other Republicans have embraced to restrict the system. Instead, he talked about the burden on election officials as justification for changing Georgia's mail voting program — which his office has previously touted as a national leader. "Asking county elections officials to hold no excuse absentee ballot voting in addition to three weeks of early, in-person voting, and election day voting is too much to manage," Raffensperger said in a statement. — The NRSC and the state GOP suffered another legal setback on Thursday, with another lawsuit dismissed. POLITICO's Josh Gerstein: "At the end of a 90-minute hearing held via Zoom, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams dismissed the suit." — Bodycam footage from police officers who responded to a call from Warnock's ex-wife was released, where she said he "was a 'great actor' after he denied her claims that he ran over her foot with his car," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein reported. "Warnock wasn't charged with a crime and an officer said in a police report that medical officials didn't find visible signs of injury in the foot." The AJC first reported on the call in March, when it happened. At the time Warnock disputed his ex-wife's allegations, telling the AJC "it didn't happen." — Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, and the USPS have "struck a deal on speedier ballot-handling procedures ahead of Georgia's critical runoff election, avoiding a court battle," The Washington Post's Jacob Bogage reported. Among the changes: The USPS agreed to treat ballots that are in processing plants within three days of the election as express mail. — Ads, and a bunch of 'em: Ossoff has an ad with a woman talking about being a first-time voter. Another Ossoff ad has a man talking about Covid deaths in his family, attacking Perdue for not taking the pandemic seriously . Loeffler has a Christmas-themed ad, with a prayer for America. She has another ad that's a positive bio spot. Warnock has a spot hitting Loeffler for taking a photo with a white supremacist, saying she was "campaigning" with him. (Loeffler has said she didn't know who he was when they took the photo.) The DSCC is out with an ad attacking both Republicans as very wealthy, saying, "They don't live like you." NEVERENDING ELECTION — The legal battle in NY-22 will continue into the new year. The last hearing of 2020 was on Wednesday, where the Utica Observer-Dispatch's Steve Howe wrote that "the current, overall unofficial results now edge to [Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi], giving the incumbent a 14-vote lead" over former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney, with hundreds of more ballots to go. The court is in recess until Jan. 4. FUTURE OF THE PARTY — A group of incoming Republicans in the House are going to try to form a "Force," as a countervailing effort to the liberal "Squad," POLITICO's Melanie Zanona, Ally Mutnick and Sarah Ferris wrote. The quartet includes Reps.-elect Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.), María Salazar (R-Fla.) and Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), and are trying to recruit more members. "Stuck in the House minority, the Force is unlikely to have much influence on next year's legislative agenda. But their message is already proving politically potent," they wrote. "Beyond the initial four members in the Force, there's also California GOP Reps.-elect Young Kim and Michelle Steel , Korean immigrants who have been friends for decades and speak on the trail." GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD — Some more mayoral maneuvering in New York City: Art Chang, a former J.P. Morgan executive, entered the race, POLITICO New York's Erin Durkin reported (for Pros). And Andrew Yang filed paperwork to open a mayoral campaign account last week, per POLITICO New York's Joe Anuta. CODA — QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I respectfully suggest that I beat the hell out of everyone else." — President-elect Joe Biden, responding to a question on a call with columnists on if he was up to political fights, per The New York Times' Michael Shear. |
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