‘Green Wave’ of Donations Aids Democratic Challengers in House Races

In the months before President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, only one candidate for Congress — the speaker of the House — raised more than $2 million in the final full quarter before Election Day.

This year is different.

In New York and New Jersey alone, four Democrats, all first-time candidates, broke the $2 million bench mark, and one nearly doubled it. In those states, all the Democrats running to unseat Republican House members outraised their opponents in the last three months — some by multiple orders of magnitude, others by millions of dollars.

In central New York, Rep. Claudia Tenney saw her Democratic challenger nearly double her money haul — even though Trump personally traveled to her congressional district to headline a fundraiser for the Republican.

In Staten Island, the last Republican clinging to a New York City congressional seat, Rep. Dan Donovan, saw his Democratic challenger outraise him by a ratio of nearly 5-to-1.

And in New Jersey, a trio of new Democratic candidates, Mikie Sherrill, Tom Malinowski and Andy Kim, shattered records to raise $7.3 million between them, outpacing their three Republican opponents in battleground districts by a combined $5 million, recent Federal Election Commission records show.

The lopsided fundraising numbers from all 14 Democratic challengers in the two states — from the longest of shots to the surest of bets — amount to a dramatic financial show of force that will fund a drumbeat of television spots, political mailers and digital ads in a crucial region for the Democratic effort to take power in the House.

The New York and New Jersey figures represent a particularly sharp example of a nationwide trend that the head of a top Republican super PAC recently warned top donors amounted to a “green wave” of Democratic cash threatening to sweep Republicans from power in the congressional midterms.

“I have never seen, nor has anybody seen, this type of money generated in the campaigns,” said Thomas M. Reynolds, a former Republican congressman in New York who previously oversaw the House GOP campaign efforts nationally. “What used to be really good money on the Republican side is being dwarfed by how much money progressives have raised.”

Antonio Delgado, the Democratic nominee in a battleground seat that stretches north from the Hudson Valley, paced the field not just in New York but nationally. He has raised $3.8 million since July to unseat freshman Republican Rep. John Faso, who collected $1 million. Only two Democratic House candidates in the nation reported bigger hauls than Delgado as of late Monday.

The rush of money to Delgado appears to be partly a backlash from a series of Republican ads that Democrats have denounced as racist for casting Delgado, who is black, as a “big-city rapper” amid clips of him in a hooded sweatshirt. Delgado is, more recently, a lawyer and a Rhodes Scholar.

“The GOP is now facing a green wave, not a blue wave,” wrote Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the biggest House Republican super PAC nationally, in a memo to donors last week. The group is spending millions defending two Republican incumbents in New York, including ads hitting Delgado.

What strategists of both parties have said is remarkable about the latest fundraising figures is the sheer breadth of Democratic candidates who have been lifted financially, often by small donors who have ignored the political prognosticators in determining which candidates to open their wallets for.

Party leadership had pushed Juanita Perez Williams as the favored candidate during the Democratic primary in the Syracuse-area 24th District, for instance. Dana Balter won the race and has been deluged with $1.5 million in donations — a figure that in past cycles would rank her as one of the most prolific fundraisers in the nation. An activist and visiting professor, Balter tripled the total gathered by Rep. John Katko in a district that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.

Or take Tracy Mitrano, who is running for Congress in a rural New York district that does not even merit a mention on the Cook Political Report’s list of the more than 100 most potentially competitive seats. She outraised the Republican incumbent, Rep. Tom Reed, by more than $200,000 in the last three months.

In the most contested race in New York, Anthony Brindisi, a Democratic state assemblyman, raised $1.4 million and spent $2 million against Tenney (also double her total) to contest the 22nd District. He still entered October with more cash than her, despite Trump’s visit to Utica in August.

Perhaps the best news for Republicans is that despite the avalanche of Democratic money, many still entered October on at least equal financial footing, often as a result of years of incumbency or past fundraising.

Reed, for instance, had nearly $1.3 million in the bank, almost double Mitrano’s $684,000. Katko entered October with a slight cash lead, too, despite being badly outraised in recent months.

Similarly, Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin was outraised by his Democratic challenger Perry Gershon, $1.5 million to $1 million, in the last three months in a district at the far end of Long Island.

But Zeldin, whose coffers were boosted by an event headlined by Donald Trump Jr. over the summer, still entered October with $1.8 million on hand, compared with $535,000 for Gershon. Trump carried the seat in 2016 after President Barack Obama won it four years earlier.

Some of the most fertile political territory for Democrats is in New Jersey. Democrats are already favored to win the southern New Jersey seat of Rep. Frank LoBiondo, who is retiring, as national Republicans have abandoned their nominee there, citing his “bigotry.”

Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, is favored in the northern New Jersey district of another retiring Republican, Rodney Frelinghuysen. She raised more than $2 million more than the Republican in that race.

The two New Jersey Democrats running against Republican incumbents, Kim in the 3rd District and Malinowski in the 7th, raised $2.3 million each. For Kim, that is $1 million more than Rep. Tom MacArthur; Malinowski quadrupled the $562,000 haul of the Republican congressman he is challenging, Leonard Lance. Financially, perhaps the most embattled Republican incumbent in the region is Donovan, whose district includes Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. He had only $277,000 in the bank, compared with $1.4 million for his Democratic challenger, Max Rose, a veteran who has been promoting himself in television ads as a less partisan figure by criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Donovan emerged from a draining Republican primary in June with Michael Grimm, his predecessor who tried to mount an unlikely political comeback after serving time in prison. The 11th District has proved elusive for Democrats, who could not unseat Grimm in 2014 despite the cloud of a 20-count federal indictment at the time.

In the Buffalo area, Rep. Chris Collins is trying to pull off the same feat as Grimm, after he was indicted on insider trading charges this August. Despite initially announcing he would not seek re-election, Collins restarted his campaign in September. Fundraising has almost frozen since his indictment, but he still has $1 million in his treasury and is independently wealthy.

Collins’ Democratic challenger, Nate McMurray, had raised little until the indictment, but pulled in more than $500,000 in the last three months.

While the wave of Democratic cash appeared to lift almost all candidates, one notable incumbent appeared somewhat left behind: Sen. Robert Menendez, who faced federal corruption charges last year that resulted in a mistrial. He reported $2.1 million in contributions in the last three months — less than three of the House Democratic challengers in his home state, even as Menendez faces a strong challenge from Bob Hugin, a pharmaceutical executive pouring millions of his own money into the race.