The money game isn’t everything but they can’t win without it:
All seven House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump and are seeking re-election have out-raised their primary opponents, many of whom have received Mr. Trump’s backing, according to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission this week.
In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney, who was all but exiled by her party for bluntly condemning Mr. Trump’s false election claims and has emerged as one of the lead lawmakers on the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, raked in $2 million during the last quarter, entering 2022 with nearly $5 million in cash on hand. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has drawn the vociferous support of Mr. Trump and his family, raised $443,000 last quarter and has about $380,000 cash on hand.
Representative Fred Upton, a centrist who has held his seat in southwest Michigan for more than three decades, brought in $726,000 and has about $1.5 million cash on hand, well ahead of the challenger Mr. Trump has endorsed, Steve Carra, a state representative who raised $134,000 last quarter and has $200,000 cash on hand.
Joe Kent, a Trump-backed Army Special Forces veteran prolific on social media and conservative talk shows, appeared to come closer to matching the fund-raising totals of his opponent, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, but still trailed her in both quarterly hauls and cash on hand.
I don’t think this means all that much — these people are probably getting money from Democrats as well as disaffected Republicans and Independents but I’m not sure they’ll get their votes in a primary or in the general election. Maybe. But people do send money as a show of support and it appears they are sending it to the Republicans who stood up to Dear Leader.
But I wouldn’t worry too much about those challengers. The RNC just voted to allow itself to spend money for Liz Cheney’s opponent (which is apparently against Wyoming law.) But don’t worry. Whatever happens they aren’t going to let those pro-Trump candidates flounder without money. They can’t guarantee they’ll win, but they won’t let them starve.
Trump won’t spend much of the massive war chest he’s collected, of course. He gave a million plus to Mark Meadows’ group and disbursed a small amount across 65 different candidates. But for the most part he’s hoarding it all for his own run. And there’s plenty more where that came from, I’m sure.