'Very dicey': Trump’s massive fundraising surge masks glaring blind spot for GOP

24 June 2024

For months, President Joe Biden's reelection campaign was way ahead of presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in terms of fundraising. But Trump enjoyed a major fundraising surge after a Manhattan jury found him guilty on 34 criminal charges in his hush money/falsified business records trial.

The Hill's Jared Gans, on June 22, reported that "more than $50 million flowed in" after the verdict."

According to Politico's Adam Wren, however, that post-verdict fundraising surge doesn't erase other problems the GOP is dealing with this election year.

Post-verdict polling from Fox News, Wren notes, shows that independents now favor Biden over Trump by 9 percent. And that is in addition to the GOP's down-ballot worries.

"Trump may be raking in donations," the Politico reporter explains, "but across the country, the mood of Republicans has dimmed, according to nearly a dozen Republican operatives, county chairs and current and former GOP officials. It comes amid ongoing concerns about the effect of abortion on Republican candidates."

Wren notes that although Trump's conviction is "animating base voters," swing voters are another matter.

Tom McCabe, who chairs the Mahoning County, Ohio GOP, told Politico, "This election is going to be decided on the margins, and short-term, his conviction is hurting him in the polling."

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, abortion continues to be a problem for Republicans in down-ballot races.

Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist, told Politico, "Republicans have a ton of down-ballot problems, not the least of which is on abortion."

Indiana-based GOP attorney James Bopp Jr. is sounding the alarm about Trump's performance in the state's 2024 presidential primary in May — which showed a lot of support for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley long after she exited the race.

Bopp, in a memo that Politico obtained, warned fellow Republicans, "Trump got 78 percent of the Republican primary vote and (Nikki) Haley got 22 percent. Now, there is very good reason to think that 10 to 12 percent of that vote were Democrats, leaving 10 percent of Republicans not convinced to support Trump…. This makes the general election very dicey."

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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