Rick Scott asked for an 'emergency donation' to Herschel Walker — and kept most of the money for the NRSC

22 November 2022

If Sen. Raphael Warnock is reelected in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff election, Democrats will expand their Senate majority and will have 51 seats, while Republicans will have 49. But if Warnock’s Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, prevails, the Senate will have a 50-50 Democrat/Republican split, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking power still giving Democrats an effective majority.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), chaired by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, is hoping to prevent Democrats from getting that 51-seat majority. And the NRSC, on November 21, sent out a fundraising e-mail urging Republicans to “make an emergency donation as soon as possible” in order to get Warnock voted out of office.

But according to the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger and the conservative National Review, most of the money donated would go to the NRSC rather than directly to Walker’s campaign.

Sollenberger tweeted, “New fundraising email from NRSC chair Rick Scott asking to help Herschel Walker, who ‘needs as much support as he can get.’ But 98% of the money is automatically allocated to the NRSC. Of the remaining 2%, Rick Scott himself gets as much as Herschel does.”

The National Review writes, “The NRSC says it is spending the money it’s collecting on supporting Walker in Georgia. Fair enough; we’ll see at the end of the cycle how its inflows match its outflows. But Scott’s capitalizing on the scramble to elect Walker is less defensible. The Walker campaign has already asked other Republicans — looking at you, Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Ted Budd — to stop sending deceptive fundraising e-mails stressing the importance of Walker’s race while disproportionately directing the money raised into their own campaigns’ coffers.”

The Review adds, “‘We need everyone focused on winning the Georgia Senate race, and deceptive fundraising tactics by teams that just won their races are siphoning money away from Georgia,’ argued Walker’s campaign manager last week. So why is Rick Scott, whose job it is to elect Republicans to the Senate, siphoning away funds from Walker for his 2024 reelection bid in a state where his colleague, Marco Rubio, just prevailed by more than 16 points? I have no doubt that Sen. Scott worked hard to elect Republicans to the upper chamber of Congress over the last two years, but his efforts, however prodigious, were not successful. It’s more than a bit rankling to see him attempt to reward himself for them at the expense of an ongoing GOP campaign.”

The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher, on November 21, tweeted, “NEW: The NRSC sent a fundraising email today signed by Herschel Walker in which it is actually keeping 99% of what’s raised, per fine print. Walker gets a dime for every ten dollar donation.”

The fundraising e-mail that Sollenberger reported on November 21 wasn’t the first time Republicans asked for Walker donations without giving all of the money directly to his campaign.

On November 14, NBC News’ Marc Caputo reported, “Republican politicians and associated committees are sending out desperate fundraising e-mails begging the GOP faithful to help save America by getting behind Herschel Walker in his December 6 runoff against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia. But what’s not immediately clear to recipients is how little of that money is going to Walker's campaign: just a dime for every dollar given by small donors. Walker’s campaign, which has trailed Warnock’s in fundraising throughout the election, is asking fellow Republicans to stop their fundraising practices — or at least to start sharing more with the candidate.”

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