By The super PAC aligned with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy could spend at least $100 million in the 2024 election cycle to support GOP House candidates in states that were won by President Joe Biden in 2020, according to a strategy memo obtained by CNBC and committee executives.
“In 2024, the House will be won or lost in blue states,” Congressional Leadership Fund president Dan Conston, wrote in the Aug, 7 memo addressed to “Interested Parties.”
“Swing voters in blue states are different from swing voters in swing states,” he added, and “Republican party infrastructure won’t be present in the same way” in these states as it is in battleground states, where both parties have armies of volunteers and years of experience reaching voters.
Conston dubbed the CLF’s plan the “Blue State Project.” A senior executive later said the group could spend over $100 million on the project, but did not have a firm budget yet.
In states that are consistently competitive in presidential and Senate contests, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, both Democrats and Republicans maintain huge volunteer networks and voter outreach programs.
But in states where one party has long been dominant, like Democrats in California or Republicans in Wyoming, there is little motive for top super PACs to spend money building up voter outreach networks.
This is the challenge facing House Republicans, wrote Conston. “These blue states exist in a vacuum outside of the competitive presidential and senate races … meaning we must create our own infrastructure.”
This will include identifying key voters, building a voter contact plan and creating a turnout strategy for Election Day, he wrote, listing three notoriously expensive, and complex, elements of political campaign management.
Republicans currently have a slim majority in the House after the 2022 midterms, largely thanks to victories in blue states like New York, where the GOP flipped four House seats.
All of those flipped New York seats are 2024 targets of the campaign arm for House Democrats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The Democratic rival House Majority PAC has said they are investing $45 million in New York and $35 million in California.
There are currently six Republicans who represent Biden-won districts in New York, and another five in California. To hold these seats in deep blue states will require that groups like CLF buy airtime for ads in some of the most expensive media markets in the country, Conston notes.
The Cook Political Report’s list of toss-up House seats — the most competitive seats in the country — currently includes 13 Republican seats, four of them in New York and three in California.
Democrats, by contrast, hold 10 toss up seats, but none of them are in traditional Republican strongholds.
The Congressional Leadership Fund spokeswoman explained that the PAC’s planned efforts in blue states are going beyond New York and California, including targeting districts in New Jersey, Washington and Oregon.
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The memo comes after the Congressional Leadership Fund raised over $19 million in the first half of the year and are going into the latter half of 2023 with around $17 million on hand, according to federal election filings. The group raised over $260 million during the 2022 election cycle, according to the records.
Top donors so far this year were Timothy Mellon, who gave $5 million, and Craig Duchossois, who contributed more than $2 million, according to the PAC’s disclosures.
Ozzie Palomo, a co-founder of lobbying firm Chartwell Strategy Group and a Republican fundraiser, told CNBC that competing in blue states could be key to maintaining and possibly expanding the GOP’s control over the House.
“With such a narrow majority, it’s critical that the map is expanded, and Republicans not only save seats in blue states but look at opportunities to add seats,” Palomo told CNBC.
The CLF memo also hints which specific districts the committee and House Republicans think they have the best chance at success.
Conston’s memo says the super PAC believes the party has a “serious pickup opportunities,” for instance, in the seats held by Reps. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Susan Wild, D-Pa. and Matt Cartwright, D-Pa. Slotkin is currently running to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
