Bulwark Takes - Democrats Are CRUSHING GOP in Fundraising—But There’s a Catch

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Sarah Longwell gives her take on the state of race in the early contours of the 2026 midterm landscape. Democratic candidates are posting eye-popping Q1 fundraising numbers, dramatically outraising Republican opponents across key Senate and House contests. But the picture is more complicated than candidate fundraising alone—while Democrats are surging at the individual race level, Republicans maintain a substantial edge in party committees and aligned super PACs.Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too!

Hey everyone, Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the bulwark. And as the midterms begin to heat up, I'm going to start doing what I'm going to call the state of the race with Sarah Longwell. Not a new show just to take, but I want to give people some context for some of the news items that they're seeing. So right now, we've just seen Democrats start posting these bonkers fundraising numbers for Q1. So the first quarter of the fundraising for the Senate and House races going into the 2026 midterms. So Democratic candidates are outraising their Republican counterparts at just staggering rates. The New York Times has a great graphic that we're going to show you here that helps outline some of it. You've probably seen some of these numbers where you've got someone like James Tauroko in Texas who had a $27.1 million hall.

John Ossoff in Georgia, 13.8 million. His next closest rival only raised $1 million in Ohio, which is a coveted Senate race. If Democrats have any hope of taking back the Senate, that path is going to run partly through Ohio, where Sherrod Brown, who was a senator in Ohio and then lost back in 2024, is running again. He has raised 10 million outraising his Republican opponent, John Houston, who only raised 2.9 million. In Alaska, another big one for Democrats, where Mary Peltola raised $8.6 million, where incumbent Dan Sullivan only raised $1.7 million. And then you've got North Carolina,

a very important gubernatorial election where Roy Cooper is way up over Mike Watley, the Republican. Cooper raised $8.4 million. Graham Platner raised $4.1 million, almost double Susan Collins. who raised 2.9 million. This is interesting because there's two Democrats right now who are fighting each other in that Democratic primary, even though Platner has been basically ahead of Janet Mills the whole time, but she raised another 2.5 million. So if you add Platner and Mills together,

they're far out raising Susan Collins. In New Hampshire, you've got Chris Pappas, who raised 3.3 million, which is quite a bit more than John Sununu, who is the most likely, I think, Republican challenger, Scott Brown. You may remember him from back in the... the day he's also in that race. So there's a Republican primary happening, but Chris Pappas has raised 3.3 million. Michigan is a super interesting race, really interesting Democratic primary that's going to

say a lot about Democrats this cycle. Right now, you've got Mallory with McMurro in the lead from a fundraising standpoint. She raised $3 million. Adul Al-Said raised $2.3 million. He recently got a big, I don't know if it was a boost, but there was certainly a lot of attention around him campaigning with Hassan Piker. And then you've got Haley Stevens, who is sort of the establishment pick there in Michigan, although Schumer has been quietly signaling that McMorough could be an acceptable candidate because at some point you're going to have to have somebody drop out probably, either McMorough or Haley Stevens, but McMorough has been polling much higher than Haley Stevens.

And so I think you're going to start to see some institutional pressure on Stevens to drop out of that. race. So that's the good news. Democrats, candidates, the candidates that Democrats have are wildly outraising their Republican counterparts. However, the bad news for Democrats is that their institutions, their committees, the DNC, the House Majority Pack, the Senate Majority Pack, they are not raising as much money. You know, so here's how it works, right? The party infrastructure is composed of just multiple different political committees. These are different from sort of traditional super PACs. Committees are these official organizations of a political party rights,

so the DNC, the RNC. They're authorized to raise funds. They support party candidates. They coordinate efforts with the candidates. Pax are like independent groups, and they can accept contributions in coordination with the candidate. And then super PACs cannot coordinate with the candidates. So the party committees,

raise and receive money in member dues from elected officials in the House and Senate to benefit their respective parties. So right now, the DNC has $15.9 million in cash on hand compared to the RNC's $109 million. So a huge gap. Republicans are way outraising Democrats on sort of the institutional and committee side. So Republicans have what seven times. what the Democrats have. SLF, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is Republican-aligned, they have $166 million cash on hand, and they have raised $175 million. So they've spent some of it, but they have cash on hand $166 million.

Whereas SMP, Senate Majority Pack, which is the Democratic-aligned PAC, has only raised $56 million, and has 74.8 million cash on hand. Okay. So this is interesting because it means that SLF, even though they have more money, right, the Republicans have more money, but they are defending in a lot more places. They've had to sort of have a defensive posture this cycle because the environment is looking so good for Democrats because Donald Trump's polling is so low. And so they've actually, they've booked already 300,

million dollars in ads. So they're called ad reservations, but they've booked that, which means they know they're going to have to spend a ton of money to try to pull a lot of their candidates across the finish line. I've been doing a little bit of spring reset in my closet lately. You may have noticed on these takes, focusing more on quality over quantity. Just trying to build a wardrobe of pieces that are well made, versatile, and easy to reach for every day. That's why I keep coming back to quince. Fabrics feel elevated. The fits are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense. Better than makes sense. It's great. Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton, super soft denim with style

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quality, not brand markup. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash bulwark takes for free shipping and 365 day returns now available in Canada. Go to quince. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash bulwark takes for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash bulwark takes. You can learn a lot about how the parties are feeling about their prospects from how they are spending money or how it looks like they're going to have to spend their money. So the Republican-backed Senate leadership fund, they've announced this $342 million in reservations on the Senate side alone.

So that's $342 million that they think they're going to have to spend on Senate races. And here are the races that they think are really going to matter. They have booked $79 million in Ohio where they are trying to protect a Senate seat from Sherrod Brown. You've got 71 million being booked in North Carolina, which is an open seat. That's the one where you've got Rory Cooper running. That's an open Senate seat. You got 45 million in Michigan because they are hoping to pick up that Senate seat. You've got a retiring Democratic senator there.

They are spending 44 million in Georgia to try to beat John Ossoff, who again put up those crazy fundraising numbers himself. They're spending $29 million in Iowa where they're trying to, it's an open seat, but it was previously held by a Republican, so they're trying to protect that seat. That would be a long shot stretch for Democrats, but in this environment, it's notable that Republicans feel like they have to spend so much money to defend that or to try to win that seat. They have booked $50 million in Alaska to try to protect their Senate seat from Mary Peltola, who's a really good candidate. and then they're spending $17 million in New Hampshire, which is an open seat that they are hoping to pick up. Also playing in this space is President Trump's super PAC MAGA, Inc., which has $312 million in cash on hand, and they begin to plan unloading that massive war chest around Memorial Day, which will probably give a major boost to Republicans heading into this treacherous midterm election.

What this shows us is that SLF, the Republican-aligned pack, is it indicates that they are really spooked in states like Ohio and North Carolina. And if Republicans have to spend to hold seats that were relatively safe red seats, it opens up the possibility that Democrats could sneak into some under the radar states with strong investments while Republicans abandon the playing field. This is also why Democrats shouldn't give up on recruiting strong candidates that fit their red states. even if the chances of victory are slim. If you can get a candidate that makes the race competitive enough, where Republicans feel like they have to invest resources in that state, then you can force Republicans to spend money there, and it takes money away from some of the more competitive races, right?

So you can see how this works, where they may seem like they've got all this money, but if they have to spend money in places that normally they wouldn't have to spend it, then that stretches the money further than is comfortable for that. So what does this all mean? Here are the big takeaways. Donors to Democrats are excited about the candidates themselves, but they are less enthusiastic about the party, right?

They're giving a lot directly to the candidates, but they are not investing in the party infrastructure. That's interesting. It kind of makes sense because base voters have been extremely critical of the party and Democratic leadership. But the good news is they're not attributing the failures of the party to the individual candidates and they actually like the candidates and think that they have a chance to win and think they have a chance to do good things for the voters.

There are also a lot of repeat candidates this cycle, people who lost last time, but like they've gotten their sea legs under them. They've figured out how this works. And so they're running better campaigns this time around and I think probably can use money more efficiently. And small dollar donors are super energized because, you know, a lot of times it's the, big dollar donors that give to the party infrastructure, where small dollar donors tend to invest in the candidates themselves. The last thing I'll say, money alone does not win elections. This is really, really important. People are excited about the big Democratic numbers that are coming out right now. They look really good. But I will remind you that Kamala Harris's campaign

raised $1 billion. That's B as in Bessent. $1 billion and Dems themselves, they had sort of a field day with that numbers. Like, look how much we're raising. Look how much we're outraising Republicans. But that obviously did not translate to electoral victory. So in other words, these candidate specific numbers, while exciting, could be a bit of a trap if people start feeling complacent about this. Like, oh, it's all going to happen.

Blue Wave, that's what's going to ride us to the end. Nobody can get complacent. The money is not enough. you need the energy, you need the infrastructure. That is just important as we continue to get closer to election time. So that is the overall state of the race. That is what the money means right now. We are going to be back every week, if not more often, to talk about individual races.

I want to break down what's happening in California, what's happening in Michigan, what's happening in Iowa, what's happening in Ohio. And I'm going to do that state by state as we go. But first, I wanted to lay out the big picture of what it means in terms of all this money. Hope you learned something. Come check us out next time.