It’s election day in Georgia, where the runoff Senate election between Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock is well underway.
Warnock has a substantial lead at the end of early voting — 13 points, compared to just 8 points at the end of early voting for the general election in November.
But Walker is expected to get the lion’s share of the vote on election day. So the question is, will the election day vote be large enough to overcome Warnock’s early vote advantage?
One thing is certain: Herschel Walker was not well served by Republican Party fundraisers. Specifically, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, headed by Sen. Rick Scott, whose scandalous fundraising efforts gave 99% to the NRSC and just one or two percent to Walker.
Related: Walker Campaign Calls Out PACs for ‘Deceptive Fundraising’
No wonder several Senators want the NSRC audited.
On November 15, the same day that Scott announced his challenge, Steven Law, the CEO of the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), a McConnell-aligned political action committee, criticized the NRSC for sending fundraising emails stressing the importance of Walker’s race, while pocketing 99 percent of the resulting donations and forwarding a paltry 1 percent on to the Walker campaign. According to Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times, this breakdown was acknowledged only in the fine print of the appeal.
The SLF eventually contributed $11 million to the Walker campaign. “Good committees raise enough so that they don’t have to steal from their candidates,” Law said. In fact, there were other questions about Scott’s fundraising including the fact that one fundraising letter that went out under Walker’s name benefitted both Walker and Scott.
The sad fact is, Walker was buried under an avalanche of cash, much of which went to TV advertising for Warnock.
In the month-long campaign battle in Georgia, Warnock and allied Democratic outside groups outspent Walker and GOP aligned groups by a roughly two-to-one margin.
The margin was $57.2 million for Democrats to $27.3 million for Republicans, according to data from Nov. 9-Dec. 5 provided by AdImpact, a nationally known ad tracking firm.
The biggest spender was the Warnock campaign, at $27.3 million, compared to just $11.5 million by Walker’s team. Campaigns get more bang for their bucks than outside groups such as super PACs when it comes to TV commercial rates.
While incumbent Senators have an advantage over challengers, the discrepancy in Georgia was exasperated by “vultures and hyenas” who picked clean the bones of the Walker campaign.
A source familiar with the Walker campaign’s thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity likened those raising money off Walker’s campaign to “a bunch of vultures and hyenas.” (The NRSC isn’t the only entity guilty of using Walker to raise funds for itself: Former President Donald Trump and Senators-elect J.D Vance and Ted Budd have sent out similarly deceptive solicitations touting the urgency of supporting Walker during his runoff.)
“It’s unimaginable that the campaign would be essentially negotiating against people on their own team,” the source said.
Any money raised for other candidates using Walker’s name probably wasn’t enough to have made a difference — not when Democrats were already spending at a 2-1 advantage. But given the stakes involved, perhaps Sen. Scott could have refrained from fundraising for his 2024 re-election race in 2022.
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