Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), is trying to push his GOP brethren to match their Democratic counterparts’ generosity in donating to their Senate campaign committee.
Senior Senate Democrats have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars from their campaign funds to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) this election cycle, placing them among its top donors,
The Hill reports.
In contrast, Republican senators don’t count among the NRSC’s biggest donors, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Democratic senators account for 12 of the DSCC’s 22 top contributors this cycle. Meanwhile, no Republican senator ranks in the top 20 for the NRSC.
Cornyn isn’t too happy about these numbers and understandably so. He invited his GOP comrades to NRSC headquarters last week to stress to them the need for closing the fundraising gap.
“The Democrats have always been more aggressive at that than we have,” he told The Hill. “What I did is I showed them what they’ve done, and I showed them where the gap was and challenged them to step up,” he told The Hill. And Cornyn hopes his efforts will lead his GOP buddies to let go of their purse strings.
The NRSC’s top backer so far is Goldman Sachs. The bank’s employees donated more than $250,000 through May.
To be sure, some Republican senators have acted to help the party’s electoral cause outside of cash contributions. Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, who has angered Republican leaders in the past by keeping almost all of his hefty cash coffers for himself, is one who has helped out.
He recently hosted a fundraising event with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and has hosted several events for the NRSC.
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