DNC Nearly Broke; RNC Has Cash To Spare

by Ben Bullard
The Democratic National Committee (DNC), which sets the party’s National platform, plots out election strategy and sits atop its fundraising hierarchy, is nearly broke. In fact, the DNC is so deep in the hole that it’s having to negotiate delinquent vendor payments on a case-by-case basis.
Some of those disgruntled vendors broke the DNC story Monday by anonymously complaining to CNN that the DNC was seriously overdue on payments.
From the CNN/Fortune report:

It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party – especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief – and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the last election, obscured in part by the much messier spectacle of GOP infighting.
The Democrats’ numbers speak for themselves: Through August, 10 months after helping President Obama secure a second term, the DNC owed its various creditors a total of $18.1 million, compared to the $12.5 million cash cushion the Republican National Committee is holding.

It’s not as though Barack Obama has not been pounding the pavement on the fundraising circuit; he’s done 15 engagements so far this year. But much of the grass-roots effectiveness of the Obama money machine owes not to the DNC’s organizational structure, but to Organizing for Action (formerly Organizing for America, then Obama for America), the metamorphosed community organizing group that, under the DNC’s leadership, helped Obama win the White House in 2008 and 2012. OFA has used its extensive mailing list and stronger leadership to effectively cannibalize the DNC’s donor base.
In addition, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, despite her party leadership position, has reportedly faced tough sledding as an aloof political outsider with no strong ties to the Administration of Obama, the Democrats’ chief fundraiser.
“The [OFA] group can raise unlimited sums from deep-pocketed donors, and there is some evidence it is siphoning resources from the DNC,” reported CNN. “All of the top-tier OFA donors this year have been prolific supporters of the DNC in past years. But of the 13 who cut six-figure checks to OFA in the first half of this year, only three gave to the DNC over the same period, according to a review of records from the Center for Responsive Politics.”
So the DNC owes $18.1 million and the Republican National Committee (RNC) is sitting on $12.5 million. Does that ironic disparity reflect any underlying truths about the two parties’ differing fiscal philosophies? Or is the RINO-dominated RNC money just better at coordinating its donors’ political “investments?”