Nine months before the 2018 election, the Democratic National Committee is in dire shape—and falling deeper into debt.
In their recently-released monthly Federal Election Commission filings, the DNC admitted they had to take out a $1.7 million loan in February in order to make ends-meet. That brings their total debt to more than $6 million.
While the Democrats have a strong tailwind going into the mid-term election, which is usually unfavorable to the President’s party, that has yet to translate to a fundraising advantage for the national party.
In February, the month the Democrats were forced to take out the hefty loan, they raised just $6.9 million. The Republican National Committee raised nearly double in the same period of time: $12.8 million.
DNC Chairman, Tom Perez, blamed rich Republicans as the reason why the RNC has been able to outraise the Democrats so decisively.
“When I read stories that the Republicans out-raised the Democrats, that’s kind of a dog-bites-man story,” he said. “They’ve got a lot more rich donors than we do.”
However, Perez left out that the RNC raised substantially more than the Democrats from donations under $200 too.
But, regardless of the foggy facts, Perez assured Democrats that the situation was under control: “If the question is, ‘Do we have enough money to implement our game plan?’ Absolutely,” he said.