Far left out-of-state donors have led the fundraising charge for Democrat candidates challenging GOP candidates in two Republican-held House seats in North Carolina in the midterm elections.
Democrats are hoping that they can flip both of these districts in November, giving them two of the 23 net gains they need in the House of Representatives to take back the majority there.
The Charlotte News Observer reported on Friday that the Democrat candidates in the 13th Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), and the 9th Congressional District, where Dr. Mark Harris is the GOP nominee after defeating incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) in the May primary, have out raised their Republican rivals by a 2-to-1 margin:
Democrats Dan McCready and Kathy Manning held large money advantages over their opponents in the GOP-held 9th and 13th districts, respectively, before the second quarter began April 1. The fund-raising quarter ended June 30 and campaigns are required to file their reports with the Federal Election Commission by July 15. Each outraised their Republican opponents in the first quarter as well.
McCready, an Iraq War veteran who owns a solar company, will report raising more than $833,000 in the second quarter and has $1.8 million cash on hand. Mark Harris, his Republican opponent and a former Baptist pastor, will report raising more than $400,000 with $300,000 cash on hand. Harris defeated incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger in the GOP primary in May in south-central North Carolina’s 9th district, which runs from Charlotte to Fayetteville along the South Carolina border
. . .
Manning, an attorney, will report raising more than $725,000 in the second quarter with $1.3 million cash on hand. Ted Budd, a first-term Republican congressman who owns a gun shop, will report raising nearly $350,000 and has about $780,000 cash on hand in the 13th District, which runs from Statesville to Greensboro
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Budd emerged from a 17-way GOP primary in 2016 and won the seat with 56 percent of the vote. Trump won the district by more than 9 points over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Much of the fundraising advantage for these two Democrats comes from out-0f-state sources in liberal bastions such as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC, many of whom contribute through the far left fundraising powerhouse, ACT BLUE.
According to Federal Election Commission records, 55 percent of the $1.264 million 13th Congressional District Democrat nominee Manning raised directly for her campaign through April 18, 2018–or $700,000–came from individuals who live outside of North Carolina. ($563,790 came from North Carolina residents.) The second quarter report outlining the additional $725,000 raised in the second quarter of 2018 (up to June 30, 2018) has been filed with the FEC by the campaign but has not yet been made available to the public.
The story is similar for the Democrat 9th Congressional District candidate, Dan McCready.
Federal Election Commission records also show that 41 percent of the $1.916 million McCready raised directly for his campaign through April 18, 2018–or $796,000–came from individuals who live outside of North Carolina. ($1,120,320 came from North Carolina residents.) The second quarter report outlining the additional $833,000 raised in the second quarter of 2018 (up to June 30, 2018) has been filed with the FEC by the campaign but has not yet been made available to the public.
It would be surprising if the percentage of funds raised by Manning and McCready from out-of-state donors has not increased in the combined $1.5 million the two Democrats hauled in during the second quarter. The sources of their second quarter fund raising success will be known shortly, when the FEC makes those reports public.
If out-of-state liberal Democrats follow the same pattern in recent past elections, a number of independent expenditure committees are likely to spring up that will pour millions of dollars in attack ads on the Republican standard bearers in these two targeted districts: Harris in the 9th and Budd in the 13th.
“Kathy Manning is an establishment Democrat insider who’s worked for decades alongside far-left Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. In fact, she and her husband have bankrolled these job-destroying candidates by nearly $1 million,” the Budd campaign says of Manning at a website with the domain name kathymanningforcongress.com:
So it comes as no surprise that they regularly rewarded her with state dinners at the Obama White House and high-dollar fundraisers with Bill Clinton. She is the true definition of a liberal Washington insider.
Now, she is Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked candidate to run against me and buy this seat for their hard-core liberal agenda.
Manning has tried to distance herself from House Minority Leader Pelosi (D-CA).
In a recent article published at Medium, Manning wrote, “I have decided if I want to change how Washington works, I cannot vote for more of the same, and I cannot support Nancy Pelosi or Paul Ryan to lead Congress.”
“A couple of political analysts agree that the [13th Congressional] district is mostly conservative, but also believe the 13th District has the potential to be competitive by November,” the Dispatch reported:
Dr. J. Michael Bitzer, provost and professor of political science at Catawba College, said that midterm elections are typically referendums on the president and that the president’s party generally loses seats.
Bitzer also noted that in the 2016 election, President Donald Trump received 53 percent of the vote in the district, which according to the political scientist, is a sign of a competitive district.
However, the political scientist said Budd slightly over-performed by receiving 56 percent of the vote in the 2016 election, and he cited a recent Meredith College poll that had a generic ballot with the two parties tied in the state. . .
“Kyle Kondik, director of communications at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said that Democratic fundraising across many House districts has been successful, and that it can sometimes be a negative sign if an incumbent gets out-raised by a challenger,” the Dispatch noted:
“We have a pretty stark example of that in North Carolina 13,” Kondik said. “That’s a really big gap. So money’s not everything, but Manning is raising money at a level that will attract national interest from Democratic outside groups and should allow her to run a credible campaign against Budd. … That’s probably one of the worst challenger-to-incumbent fundraising ratios in the whole country. There’s some good signs there for the Democrats, but again, this is also a district that certainly leans Republican naturally.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee selected Manning for its Red to Blue program. According to its website, the program arms top candidates with organizational and fundraising support. Manning has also been endorsed by Emily’s List, a national organization that supports Democratic women pro-choice candidates. Emily’s List raised more than $90 million in the 2016 election cycle.
Democrat Manning’s disavowal of Pelosi is the same promise newly elected Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) made that helped him win a special Congressional election in Pennsylvania in March. It is a promise the National Republican Congressional Committee says Lamb has backtracked on in his Congressional votes.
Like Harris’ Democrat opponent in the 9th District, Lamb is an Iraq war veteran. Democrats have heavily recruited young military veterans who claim to be political moderates across the nation to challenge Republican candidates in districts currently held by Republicans this election cycle.
In a poll released by the North Carolina-based Civitas Institute earlier this month, McCready leads Harris by 7 points in the 9th Congressional District race, 43 percent to 36 percent.
“The poll, conducted July 5-8, 2018, surveyed 543 likely voters in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district, a seat currently held by Republicans,” the Civitas Institute reported:
The exact text of the question reads as follows:
If the election for U.S. House of Representatives were today, who would you vote for? Republican Mark Harris? Democrat Dan McCready? Or Libertarian Jeff Scott?
Mark Harris (R) 36%
Dan McReady (D) 43%
Jeff Scott (L) 3%“This race has all the indications of being a nail-biter into November, but Republicans should be concerned with a negative 7-point spread in a district that has an R+7 rating,” said Civitas President Donald Bryson.
This gap between the two leading candidates grows even larger when looking at female support. McCready leads Harris by 16 points among likely women voters.
Bryson continued, “This poll went into the field on the same day a news story broke regarding a 2013 sermon by Rev. Harris on the role of women in the household. With women constituting 53 percent of the poll and breaking towards McCready by a 16-point margin, it seems that the story may have had some effect.”
The poll has a margin of error of 465 percent.
The Cook Political Report has moved their analysis of competitive Congressional races in North Carolina, where Democrats currently hold three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Republicans hold ten seats, towards a more favorable outlook for the Democrats since the beginning of this year.
On December 30, 2017, when the Real Clear Politics Average of Polls gave the Democrats a 12.9 point generic congressional ballot advantage, five points higher than the Democrats’ current 7.2 point generic congressional ballot advantage, the Cook Political Report rated 0nly three Republican-held seats in North Carolina as competitive. All of those races—the 2nd Congressional District, where Rep. George Holding (R-NC) is the incumbent, the 9th Congressional District, where Rep. Pittenger (R-NC) is the incumbent, and the 13th Congressional District, where Rep. Budd (R-NC) is the incumbent—were listed as “likely Republican.”
As of July 15, there are now four competitive Republican-held seats in North Carolina, and no Democrat-held seats on the list.
Both the 9th Congressional District, where incumbent Pittenger has been ousted from the GOP ballot in favor of Harris, and the 13th Congressional District, where the GOP’s Budd faces Manning, have been down-graded from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”
The 2nd Congressional District remains rated as “likely Republican,” but now, the 8th Congressional District, represented by incumbent Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), has been added as “likely Republican” as well, a down-grade from its previous classification as non-competitive.
Over the next three and a half months, far left activists from wealthy liberal coastal enclaves in blue states such as California, New York, and Massachusetts will continue to pour money into Republican-held House districts in “fly-over” country like North Carolina’s 9th and 13th Congressional Districts, in their never-ending efforts to nullify the results of the 2016 Presidential election.
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