The Republican National Committee in the coming months will debate changes to the presidential nominating process, possibly leading to friction between President Trump’s loyalists and party institutionalists.
Trump, through emissaries at the RNC, could seek rule changes constricting the path of potential GOP primary challengers in 2020. It wouldn’t be the first time a Republican president, or nominee, attempted to alter the nominating regulations with an eye toward defrocking future competition.
The just-concluded annual winter meeting of the RNC was virtually tension-free. Committee members basked in the glow of Trump’s well-received State of the Union address, plus the improving popularity of the $1.4 trillion tax overhaul that he signed into law late last year.
The RNC rules committee met as scheduled during the gathering. In brief session, panel members agreed to begin the quadrennial process of examining the regulations that govern presidential nominations, which encompass primary contests in the states and the national convention. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]Tom Perez, former secretary of labor under President Barack Obama, has been chairman of the Democratic National Committee for a little under a year. During his time at the helm of the Democratic Party, he has made a lot of headline-grabbing comments.
On Thursday, Perez addressed the fact that the Democratic Party is getting clobbered in fundraising compared with the Republican Party.
During an interview with MSNBC, Perez waded into accusatory territory:
“The notion that Republicans have outraised Democrats is not a new proposition. Back in 2005, the Republican National Committee outraised the Democratic National Committee two to one. And we took over the House of Representatives in 2006.
And this year we had our best year since 2013. Republicans have more wealthy donors. We are talking to ordinary Americans. We are not talking to simply the one percent. We raise more money in 2013. We don’t raise as much money as the Republicans because quite simply they got this massive tax cut that benefits corporations and very, very wealthy people.” – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]The Democratic National Committee tried to get this news under the radar, releasing it during President Trump’s State of the Union speech, but here it is: the Democratic National Committee is nearly broke.
Interesting timing: @DNC files its @FEC report in the middle of the #SOTU, revealing that it raised $5.2M last month, but finished the year with $6.1M in debt. https://t.co/N9mSrDoE7v
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) January 31, 2018
The DNC tried to bury their latest FEC #s tonight…
Dec. Raise
RNC 11.1M
DNC 5.2M2017
RNC 132.5M
DNC 65.9MCOH
RNC 38.8M
DNC 6.3MDebt
RNC 0
DNC 6.1M (!!)Heading into 2018, the DNC is less than $200K away from insolvency. https://t.co/ifRY2NYlPD
— Michael Ahrens (@michael_ahrens) January 31, 2018
Look at the figures: the Republican National Committee raised twice as much money in 2017; the RNC had no debt while the DNC was $6.1 million in debt with only $6.3 million in cash on hand. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]Many have framed the 2018 midterms as Democrats’ to lose, and given recent reports of infighting, they might do just that.
Nearly one year after Tom Perez, labor secretary in the Obama administration, took the reins of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the former Hillary Clinton supporter is lamenting that the job of DNC chairman is more difficult than he realized.
At issue is the fact that Democrats who backed Clinton are still at odds with those who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The DNC has become every frustrated Democrat’s favorite piñata, and a symbol of everything that went wrong in 2016. Sanders-Clinton hostilities have taken on a new form: The tension now is over whether Sanders should hand over his massive voter list to the committee, as Perez has asked, and whether the committee has gone far enough to overhaul internal rules that Sanders forces are convinced rigged the nomination for Clinton. Neither side is satisfied, and words like “crazy,” “still doesn’t get it,” and, in one case, “Judas” are tossed around to describe people in the opposite camp.– READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]A new legal complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission alleges that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee used state chapters as strawmen to circumvent campaign donation limits and laundered the money back to her campaign.
The Committee to Defend the President, a political action committee, filed its complaint with the FEC on Monday with the allegations that the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF) solicited cash from big-name donors, including Calvin Klein and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane — money that was allegedly sent through state chapters and back to the DNC before ending up with the Clinton campaign.
Officials with the committee said their filing was spurred by their own analysis of FEC reports, where they said they discovered the HVF either never transferred the money to state chapters and back to the DNC, or did so without the state chapters having actual control.
“What we have found, people need to see,” Ted Harvey, chairman of the CDP which emerged from the now-defunct Stop Hillary PAC, told Fox News. “I think it’s important that the American public has an understanding of how corrupt this campaign system was and that they were doing anything they could to secure the nomination in her favor.”
In its complaint, the CDP alleges that about $84 million was funneled illegally from the DNC through state party chapters and back into the war chest of the Clinton campaign. – READ MORE