Democratic secretaries of state say they’re at the vanguard of protecting democracy, pushing back against election disinformation and attempts to suppress the vote.
But while the party’s base has largely rallied behind them, its biggest donors have not.
During the last six months of 2021, just one person, Democratic financier George Soros, gave more than $25,000 to the main association involved in electing the party’s candidates for secretaries of state, according to a review of the group’s filings. Four other individuals gave $25,000 precisely.
The absence of more big checks is notable considering that the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, a 527 organization, has no limit on the size of the donations it can receive.
“I was operating under the assumption that people were recognizing this problem and we’re going to be flooding them with cash,” said Doug Edwards, one of those four individuals who gave $25,000. “That’s clearly not the case. … I’m going to start worrying about DASS again.”
DASS’ executive director, Kim Rogers, said that 2021 was a record fundraising year, with the group touting $4.5 million in donations. That figure included money given to “affiliated organizations” including a 501(c)(4) nonprofit voting rights group known as Every Eligible American, the organization’s PAC (which reported $124,663.60 in contributions), and the allied DASS Victory Fund. The amount that DASS itself took in, according to IRS filings, was $2.4 million.
Direct comparisons to what Republicans are doing are inexact, since the group’s GOP counterpart, the Republican State Leadership Committee, fundraises for other state races as well as candidates for secretary of state. But, over the same time period, that group and its subsidiary for state courts reported raising $28 million, according to IRS filings. The RSLC and “its strategic policy partner” the State Government Leadership Foundation together raised $33.3 million, the RSLC said.
Democrats’ failure to energize large-dollar donors behind the association directly involved in electing state election administrators threatens to undermine whatever momentum the party had been hoping to build around protecting voting rights heading into the midterms and the 2024 campaign. The right to vote has emerged as a rallying cry among the party’s base. But the lack of attention on DASS underscores that Democrats have struggled to turn that rhetoric into action and big checks, even as a number of battleground states — including Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan — will elect their secretary of state in 2022.