Financial troubles befall state GOP parties
WHAT YOU MISSED
- Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced plans to expand pressure on private insurers into providing better access to mental health care.
"Despite the repeated bipartisan efforts aimed at mental health parity, insurers too often make it difficult to access mental health treatment, causing millions of consumers to seek care out-of-network at significantly higher costs and pay out of pocket, or defer care altogether," the White House said in a statement.
- As the special election regarding constitutional amendments nears, Ohio is on a record pace for early voting.
- Meanwhile, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) called a potential ballot measure to enshrine reproductive rights into the state constitution a "radical abortion" bill. LaRose’s comments were met with loud groans from the City Club of Cleveland crowd.
Inside the collapse of four state Republican party apparatuses
The coffers are running dry for GOP outlets in Arizona, Michigan and Minnesota — and things aren’t looking great in Georgia, either.
That’s especially dire for any potential path to victory for Republicans, as the electoral map has shifted and made Arizona and Georgia swing states, Michigan into a highly contested space and turned Colorado and Minnesota near impossible, Democratic strongholds to recapture. Such dire financial straits come as the 2024 election slowly creeps into the horizon.
For example, in Minnesota, the state GOP has an astonishingly paltry $53.81 to go along with $334,000 in debt, according to recent FEC filings. Arizona Republicans are fairing slightly better with just under $24,000 on hand.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, GOP state committee Budget Chair Dan Bonamie confirmed in a July statement that the party is running on fumes with $93,231.90 in the bank. Bonamie’s predecessor, Matthew Johnson, said that they are “on the path to bankruptcy.” For context, former Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard (R) told the Detroit News that "if the party is serious about winning, they should have between $4 million and $6 million cash on hand."
And in Georgia, party insiders spent the first half of 2023 paying more than half a million dollars in legal fees — a large portion of which went to defending individuals who attempted to join former President Donald Trump’s election denial grift by posing as fake electors.
Such ties with conspiracy-minded Trumpists have scared away big-money donors, according to a Reuters report.
In these states, “we are seeing the self-marginalization of the Republican Party,” wrote the conservative writer Jim Geraghty in the National Review on Monday about the chaotic parties.
“No outside force came along and forced these state parties to spend money, alienate traditional supporters and donors, pick nasty fights with their own lawmakers, turn loyalty to Trump into the preeminent litmus test on all issues and disputes, and alienate and repel once-persuadable swing voters. No, the people who took over these parties chose this path.”
However, we here at Heartland Signal would like to provide some free campaign advice to embattled, reactionary politicos in swing states: Keep it up!
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY
On this day 33 years ago, President George H. W. Bush signed a historic civil rights act into law: the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The bill enshrined legal protections for disabled people, created standards for public accommodations and banned discrimination by employers. It resulted in a skyrocketing rate of employment for those with acute physical and mental conditions.
While we’re still a ways off from completely ensuring the dignity and humanity of our fellow disabled neighbors and citizens, the ADA was a crucial step in changing social, economic and cultural conditions for people in that community.