Democratic state parties have accrued more debts than Republican state parties, a Newsweek analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) data has revealed.
Twenty-three branches of the Democratic Party owe in total $16,468,94.81 to various entities while 18 branches of the Republican Party owe debts totalling to $11,062,31.79.
Newsweek contacted representatives for both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party by email to comment on this story.
This does not mean the state parties have negative bank balances, but that they have unsettled debts to different sources. The FEC data does not disclose the specific entities that the parties are indebted to.
The state Democratic party with the highest debt is New Jersey, with $321,445 of debts causing the party's finances to dwindle. At the start of their reporting period, January 1, 2023, the party had $198,002.97 cash on hand. By November 30, 2023, the party was left with $44,198.21.
The state with the lowest debt among Democratic parties, on the other hand, is Arkansas, which owes just $1,240 in debts.
Newsweek was unable to find financial information for the Democratic parties in Louisiana, Georgia and West Virginia.
Meanwhile, the state with the largest Republican debt is Minnesota, which has accrued $458,707.80 in debts. Despite this, the party increased its cash on hand from $1,124.28 on January 1, 2023 to $164,955.65 on November, 30, 2023 having raised more money than it spent in the reporting period, raising $1,195,064.12 and spending $1,032,084.57.
At the other end of the scale is Tennessee, which has just $166.23 worth of debts.
Newsweek could not find data for the Oklahoma Republican Party.
Despite the discrepancies between the parties at a state level, the wider Republican party has come into the spotlight in recent months because of its finances.
At the end of November 2023, the Republican National Committee (RNC), which is the GOP governing body, reported its lowest bank balance at that point in any year since 2016, disclosures to the FEC revealed. With $9.96 million in spending money, the RNC had less than half the $21.35 million it reported in 2016 after Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Ronna McDaniel, who has served as the RNC chair since 2017, has been criticized for these funding issues as well as for the Republicans losing multiple elections since 2020, leading to calls for her to resign from her role.
Speaking about the Republican state debts, Christopher Phelps, historian at the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, said: "MAGA takeovers of state parties have drawn them into unsuccessful but expensive legal fights to claim the 2020 election was stolen. That has caused a perception of some major Republican donors that such initiatives actually hurt rather than helped Republican candidates, like in the 2022 Senate elections, making them reluctant to donate."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and ... Read more
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