Initial reports indicated House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) raked in $29 million during the second fundraising quarter, but a review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings indicate he only scored $6 million, placing his total far behind House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA).
On Monday, Punchbowl News first reported that Jeffries hauled $29 million between April and June, noting it was $7.3 million more than McCarthy. But CNN, which echoed the figure, noted Thursday that Jeffries’ camp “calculates his fundraising figures in part by accounting for events he held for candidates with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee [DCCC].”
A review of FEC records shows that Jeffries’ fundraising entities brought in just over $6 million throughout the quarter, while McCarthy’s committees and PACS netted $21.1 million – more than three times Jeffries’s total. The Washington Free Beacon first reported on the disparity Friday.
The outlet noted that according to Jeffries’s press advisor Justin Chermol, upwards of $20 million in the initial figure reported came from DCCC fundraising events Jeffries held. None of that figure counts towards money raised by Jeffries on public disclosures, the Beacon noted, and McCarthy’s camp does not count NRCC events he attended in his fundraising totals.
“Team Jeffries’ fundraising claims can only be described as desperate. Simply put, their math doesn’t add up,” McCarthy spokesman Michael Abboud told the Beacon, adding that Jeffries’ team is ”artificially inflating resources to create good headlines.”
In contrast, McCarthy’s camp stated that if it had included fundraising from National Republican Congressional Committee events he held, he would have raised $36 million for the quarter. Throughout this cycle, he has scored $62.5 million, as CNN noted.
The DCCC hauled in $29.2 million from April through June, slightly beating out the NRCC’s $25.8 million. When McCarthy’s totals are combined with NRCC, House Republicans took in roughly $47 million in total in the second quarter, versus Jeffries and the DCCC’s combined $35 million.
