By Nolan D. McCaskill
WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia is a fundraising juggernaut, raising more than $81 million so far this cycle and holding nearly $33 million in campaign cash, or $30 million more than his opponent in the November election, Republican Representative Mike Collins.
It might not matter anymore.
Ossoff's financial edge in a state that President Donald Trump won in the 2024 election may have effectively been erased by the U.S. Supreme Court, which last
week struck down limits on how much individual candidates could coordinate their spending with national political parties.
The Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, among others, will now be able to spend unlimited funds from their big donors in coordination with political campaigns.
That could well tilt the playing field in favor of Republicans, who tend to raise more money from big, corporate donors through national committees, over Democrats, whose candidates tend to raise more money from small individual donors.
While the national committees could previously spend on behalf of their candidates, party officials say the restrictions on coordinating their messaging and strategy with individual campaigns made that spending far less targeted and effective.
Democratic candidates currently have a staggering cash advantage over Republican rivals in competitive Senate races: $16 million in North Carolina, $9 million in Ohio and $8 million in Texas.
Unlimited funds from the Republican Party's national apparatus, however, can now shore up lagging fundraisers such as Collins in Georgia and Texas' Republican Senate nominee, Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Under existing laws, donors are permitted to give national political committees tens of thousands of dollars, but their contributions to individual campaigns are capped at $7,000 per election cycle. And until Tuesday's ruling, coordinated expenditures for Senate races were limited to between $130,000 and $4 million, depending on each state's voting-age population.
Now that those caps no longer exist, Republican committees instantly stand to benefit. Each entered June with more cash than their Democratic counterparts, including a $110 million gulf between the RNC and the DNC, which has $18 million in debt.
POLLS SHOW TIGHT RACES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, where Democrats would need to net four seats in the November election to win control. Despite a favorable political environment for Democrats as high living costs and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran erode President Donald Trump's popularity, winning the Senate will be an uphill battle.
Democrats are defending seats in Trump-won Georgia and Michigan, while targeting Republican-held seats in North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska. They have also set their sights on more Republican-leaning seats in Iowa and Texas.
A series of New York Times/Siena polls released on Wednesday found Democrats leading in North Carolina and within the margin of error in Maine, Texas, Alaska, Iowa and Ohio. The Democratic candidates are out-raising Republicans in every state but Alaska and Iowa.
A pair of Fox News polls showed Ossoff leading by 13 percentage points in Georgia while Iowa's Senate race was within the margin of error.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority opinion on Tuesday that the Supreme Court decision levels the playing field for all political parties. But Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent, said the majority bypassed Congress, rewriting its rules to circumvent contribution limits.
The ruling enables "a party to serve as an alternative checking account for a campaign," Kagan wrote.
REPUBLICANS WANT DISCOUNTS ON ADVERTISING
But a key element of that coordination remains murky: whether the committees can purchase TV ads at the low rates afforded to candidates.
The Federal Communications Commission sets campaign advertising rules to ensure candidates are not disadvantaged with "unfairly high advertising rates during the ends of a campaign or rates that differ from their opponents."
In a memo, the Senate Republicans' campaign arm said it was no longer required to produce and distribute advertisements independently, without consulting campaigns on messaging, targeting or timing. And it touted better advertising rates as one benefit of the ruling, saying broadcast and cable buys would be three to 13 times cheaper than the rates outside groups pay.
Democrats have disputed that, highlighting past comments by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the Trump administration's lawyer, who in an October Supreme Court filing said "rules require broadcasters to charge low rates for candidate spending, but not for party spending — whether coordinated or independent."
The FCC did not respond to a request for comment.
Jacquelyn Lopez and Rachel Jacobs, partners at Elias Law Group, which represented Democratic groups in the Supreme Court case, disagreed with the ruling but said Democratic campaigns would benefit in the long run.
"For years, Republicans have pushed the boundaries of coordination limits to make up for the weak campaigns and lackluster fundraising of their House and Senate candidates," they said in a statement. "Now, both parties are free to offer unlimited support to their candidates."
(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Edmund Klamann)
