The Lincoln Project convinced Democratic donors to part with $39,384,397 in Q3. It burned a staggering $13 million on operating expenditures, made $23.9M of IEs (mostly routed into its founders firms), and ended with $13.2M on hand.
Catering to #Resist donors has been a lucrative reversal of fortune for the Lincoln Project's founders. Reed Galen's Summit Strategic was paid $18.8M in Q3, Ron Steslow's TUSK Digital got $8.7M, Kurt Bardella's Endeavor Strategy got $153K
Nice work if you can get it. Lincoln Project founder Reed Galen's Summit Strategic logged $129,668 in expenditures for lodging reimbursement in August.
The turnaround for Galen's firm is particularly pronounced, coming off a 2018 cycle where its only receipts from a federal client amounted to $12,000 from an IE backing a GOP primary challenger to Dana Rohrabacher.
Looking through the top transactions, the amount spent on 'Research Services' suggests they're overpaying for someone to trawl through twitter to snatch up other people's content.
Stark contrast between two anti-Trump groups...while the Lincoln Project burned over 35% of its Q3 outlays on questionable operating expenditures, the $573.5K from Republican Voters Against Trump accounted for less than 12% of its Q3 spending.
#NeverTrump@ProjectLincoln raised $16.8M in Q2, drawing several six and seven figure checks from a handful of Democratic megadonors, spent $4.6M on independent expenditures, $2.28M on operating expenditures, and ended the quarter with $10.8M on hand.
Improving from Q1 when Lincoln Project faced accusations of being a ScamPAC on account of 90% of their expenditures being paid out to Lincoln Project members and their firms, only ~86% of its operating expenditures/IEs went through Lincoln Project members and their firms in Q2.
That's not to say they pocketed it all...the FCC's political file database indicates at least $3M in ad buys were made and $1.36M in Facebook ads were purchased as of June 30th.
Friday's dump of 25,980 more #CA25 ballots from L.A. County is the first update to net votes for Christy Smith, splittng 51.5%/48.5% for Smith and bringing Mike Garcia's margin down by 790 votes to 16,860.
Another 350 #CA25 votes were also added from Ventura County, splitting 50.9%/49.1% for Smith, cutting Garcia's margin down another six votes to 16,854.
Wild. Turnout in the #CA25 special election runoff is now at 40.78% with 173,322 votes in, surpassing the total from the #CA25 primary (which coincided with a competitive Democratic presidential primary).
#NeverTrump Lincoln Project raised $1.9M in Q1, over $1.16M from small donors giving less than $200. It logged $1,135,686 in operating expenditures and another $148,132 in independent expenditures, burning through $1,284,078.
After its $1.9 million Q1 haul, the Lincoln Project spent $148,132 on independent expenditures (all to firms operated by Lincoln Project founder Reed Galen and Lincoln Project member Ron Steslow), with a staggering $1.135 million on operating expenditures.
The ostensibly #NeverTrump Republican Lincoln Project spent $85,707 on merchant fees, $36,948 on its Democratic fundraising consultant, $15,078 on its Democratic compliance firm, and $3,000 for the Democratic NGP Van software. subscription.
Lincoln Project members Reed Galen (Summit Strategic Communications) and Ron Steslow (TUSK Digital) appreciate your support.
#NeverTrump The Lincoln Project raised $685,071 in the last two weeks of 2019. Of the $100K spent, $50K went to Lincoln Project member Ron Stelow's TUSK Digital, $5K to Lincoln Project's Jennifer Horn, w/$10K in unpaid bills to Lincoln Project's Reed Galen's firm.