Democratic donors sit on sidelines as party schism persists

The gap is a warning sign for Democrats as some of their donors remain skeptical of the party’s direction and of whether there is a viable plan to win again.

At one point earlier this year, the DNC reached out to big donors to host a San Francisco-area fundraiser headlined by former Vice President Kamala Harris. Most of the donors rejected the request, according to several people familiar with the conversations.

Upon receiving the invitation, one replied with a profanity-laced rejection. Others said they didn’t want to give to the party until it produced substantive plans to win elections. Those who declined told the national party they had commitments and couldn’t make it work.

The DNC ultimately found a donor who hosted the event, but it raised less than organizers had hoped.

The latest fundraising totals released this week show the Democrats’ weakness. The RNC had receipts of $10.7 million in the most recent month and $86 million in cash reserves as it started October, compared with $10.3 million and about $12 million for the DNC, respectively.

The party out of power usually raises less money. In October 2017, when Republicans also controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, the DNC had $7 million in the bank after monthly receipts of $4.8 million. But the cash-on-hand deficit compared with the RNC was about half the size it is now.

Rachel Pritzker, a donor and fundraiser who chairs a group trying to push Democrats closer to the center, said many party donors are concerned that the progressivism pushed by such figures as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist favored in New York City’s Nov. 4 mayoral election, will hurt Democrats.

“They’re worried that the way the party looks and sounds can’t really compete and win elections," said Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune and a relative of the Democratic billionaire governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker. “They’re worried that it needs to reorient toward the cultural mainstream and it needs to basically rebrand."

Jon Henes, finance chair for Harris’s 2020 presidential bid, said he is struggling to identify with his longtime party as a whole. “Right now, I’m focused on supporting individual candidates whose values and leadership I believe in," said Henes, the founder and chief executive of the consulting firm C Street Advisory Group. “Many donors feel the same way. They want to choose their candidates rather than leave that to party committees."

Despite the DNC’s fundraising struggles, there is still money flowing to specific candidates and efforts. Some donors are directing resources to state-level candidates such as Abigail Spanberger, a moderate former Democratic congresswoman and onetime Central Intelligence Agency officer who has raised significant amounts as she campaigns for Virginia’s governorship. Spanberger’s ex-roommate, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and a moderate, is running for New Jersey governor.

Both are front-runners—though their races have tightened recently. Victories in November would show some high-profile electoral success for the party, potentially boosting donor confidence. Several Democratic Senate candidates are also showing fundraising strength, including in the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia.

Democratic donors have also been shelling out cash for an effort to redraw congressional maps in California to counter a GOP power grab that started in Texas and has since spread to other Republican-led states.

Steve Israel, chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm from 2011 to 2015, said he has encouraged the donors to take a deep breath.

“Democratic donors and others are pretty good at prematurely breaking the glass," said Israel, who represented a New York swing district before retiring from Congress in 2017. “A midterm messaging environment does not get locked in until three months before the election."

Tommy McDonald, a Democratic consultant who worked to elect Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) and progressives including former Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.), said the donor class is focusing on the wrong things.

“I think the Democratic civil war isn’t actually a civil war," he said. “It’s just the people with the money are deeply out of touch with what the American people want and don’t want their party to do the things that win elections."

Progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani have continued to rake in cash, but they rely on a different set of donors, with their campaigns mostly funded by grassroots and small-dollar donors.

Part of the party’s fundraising challenge is that Ken Martin, who became DNC chair in February, has had to deal with internal clashes that reflect the generational and ideological divisions within the party.

A top official at a national Democratic group said some donors remain angry about how their money was spent in last year’s presidential election by outside groups, including on what they see as excessive salaries for Washington, D.C., consultants. The official said the party has failed to complete a public postelection investigation into what went wrong in 2024.

Pritzker, chair of the group Third Way, said, “It is shocking how little reassessment the party and its leadership has done."

In an interview, Martin said he wants the review to take a “holistic" approach that includes outside groups representing about three-quarters of 2024 election spending. Several hundred interviews have been conducted, but the national party has said it won’t share the results until after next month’s election because it doesn’t want the report to be a distraction.

Some Democrats say hand-wringing happens every time a party loses. While Democratic poll numbers are dismal, voters disapprove of many of the president’s policies, such as tariffs and the GOP’s big tax-and-spending law. Plus, the party out of power often picks up seats in a midterm election.

“To make it sound as if the Democrats are not going to be organized, aren’t going to be funded and are somehow not going to step up to the moment is unfair to what is happening on the ground," said Sean Domnick, a major Democratic donor.

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com, John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com and Tarini Parti at tarini.parti@wsj.com