Will the Post-Trump GOP Have a Money Problem?

Donald Trump is an enigma. Had he not raised a single dollar in his presidential campaign, he would still have dominated the airwaves and the social media feeds, appearing everywhere from massive rallies to Joe Rogan’s podcast (over 51 million views on YouTube alone) to a McDonald’s drive thru window or a garbage route near you. The man is a master of the media, able to appear on every phone, computer, and television in the country without spending a cent.

Add in the fact that, even before his first term as president and multiple nationwide political campaigns, he was a household name from The Apprentice, Trump hotels and high-end condos, and decades of celebrity status. It is unquestionable that Trump is no ordinary political candidate. He simply doesn’t need the same campaign apparatus to get his message out to the voters.

Yet even for Trump the media genius, money does matter. True, Trump needs no improvement in name recognition and therefore it might not be particularly important for Trump to spend cash on t-shirts, yard signs, and media buys. But the get-out-the-vote effort matters and that costs money too. We saw this in 2020 and 2022, as the Democrat machine mobilized armies to chase mail-in ballots and stuff drop boxes while Republicans remained extremely skeptical of early voting. The results speak for themselves. In 2024, Republicans caught on and promoted early voting throughout the country. Republican efforts, led by everyone from Elon Musk to Charlie Kirk and Scott Presler, paid off. Early voting surged in Republican strongholds and the Democrats lost their advantage of banking votes before election day. 

Though Harris outraised Trump both in donations to the official party committees and to aligned PACs, Trump made up for the campaign cash deficit with his ability to attract influential people and dominate the news cycle. This superstar campaign attracted online influencers, extremely talented political operatives, and powerful billionaires into the fold. The result was astounding: 312 electoral votes. But more importantly, the realignment that conservatives have been talking about for over a decade. Latino voters broke hard for Trump; the black vote shifted; religious voters abandoned the Democratic party; and even the Amish came out to stop the Democrats from winning the White House.

Republicans can solidify their new status as the party of the working class (not merely the white working class), the party of peace, and as the party of normal, healthy living. This is a coalition that can win elections and wield power. But what will happen when Trump is gone? Will there be a money problem that will render 2024 a one-off rather than a sea change?

The likely answer is “yes, there may very well be a money problem for the GOP after Trump.” But the problem is not insurmountable. As corporate America has veered left, it is no longer a reliable source of GOP money. The Democrats have control of Hollywood, the corporate class, and most of the wealthy elites. The Republicans, transitioning to this new working class coalition, need to take stock of the situation, reassess their sources of political funding, and allocate resources efficiently to address the realities of modern campaigns.

If money was necessary to mount an effective voter registration and “get out the vote” campaign for a celebrity candidate like Trump in 2024, money will become an even more necessary issue to deal with for the GOP in 2028 and beyond. Republicans need to find an effective strategy for both major sources of donor dollars as well as small-dollar donations. 

On the former front, Republicans need to navigate the ongoing realignment and find demographics within the corporate world and among wealthy individuals that will invest resources into GOP campaigns. While Silicon Valley brings concerning secular and libertarian values that threaten the social conservatism necessary to a healthy conservative movement, it remains a necessary part of the new coalition. Silicon Valley executives and companies bring a vast amount of wealth, coupled with a growing skepticism towards wokeism and excessive government burdens on the market and on individual liberties. Again, this coalition needs to be managed in tension with conservatism, but it is a vital source of campaign revenue. JD Vance, with his ties to Peter Thiel in particular and the Silicon Valley tech/venture capital crowd in general, offers a path to managing this coalition and strengthening these ties with needed donors to combat the corporate money pouring in on the left. There are also gains to be made among certain labor/union coalitions, especially as the GOP continues to take its place in the new political alignment as the party of the working man.

Small-dollar donations are also a challenge the GOP needs to continue to solve. Again, as the GOP moves from the party of big corporations of decades past to the party of the everyman, it needs to capture this reality in dollars. Massive corporate donations have moved to the left and ordinary people of ordinary means are increasingly the GOP base. Yes, the Republicans have quite the operation of spam text messages and emails soliciting donations, but there needs to be a culture shift, not just a scattershot marketing campaign. 

There needs to be a concerted effort to create a culture where the MAGA base realizes the stakes. The party that represents them cannot win on ideas and memes; at the end of the day, the number of operations on the ground to register new voters, flip Democrats to Republicans, chase early and mail-in votes, and get out the vote on election day is an absolute necessity. Popular parties and ideas do not win unless they master and dominate the election process. These ordinary, working-class voters need to be convinced of the importance of campaign dollars to win elections and enact their policy preferences. Every dollar counts.

Finally, the GOP needs to continue to overhaul its electioneering approach and tailor it to the 21st century. If campaign funds are already a challenge and Democrats are severely out-fundraising Republicans, Republicans need to master efficiency and spend every dollar where it matters most. T-shirts and lawn signs? Useful tools for local candidates to boost name recognition. But for presidential candidates, they make little sense: everyone knows who the two candidates are and nobody is changing his mind about who to vote for over a cluster of signs on the freeway or his neighbors’ lawns. It might be prudent for campaigns to maintain an online store where they can sell the campaign paraphernalia, but campaigns should not be spending precious resources on swag for the fans. 

Republicans need to skip many avenues of legacy campaign spending (I’m not just talking lawn signs but ineffective, outdated, and overpriced general consultants as well), take advantage of free media (why pay for so much primetime TV airspace if Joe Rogan invites you on the podcast?), and focus campaign dollars on the ground. Republicans need to organize and spend their money on voter registration drives, ballot chasing, and election day get-out-the-vote efforts. That push to translate platform and popularity into votes on election day is where the money needs to be focused.

Hope is not lost for the post-Trump GOP, but the financial strategy needs to be intentional. When the GOP loses its TV star front man, we will need to address that the Democrats out fundraise and outspend us. We need to acknowledge that and adapt: adjust fundraising strategies to the ongoing political realignment, assess where money needs to be spent, and create from the ashes of the old GOP a lean, mean, election-winning machine.