Trump-backed Online Donor Platform Launched at State Level to Compete with Democrats’ ActBlue

WinRed, an online donation platform launched last year and endorsed by President Donald Trump, is partnering with the Republican State Leadership Committee to make contributions available at the state level. This tool will enable small dollar donors to set recurring donations to their favored candidates, and has other features like one-click donating and the ability to create optimized fundraising pages. Until now, the Republican online donation effort on down ballot races consisted of a factionalized system of vendors.

This is the GOP’s answer to ActBlue, the Democratic online donation platform founded in 2004. During the 2018 midterms where Democrats won a historic landslide victory, ActBlue raised a staggering $1.6 billion for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. This was the spark that led the Republicans to launch WinRed, initially only available to Trump.

Josh Holmes, a top lieutenant to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Politico that the creation of WinRed “It’s unquestionably the most significant realignment of political infrastructure in my career.”

This move comes on the heels of Trump ramping up his reelection efforts, as he has created a campaign-style press shop at the White House. Typically, presidential campaigns are run from a separate headquarters because of the Hatch Act, a 1930s-era law which prohibits executive branch officers from engaging in political activity during work hours, a law that top Trump officials like Kellyanne Conway have been accused of violating in the past.

However, that norm has changed in recent decades. Though Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign was headquartered in Chicago, David Plouffe’s appointment to the White House staff in 2011 created a de facto branch of the campaign in the White House communications office.

The 2020 down ballot races are especially important thanks to the decennial redistricting process which begins next year. While most of the media attention will be placed on the presidential and congressional races, state-level races will fill legislatures that will be able to draw maps that will favor one party for the next decade.

The United States is unique in this respect, as most other democracies around the world have independent commissions draw their districts, but America eschews this common model in favor of being one of the few democracies which effectively allows politicians to choose their voters.