Trump and RNC raise nearly $90M contesting election: FEC records

By Carly Roman

Former President Donald Trump's WinRed platform helped the Republican Party fundraise during the months he spent contesting the 2020 presidential election, filings showed.

During the period between Nov. 24 and the end of 2020, WinRed, the online platform that collected donations on behalf of Republican candidates, amassed over $86 million for Trump and the Republican National Committee, according to a Federal Election Commission filing recorded on Friday. Most national outlets called the race for President Biden on Nov. 7.

WinRed reported raising more than $207 million for GOP candidates and committees nationwide during the time frame, with $68 million going to Trump Make America Great Again, a joint fundraising committee comprised of Save America, the political action committee that the former president started after the election, and the RNC.

Trump and Republican allies first founded WinRed to counteract ActBlue, the long-standing Democratic counterpart, in 2019 as a vehicle for facilitating grassroots political donations to Republican candidates up and down the ballot. The move was celebrated by GOP operatives.

"This is the first time I’ve ever seen either political party come together to do something genuinely good for campaigns instead of consultants," said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell. "It’s unquestionably the most significant realignment of political infrastructure in my career."

WinRed proved an especially profitable fundraising vehicle during the final days of the presidential contest, as well as in the subsequent 2020 Georgia Senate runoffs wherein both Republican incumbents were defeated by Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

“The rapid success of WinRed is testament to unprecedented party unity behind the need to take on ActBlue — quickly and aggressively,” said WinRed President Gerrit Lansing in a press release for the organization's third-quarter donor haul in October 2020.