Anti-Trump Republicans Raise Over $35 Million to Help Harris

A national group who call themselves anti-Donald Trump Republicans has raised more than $35 million to defeat the GOP nominee this November, it said.

Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT) set a $50-million campaign goal in March to help the Democrats stay in the White House. It compares to the approximately $10 million raised for the 2020 election, when the group was formed, according to financial records.

The donations compare to at least $574 million raised so far by pro-Trump groups or the more than $770 million raised by Vice President Kamala Harris since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. However, they are an indication of the enduring disaffection with Trump among some conservatives ahead of the election that opinion polls show is a neck-and-neck race.

RVAT is led by conservative strategist Sarah Longwell, who founded the group with others including Bill Kristol, who served in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, and Tim Miller, the former communications director for Jeb Bush’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.

Last week, RVAT launched an $11-million ad blitz across Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District that Longwell described as the “opening salvo” of an autumn push to aid the Harris campaign.

As of September 4, more than 6,200 donations had come from all 50 states, ranging from $1 all the way up to seven figures, the group said.

“We have a broad and robust donor base of supporters from around the country who want to protect democracy,” RVAT spokesperson Tony Franquiz told Newsweek.

The Trump campaign dismissed the group when asked by Newsweek whether it could have an impact.

“Kamala Harris is weak, failed and dangerously liberal, and a vote for her is a vote for higher taxes, inflation, open borders and war,” the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Newsweek.

“President Trump is building the largest, most diverse political movement in history because his winning message of putting America first again resonates with Americans of all backgrounds.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to Newsweek‘s request for comment.

Another group targeting traditionally Republican-leaning voters is Vote Common Good, which began in 2018 with a bus tour that traveled to 37 cities during the midterm elections.

It aims to help Democrats by focusing on evangelical and Catholic voters aged 40 and older in swing states. The group has raised $1.2 million since January 1, 2024, with messaging focusing on the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and what it says are the threats of Christian nationalism.

“It’s not a personal thing with Donald Trump,” Vote Common Good executive director Doug Pagitt told Newsweek. “It’s what he represents and what he said—both on policy, but more so on the approach of what political power should do.

Evangelical support for Trump increased from 2016 to 2020, from around 78 percent to 81 percent.

The organization, funded by small donations, believes it can help shift 5-10 percent of evangelical voters against Trump in key states—numbers that could potentially cost him the election.

“If he starts bleeding even half a percent of the more conservative evangelicals, that’s problematic,” he said.

The Lincoln Project, a political action committee formed in 2019 by conservative political insiders who opposed a second Trump term, has raised over $10 million in the 2023-24 election cycle. That includes more than 3,260 donor contributions of $200 or more; however, the money does not go directly to the Harris campaign or any other candidates.

David Dulio, a professor of political science at Oakland University in Michigan, told Newsweek that longtime Republicans who openly campaign against Trump could certainly sway portions of the electorate in tight battleground states.

“In an election where the margins are going to be so close in places like Michigan, any small shift in voter alignment, voter preference[…]could result in a very big difference in terms of outcome,” Dulio said.

However, he acknowledged that “never Trumpers” have existed since the former president first ran in 2015.

Republican communications specialist T.J. McCormack also said it could prove influential.

“Considering this may come down to one state, that kind of money could absolutely put her over the top,” McCormack said. “These conservatives should bear in mind the lawfare and attacks on the First Amendment from Democrats the past few years.

“From a packed Supreme Court to restrictions on expression and jailing political opponents, they very well could be enabling an honest-to-goodness end of America as we know it—all because they find a well-known blowhard to be a blowhard.”

Among the anti-Trump conservatives is Robert Nix, a lawyer from Philadelphia who has had his face plastered on billboards around the city to support the campaign against the former president. He called voting for Trump in 2016 “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made” and switched to Biden in 2020.

Another is Hyla Winters, 75, of Las Vegas, who is a self-described political and fiscal conservative who has voted Republican dating back to Richard Nixon. In 2020, she changed her party registration to Democrat.

“I am more energized and excited now than I think I have ever been in any presidential election,” Winters told Newsweek.

But the vast majority of Republican voters still plan to vote for Trump.

Polling averages in March, prior to Biden’s exit and the two presidential debates, showed Trump with 80.4 percent favorability among Republicans.