Party Chair Gruters Announces Record Fundraising, Then Passes the Hat: 'The Reality Is We Need More'

AUSTIN — National party chairman Gruters opened his committee's summer meeting on Friday by announcing that it had raised more money than at any point in its nearly two-century history, and closed the same paragraph by explaining that this was not enough. 'I don't want folks to think, well, we're OK,' Gruters told the executive committee. 'We need more.'

The committee ended June with about $16 million on hand and more than $18 million in debt, having previously pledged its own headquarters as collateral on a loan — a balance sheet the chairman describes as a record and the ledger describes as a building. Across the aisle, the opposing national committee sat on roughly $129 million and the opposing president's super PAC on $400 million, an asymmetry the chairman attributed to a White House that has 'auctioned off the federal government' to corporate donors, and which the opposing party attributed to being better at fundraising.

'Every committee has been outraised,' Gruters said, in what aides characterized as a rallying cry and what the room characterized as an audit. A special finance committee stocked with big-name bundlers has been convened to bring in more, a step The Press's treasury desk notes is what a party does when the regular finance committee has already been asked.

The Press observes that the party out of power always raises a record and always needs more, and that the party in power always accuses it of buying elections while accepting corporate checks of its own — an arrangement so stable that both parties' talking points on money in politics can be exchanged intact at every change of administration, with only the invoice re-addressed.

Reaction followed the standing choreography. Party loyalists heard a chairman leveling with members about the stakes; critics heard a man who put the headquarters up as collateral asking the room for a bigger hat. The Press archives confirm both parties own the vocabulary — 'grassroots energy' and 'bought and paid for' — and swap it at the door whenever the other side is the one with the war chest.

The record, contacted for comment, confirmed it exists, and asked whether anyone had change.