Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez on Wednesday said even if his party’s fundraising lags behind that of the Republican Party, they make up for it by not being “morally bankrupt.”
“We’ve been winning elections over the course of 2017. This is not an aberration, this is a trend. And I think we’re winning because frankly, while the Republican National Committee [RNC] outraises us, they’re morally bankrupt. They’re investing in the likes of Roy Moore in Alabama,” Perez said on Fox News’s “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
The Republican National Committee has been outraising the DNC for months.
But Perez in the interview claimed victory in the special election this week in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Conor Lamb appears positioned to beat Republican Rick Saccone.
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Lamb took in more than five times as much in contributions as his Republican opponent by the start of this month, in a district that President Trump won by 20 points in 2016. GOP-affiliated groups poured over $10 million into the race to keep up. Lamb was declared the winner by some media outlets on Wednesday, but Saccone has not conceded.
Perez expressed confidence that the Democrats would see a wave of victories in the 2018 midterm elections, pointing to the GOP’s backing of candidates such as Moore, an Alabama Senate candidate who lost after reports of alleged sexual misconduct toward teenagers, and Joe Arpaio, the controversial former sheriff who is running as a Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona.
He also slammed reports that RNC funds have gone toward legal costs amid the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion with President Trump’s campaign.
However, Perez sidestepped questions about whether Democrats would need to distance themselves from leadership, such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who Lamb in his campaign pledged not to support.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) assured Republicans at a news conference Wednesday that the Pennsylvania race “is something that you are not going to see repeated” in the upcoming elections.