Who’s on top in June fundraising?

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House Speaker John Boehner, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor led fundraising by leadership PACs.

 

While Republican Party committees had a better fundraising month than their Democratic counterparts, Democrats had the clear edge when it came to outside groups' fundraising in June, campaign finance report filed over the weekend showed.

To see an aggregation of campaign finance data from the party and political action committees that reported to the Federal Election Commission in time for a midnight Saturday deadline, download Sunlight's .csv table. We earlier provided the similar data for candidate committees. A complete picture of how the 2014 fundraising landscape is shaping up will have to wait until next week, however: Many PACs, including most prominent super PACs, choose to file every six months in off-election years; those filings are due July 31.

Among congressional leadership PACs in the June filings, the three that raised the most belonged to Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., with nearly $300,000 in receipts, followed by PACs associated with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who doubles as chair of the Democratic National Committee, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Of the non-party committees that filed June monthly reports, seven of the ten biggest recipients are Democratic-leaning political action committees; four are associated with unions. Overall, the Democratic fundraising website ActBlue had the largest take of the non-party committees in June, raising $7.4 million in the month of June. The vast majority of ActBlue's contributions are earmarked for specific campaigns and come in small amounts of less than $100.

Other big recipients on the Democratic side were Emily's List, which gained $1.6 million to support female candidates; DGA Action, which is the super PAC of the Democratic Governors Association —  and the source of most of the super PAC's receipts; and two labor PACs: the SEIU's and the AFL-CIO's.  

The biggest recipient on the Republican side was the National Rifle Association's PAC, which received $755,577, bringing the total that the pro-gun group has raised in the six months since the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., to $7.1 million.

Two other GOP groups brought in nearly a half million dollars each: The Senate Conservatives Fund, a PAC that was founded by ex-Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and the American Resort Development Association, which gives to members of both parties but gives 57 percent of its contributions to the GOP, according to Influence Explorer.

Of the national party committees, the Republicans edged the Democrats in June $18.8 million to $17.5 million. Those include the parties' big three committees: The Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee along with each party's House and Senate campaign arms. The Democrats only won the Senate, outpacing the GOP $5.3 million to $3.6 million in June, according to Roll Call, which obtained the Senate reports. (The Senate reports are not yet on the Web because the senators, unlike House members, are not required to file campaign finance reports electronically).

A number of state party political committees also file reports with the FEC. In Massachusetts, which held a special Senate election in June, Democrats doubled up the Republicans, raising $1.5 million to help propel longtime House member Ed Markey to the Senate. The next-biggest state party performers were the Democratic state committees in California and Ohio and the GOP committee in Virginia.

Other than the resort owners' PAC, the other corporate PACs that raised the most in June were the accounting firms Ernst & Young and Deloitte and the industrial company Honeywell; they all brought in around $300,000.

(Data compiled by Jacob Fenton; Photo credit: Clerk of the U.S. House)