DNC Enters Final 100 Days Before Midterms $2.2 Million in the Hole, RNC Sits on $128.5 Million

Since Michigan's athletic director payout and Hawaii's lieutenant governor indictment dominated headlines this week, a quieter but arguably more consequential story has been sitting in Federal Election Commission filings: the Democratic National Committee is broke, and the midterms are 100 days out.

FEC filings reviewed by The New York Times and Fox News Digital show the DNC ended June with $16.3 million in cash and $18.5 million in debts. That leaves the committee about $2.2 million underwater. The Republican National Committee, by comparison, reported roughly $128.5 million on hand with no outstanding debt.

The gap isn't just a balance-sheet curiosity. The New York Times reported the DNC has asked vendors to delay collecting on bills until after the elections and has told congressional leaders it will not make its traditional transfers to the House and Senate campaign committees this cycle. Those transfers have historically helped fund field operations, ad buys, and turnout efforts in competitive districts.

Where the money went

The New York Times also reported that the DNC and an affiliated committee spent approximately $840,000 on Democratic party organizations in five non-voting U.S. territories since last year. Those territories, places like the U.S. Virgin Islands, send delegates to the Democratic National Convention but have no vote in Congress or the Electoral College. Fox News Digital's coverage highlighted this spending pattern as a point of internal frustration, given the committee's debt position.

Donna Brazile, a longtime DNC member and former interim chair, told The New York Times that current chair Ken Martin needs outside help managing the situation. "Ken needs help, H-E-L-P," Brazile said. "And if he's reluctant to say it, I'm here to help him ask. It's hard. It's very difficult."

The House math

The cash disparity extends down to the committees that actually fund House races. Axios reported the National Republican Congressional Committee ended June with $92.7 million on hand, versus $79 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That's a real gap, but a far smaller one than the DNC-RNC split, and it matters because control of the House could turn on fewer than 20 races, according to The Associated Press.

DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., pushed back on the doom-and-gloom framing in an interview with Fox News Digital, pointing to her committee's second-quarter fundraising numbers and the performance of Democratic candidates so far this cycle. She said her focus on affordability messaging will "absolutely" continue heading into 2026. Committee cash-on-hand is one metric, not the only one, and DelBene's argument is that candidate quality and message discipline can offset a fundraising gap. Whether that holds up will be tested at the ballot box, not in FEC filings.

Why the numbers matter more this cycle

A recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited coordinated spending between parties and candidates has raised the stakes on committee reserves specifically. Under the old rules, parties faced caps on how much they could spend in direct coordination with individual candidates. Now that cap is gone, which means a well-funded national committee can pour significantly more money directly into specific competitive races than it could before. A national party sitting on $128.5 million in reserve has a structurally different capability under this new rule than one that's $2.2 million underwater.

Non-voting territories getting $840,000 combined since last year is a legitimate question about priorities when the parent committee is in debt. But it's a rounding error next to the $112 million swing between the RNC's and DNC's total cash positions.

What's unresolved

Neither the DNC nor Ken Martin has publicly detailed a plan to close the debt gap before November, and no fundraising rebound announcement has been made as of this writing. The DCCC has not said whether it will seek transfers from other sources to offset the lack of DNC support. Whether Democratic House candidates in decisive swing districts feel a resource squeeze as Election Day approaches is the open question that will actually determine whether this financial story becomes a political one.