With days to go, GOP convention struggles with $6 million shortfall
Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY 4:25 p.m. EDT July 13, 2016
WASHINGTON — Just days before the Republican Party’s national convention opens in Cleveland, organizers remain $6 million short of their $64 million fundraising goal for the four-day political extravaganza.
The Cleveland host committee has collected $51 million in cash and another $7 million through in-kind donations as it grapples with boycott calls by activist groups, the loss of taxpayer funding for the event and deep skepticism about Donald Trump, the GOP’s nominee-in-waiting, from some of the party’s leading figures.
The controversy over Trump’s unorthodox candidacy has had “some effect” on fundraising, said David Gilbert, president and CEO of the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee Inc., the nonprofit group responsible for underwriting the convention, which opens Monday.
But, he said, “it’s really hard to put a dollar amount on what the effect of the nominee is. People don’t give us a detailed explanation of why I’m giving or why I am not.”
Several prominent firms, ranging from Coca-Cola to Hewlett Packard and Apple, have either decided not to sponsor the convention or to reduce their traditional convention giving amid calls by activists to boycott the event over Trump’s tough rhetoric about women, immigrants and others. Officials with Color of Change PAC, one of the organizations leading the anti-Trump effort, say 15 companies have scaled back or refused to provide financial support for next week’s gathering.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/07/13/republican-convention-6-million-shortfall/87034814/
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