A group that aimed to raise $30 million to organize women voters to help elect Donald Trump came up millions of dollars short, FEC records show.
Now one of the group’s co-founders, Tea Party activist Amy Kremer, is running for the U.S. House seat in Georgia’s 6th district.
The “Women Vote Trump” PAC, co-founded by Kremer, Kathryn Serkes, and Ann Stone, and started in 2016, hosted a launch event with Hollywood star Stacey Dash and YouTube stars Diamond and Silk. The group set a goal to raise $30 million to support Trump’s presidential campaign, according reports from the Associated Press, MSNBC, and others at the event. The group’s website boasted they would “make thousands of strategic ad buys in key battleground states” to support Trump.
A CNN KFile review of the group’s FEC records show the group raised only $26,813 during the entire campaign. It spent $20,000. FEC records also show that Kremer was paid $5,500 for reimbursements for travel and lodging. The group spent less than $5,000 on web ads.
The PAC is nearly $20,000 in debt, according to its most recent filings. “Women Vote Trump,” which was required to changed its name to “Women Vote Smart” to comply with FEC rules barring the use of a candidate’s name, made no direct contributions to the Trump campaign.
Kremer is running to fill the congressional seat left vacant by Tom Price, who is now secretary of Health and Human Services.
“We had commitments from people and then people didn’t come through,” Kremer told CNN’s KFile in an interview. “A lot people didn’t raise any money, it was bizarre campaign season, and every time you turnaround and thought you were gonna get some money every other day something would happen.”
Kremer added, “We may not have spent a lot of money, but we were definitely out there being active with the grassroots and engaging people. We thought were gonna be able to do some stuff and in the end we didn’t, but I still think we had an impact.”
Kremer was one of the more high-profile faces of the group, pitching the PAC in appearances on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN.
“There’s a need for us, and some other super PACS involved in the race, simply because we have to level the playing field with Hillary Clinton,” Kremer said on MSNBC in June. “When you have Priorities USA and these other groups out here that are already spending millions of dollars to defeat Donald Trump and define him, you have to level the playing field and that is exactly what we are trying to do.”
