Trump endorsement doesn't equal cash for Culp

Plus: Rival challengers to Herrera Beutler and Schrier rake in conservative $$

Donald Trump’s endorsement didn’t do much to enliven failed gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp’s dwindling ability to squeeze money out of his base of small conservative donors for his challenge to U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse.

Despite getting the blessing of the grifter-in-chief in February, Culp took in just $46,000 in the first quarter of 2022, according to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission. To give you some context about how feeble that is, a 22-year-old state Senator raised $65K in March alone. In possibly related news, Culp was most recently in the news for failing to understand Facebook.

Quarterly reports from the FEC dropped on Friday, so today we’re taking a little spin through the money in congressional races.

Photo by Mackenzie Marco on Unsplash

As we reported back in the fall of 2020, Culp’s run for governor was less an attempt to get elected than a long con that siphoned money out of the pockets of thousands of small conservative donors around the state. Culp dragged the grift out for months by pretending he hadn’t lost by more than half a million votes.

After Newhouse became one of the handful of Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection, the now out-of-work former small-town police chief packed his carpetbag¹ and took his act to the 4th District in hopes of keeping the band on the road for another tour.

Here’s why you should care about this: It’s a live-fire test of Trump’s ability to influence politics as a former president and a test of whether Culp, who got more votes than any Republican gubernatorial candidate in history, was anything more than the “no thanks” choice for non-fans of Gov. Jay Inslee.