The super PAC backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley entered the election year in January with just $3.5 million in cash, according to new Federal Election Commission records, while Haley's campaign itself started the year on stronger footing.
The new report Wednesday from SFA Fund Inc. covers the period from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2023. It reveals the committee raised just over $50 million but spent nearly $63 million to back Haley. The super PAC entered the reporting period in July with around $17 million but finished with a paltry $3.5 million war chest after it spent heavily on ads.
Some of Haley’s wealthiest donors are considering whether to continue helping, especially after she suffered bruising defeats to the GOP front-runner, former President Donald Trump, in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Haley’s campaign itself showed some significant improvement in fundraising as she sought to capitalize on her rising poll numbers toward the end of 2023. She raised $17.3 million into her campaign committee over the final three months of the year, after raising $8.2 million quarter before that.
Although Haley stepped up her fundraising in the fourth quarter, she will likely have to expand her donor base to continue funding her primary campaign. A sizable chunk of her fourth-quarter haul, 38%, came from donors who cannot contribute more money for the primary, since they already reached the maximum $3,300 contribution limit.
Trump, meanwhile, can continue to tap his small-dollar donor base. Just 10% of his fourth-quarter haul came from donors who have hit the maximum contribution limit for the primary.
As her fundraising rose to close the year, so did Haley’s spending — more than $14 million over the last three months of 2023. Her top expenditures included media placement, mailers, payroll (for approximately 46 staff on payroll), and filing fees.
But while Haley’s super PAC ended the year low on cash reserves, the candidate herself started 2024 with a significant nest egg of $14.6 million banked away.
The next major primary is in Haley’s home state, South Carolina, where she was governor, on Feb. 24.
The leading pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., also filed its six-month disclosure report Wednesday, revealing that it entered January with just over $23 million in cash on hand.
SFA’s $3.5 million cash on hand raises questions about how it was able to finance $14 million worth of advertisements backing Haley since Jan. 1, according to data from the tracking firm AdImpact.
Mark Harris, a representative for SFA Fund, told CNBC the ad spending in January did not come out of the previous fall’s totals. Instead, he said, the additional $10.5 million minimum needed to fund the ad campaign came from “robust” fundraising just this month, he said. Harris declined to say how much the super PAC raised in total this month or who its top donors were.
The lion’s share of the $14 million was spent in Iowa and New Hampshire, with just $200,000 having been spent on TV spots airing in South Carolina so far.
Wednesday’s filing revealed that the super PAC’s fundraising success last fall came on the backs of big-money donors.
Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel, gave $5 million to the super PAC in December, according to the FEC records. Griffin made news this week when his spokesman told media outlets, including CNBC, that he donated $5 million to the pro-Haley super PAC in January.
Griffin’s spokesman later confirmed that the $5 million had, in fact, been donated to SFA Fund in December, not January, when the spokesman had originally said the donation was made.
Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, gave just over $500,000 to the super PAC, and David Tepper, a veteran investor and the owner of the Carolina Panthers, gave north of $1 million. Overall, nine donors gave at least $1 million to SFA Fund in the last six months of 2023.
Oil tycoon Harold Hamm contributed around $100,000.
