Todd McMurtry's Terrible Week

Todd McMurtry's Terrible Week

McMurtry Campaign in Shambles after
Weak Fundraising, "Troubling" Social Media Posts, and US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), US Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the Republican Jewish Coaltion and Pro-Israel America Withdraw Support and Request Refunds of Campaign Contributions

FLORENCE, KY– The wheels came off the Todd McMurtry campaign this week after their strongest supporters retracted their endorsements, requested refunds of their campaign contributions and condemned Todd McMurtry's social media comments as "troubling" and unreflective of the "values of the GOP" after a series of national stories brought these posts to light. These developments, paired with the poor fundraising numbers seen in the McMurtry Q1 FEC report, leave their campaign in a highly unenviable position less than two months out of the June 23 GOP primary.

Endorsements Retracted and Campaign Refunds
Requested After Social Media Fiasco

Headlines

WKRC (Video)- NKY congressional primary takes strange turn with questionable tweets from GOP challenger
The Hill- Cheney, Turner request return of donations to Massie's primary opponent after racist tweets surface
Jewish Insider- RJC withdraws its only endorsement of a GOP primary challenger over racist tweets
Washington Examiner- Thomas Massie primary challenger loses support of Republican Jewish group
Jewish Telegraphic Agency- After racist tweets surface, Republican Jewish Coalition withdraws support for GOP congressman’s challenger

Timeline

On April 16th Greg Girroux from Bloomberg Government wrote on Liz Cheney's Cowboy PAC donation to Todd McMurtry
On April 16th Kerry Picket from the Washington Examiner wrote on the "Twitter fight" that erupted after House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney and Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner donated to Todd McMurtry
On April 17th Catie Edmondson from the New York Times wrote on "McMurtry's series of Twitter posts and articles that contain racist tropes" including when in July of 2019 "he approvingly shared a 2016 blog post subtitled “A Very Brief Primer on Being Alt Right”
On April 18th Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) issued a statement on Twitter condemning the tweets as racist and asking for her contribution to be refunded
On April 18th Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) responded to Rep. Cheney's tweet "ditto"
On April 18th the Republican Jewish Coalition joined Representatives Cheney and Turner, "asking for a refund & withdrawing (their) PAC support"
On April 19th Pro-Israel America issued a statement withdrawing their endorsement and requesting a reimbursement for their PAC contributions
On April 20th the Jewish Insider wrote published a summary of the situation, "RJC withdraws its only endorsement of a GOP primary challenger over racist tweets", in it McMurtry claimed he was a victim of media bias according to the Jewish Insider
On April 20th RRH Elections wrote in their Political Roundup for the day that "(Thomas Massie) has gotten a bit lucky in that his only primary opponent Lawyer Todd McCurty [sic] has a fairly active twitter profile in a bad way. He is basically an open Alt-Rightist, whose comments are quite embarrassing to the many Republicans who rushed to donate to him..."
On April 20th the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published an article titled "After racist tweets surface, Republican Jewish Coalition withdraws support for GOP congressman’s challenger"
On April 22nd (Video) WKRC TV ran a segment and published an article titled "NKY congressional primary takes strange turn with questionable tweets from GOP challenger" that noted that McMurtry "declined an interview" and "After Local 12 reached out this week, McMurtry deleted some of the tweets in question." WKRC provided screenshots of the deleted tweets in their piece.

Weak Fundraising

McMurtry was outraised over 2 to 1 by the Massie campaign, even after Todd McMurtry loaned his campaign $135,000.
After taunting the Massie campaign's lack of Kentucky donors, Todd McMurtry had exactly half the amount of unique Kentucky donors the Massie campaign did in Q1.
McMurtry only managed to have a total of 3 itemized Kentucky donors from outside Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties.
The McMurtry campaign is heavily reliant on high-dollar donations and only raised slightly over $10,000 from low-dollar donors. By comparison the Massie campaign raised over $155,000 in unitemized donations, over 15 times as much.

Less than Two Months Until June 23 GOP Primary

The Thomas Massie campaign holds a close to 3 to 1 Cash on Hand advantage ($689K to $236K) as of the FEC Q1 reports both campaigns released on April 15th
Thomas Massie has the support of US Senators Rand Paul & Mike Lee, US Representatives James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz & Andy Biggs (among others), Kentucky AG Commissioner Ryan Quarles, Kentucky Treasurer Allison Ball, Kentucky Auditor Mike Harmon, Club for Growth, Northern Kentucky Right to Life, Freedomworks, Protect Freedom PAC, Tea Party Express, as well as over 75 other elected officials from Kentucky
Todd McMurtry, as of the time of this press release, has exactly one publicly released endorsement from elected officials or groups, either national or from the Commonwealth of Kentucky
Cut off from national fundraising support McMurtry will continue to remain unable to define his candidacy as he struggles to raise money

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