Indiana Republicans set to welcome Rick Scott

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is headed to the Hoosier State Friday.

Scott will go to Fort Wayne, Indiana in his capacity as the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In a tweet Friday, the Senator said he was going to support Sen. Todd Young.

This event has been set for months. Local outlet WPTA reported in June that Scott was slated to speak Oct. 8 at a dinner for the Allen County GOP.

While Scott’s travel has not gotten the level of coverage as Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been widely discussed as a 2024 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he can and will be expected to be a frequent flyer to states where Senators are up for reelection.

Young’s reelection likely is not in doubt. While it remains to be seen who will emerge from that state’s Democratic Primary, the last time Young was on the ballot in 2016, he won with more than 52% of the vote, defeating Democrat Evan Bayh by a roughly 10 percentage point margin. And political problems for the Joe Biden administration likely won’t improve a Democrat’s chances in 2022 against an entrenched incumbent.

Though there were initial questions in some corners about how the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would impact Republican fundraising, they have not translated to Scott’s Senate fundraising performance.

The NRSC announced this week it had raised more money in the first three quarters of this year than it did in all of 2019, including $9.5M in September. It has raised $76.2M this year, and retained $27.7M cash on hand as of the end of last month, with zero debt.

A lot of that, Scott said, comes from small-dollar donors.

“This quarter alone we brought in more than 56,000 first-time donors to the party — more than half of all of our first-time donors this year,” Scott remarked.