Politics- Five Republican senators each donated $5,000 to Katie Britt's
Alabama Senate campaign. - Trump has endorsed Alabama Rep.
Mo Brooks , who spoke at the Ellipse on January 6.
Five Republican senators have bucked
The political contributions, first reported by Politico, came from each senator's "leadership PAC," a campaign account separate from their main campaign that's most often used for supporting like-minded candidates and causes.
Britt, the former CEO of the Business Council of Alabama who's running as a pro-business Republican, has received donations from the following lawmakers' PACs, Federal Election Commission filings showed:
- West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito's "Wild and Wonderful PAC"
- Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer's "Nebraska Sandhills PAC"
- Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo's "Freedom Fund"
- Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe's "Fund for a Conservative Future"
- Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst's "Jobs Opportunity and New Ideas"
This news came after reports that Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby was set to spend $5 million boosting Britt, who is his former chief of staff. Both Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tommy Tuberville also appeared at a Washington, DC, fundraiser for her on Wednesday.
"I like Katie a lot," Graham told Politico. "In a party trying to grow demographically and pull more women in the party, that'd be a good thing.
But he seemingly stopped short of endorsing her outright. "The people of Alabama will figure that out," he told Politico. Tuberville also hasn't officially endorsed her, Politico reported.
Trump, for his part, has said Britt is "not in any way qualified and is certainly not what our Country needs or not what Alabama wants."
None of the five senators' offices immediately responded to Insider's request for comment, nor did Trump.
Stan McDonald, Brooks' campaign chair, told Politico that Britt was "trying to win in the DC Insider Primary because she is an insider."
"Mo Brooks' base is the Alabama conservative grassroots who decide our elections," McDonald said. "He's got their support, and he's got President Trump's support because they know he's the conservative leader Alabama needs."
Brooks has been a prominent disseminator of falsehoods about the 2020 election, and he spoke at a Trump rally at the Ellipse on January 6, hours before the Capitol riot. "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass," Brooks told Trump's supporters in a speech that day.
And in August, when a man shut down the Capitol complex with a bomb threat, Brooks issued a statement apparently expressing sympathy with the man's "anger directed at dictatorial Socialism."
—Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) August 19, 2021
Britt has raised $3.7 million versus Brooks' $1.7 million, and recent polling showed that Britt was starting to pull ahead of Brooks.
Alabama has been the site of numerous high-profile intraparty fights in recent years. In 2017, Trump backed Luther Strange, who ultimately lost his primary to Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the state's Supreme Court who was accused of sexual misconduct against several minors.