A month after the House GOP lost its single-best fundraiser as it careened into chaos, Senate Republicans are amplifying their pitch to donors: We’re your best possible investment.

The House GOP’s campaign arm lagged in fundraising last month, raising just over $5 million. And there could be more difficult times ahead. On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate map is rife with pickup opportunities — including in deep red states like Montana and Ohio — and that chamber’s Republicans have not been shy about framing them as a best-chance insurance policy to act as a bulwark against a potentially united Democratic government in 2025.

“We compete for the dollars with every other national committee and we just have to make a better case than everybody else,” said Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), adding that so far they’ve had an “excellent case to make.”

Senate Republicans have to flip only one or two seats to win back the majority, and at least one looks like a near certainty now that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) isn’t running for reelection. In preparation, top party hands have ramped up recruitment efforts and primary intervention strategies to box out potentially risky candidates seeking a spot on the 2024 ticket.

Compared to the Republican presidential primary and the House GOP, Republican senators look like the capable adults in the room, and they know it.

“Lots of uncertainty in the House and lots of uncertainty in the White House,” is how Scott Jennings, a longtime ally to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, summed it up. “But the Senate Republicans have a clear line of success.”

“Donors are going to be smart enough to realize exactly where an investment is gonna make a huge amount of difference,” Jennings added.

There is already some indication that the GOP strategy is working. Senate Leadership Fund and its sister organizations, all of which are allied with McConnell, are on track to surpass the $400 million they raised in the 2022 cycle, according to a person close to the group who was granted anonymity to speak freely. SLF and its nonprofit arm One Nation had a record fundraising haul for a non-election year in the first half of 2023.

Three people with ties to GOP donors, who were also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that some of the party’s biggest givers are taking increased interest in Senate races as the House is gripped by chaos, and Trump surges in the Republican presidential primary.

“The Senate is where they’re going to focus,” said one of those people. “Now, that all changes tomorrow if Nikki Haley is the nominee, but I don’t think anybody thinks that’s going to be the case.”

A second person, a GOP fundraiser, said that group includes the mega-donor Paul Singer.

Some of that posture is recognition that the odds are against Senate Democrats, who would have to retain every incumbent and win the presidency in 2024 to keep their majority. Meanwhile, the Senate GOP has plenty of other pickup opportunities outside of red states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada.

But winning in those places will still take millions of dollars, especially because there are well-funded Democratic incumbents in most of those states. Although the Senate GOP’s campaign arm has worked diligently to recruit candidates who can self-fund, the party will still need to attract national, big-dollar donors who might typically be more tempted to get involved in a presidential race.

“It’s my first cycle in the presidential cycle,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2022 cycle. “You gotta go convince people that there’s a reason to give you money for what you do every day.”

The House GOP campaign arm saw fundraising slow somewhat in October as conservative rabble-rousers ousted McCarthy, and the chamber spent three weeks without a leader. It raised just over $5 million, roughly half of what it raised during the off-year October in 2019 and 2021.

Republicans’ House majority is only five seats, and they have 18 members who need to get reelected in seats that President Joe Biden won in 2020. House members are fleeing for the exits after gridlock, infighting and outright animosity gripped the chamber during its 10-week legislative marathon this fall.

“If there’s anything that’s going against the House’s ability to raise money, it’s the utter chaos that people have seen play out over the last two months,” said one GOP operative who works on Senate races and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The chaos reduces the confidence in their ability to hold on to the majority, and the majority is so tight to begin with.”

In meetings with prospective donors, House GOP operatives stress that their chamber has outperformed expectations in 2020 and picked up seats in both the 2020 and 2022 when Senate Republicans did not. Their message, according to a person familiar with the fundraising strategy, is: Don’t count us out.

And the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top House GOP super PAC, has seen a strong donor response since Speaker Mike Johnson took the top post, raising $16 million in the first 10 days. That group is the largest outside spending in House races and will be determinative in key contests this fall.

“We proved to be a smart investment the last two cycles, and I’m confident we’ll continue to be seen that way in 2024,” said Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund. “We’ve seen a great response from donors as they’ve gotten to know Speaker Johnson, and it’s obvious our fundamentals have not changed.”

Speaker Mike Johnson may have saved Christmas on Capitol Hill, but Congress will be paying for it in the new year.

For the first time in roughly a decade, Washington faces no government spending deadline in December. That’s thanks to Johnson, who prevented a shutdown with a gambit designed to spare his party the type of legislative grab bag that conservatives often deride as a “Christmas tree.”

The House and Senate are far from off the hook. Johnson has promised he won’t put another “clean” funding bill on the floor, increasing the chances of a shutdown after the next spending deadlines on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2. The House GOP is so bitterly divided that some lawmakers worry they’ll engage in the same last-minute self-sabotage that plagued them this fall.

Spending is only one headache that Congress faces in the coming months. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will duel over a half-dozen other major priorities, including Israel and Ukraine aid, reauthorization of foreign surveillance powers, border security and stalled military promotions.

Congress already punted on spending twice this year. Many lawmakers see no reason it’ll be any different in January.

“If you can’t do it by September, then you can’t do it by the middle of November, and you can’t do it by December, why the hell do you think you’re gonna get it done in January?” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said. “There’s never any urgency around this place to get shit done.”

Progress on Ukraine, border and other fronts could in theory ease negotiations to avoid a shutdown next year. But with no signs that House Republicans are prepared to put weeks of self-inflicted drama behind them, lawmakers are preparing for a winter of woes.

Republicans are already privately joking that the second shutdown deadline of next year, when critical Pentagon funding will expire, occurs on Groundhog Day.

“If we don’t support our speaker, who we just all elected, it creates all sorts of issues for us,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who worried that his colleagues could undermine the speaker by continuing to squabble. “At best it weakens our hand. At worst, it makes it impossible to move things forward.”

Johnson hasn’t just challenged the Senate’s hopes of a year-end funding deal: He’s also ruling out another so-called clean stopgap spending bill, or a continuing resolution that doesn’t include any blanket cuts to government funding. That means Congress only has a few weeks of session to reconcile divergent spending levels on 12 different bills — the House GOP wants lower spending than most senators — and then steer identical legislation through both chambers.

That’s a very tall order in today’s Congress. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of GOP leadership and former House member, said Johnson needs to give himself “as much leeway as possible” to come out unscathed.

“The speaker says no more clean CRs. He’s put a gauntlet down and I don’t know how he manages his conference,” Capito said. “It’s hard to put definitive statements out that you’re going to have to walk back. And he may not have to walk it back.”

The House’s far lower spending levels are a sore point for some Senate GOP appropriators, who made severe cuts to appeal to conservatives in the chamber.

That will make things tougher on the back end: Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) are holding to bipartisan spending levels based on this year’s debt ceiling deal. A Democratic-controlled Senate isn’t going to accept some of the reductions in the House legislation.

And without a cross-Capitol agreement on top lines — the overall amount of spending — the House and Senate can’t even negotiate the less controversial areas, like money for veterans and military construction.

“We told leadership, we’ve got to have a top line if you’re going to send us over to negotiate with the Senate,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who is in charge of the House’s slimmed-down bill to fund the Interior Department and related agencies.

Until then, he warned: “It just can’t happen.”

Senate and House leaders of each party are starting to talk about a funding deal, Schumer told reporters last week. And in an interview, Collins praised Johnson’s hard line on no more continuing resolutions, saying “he’s right to keep the pressure on” Congress to get its work done. But Senate Democrats are worried Johnson created “two potential crises, even worse than” the November confrontation, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

At the same time, Johnson is confronting another huge headache: His own members are blocking him from bringing bills to the floor.

Just before leaving for Thanksgiving, nearly 20 GOP members tanked their own party’s spending bill, retaliation for Johnson’s decision to lean on Democrats to pass a short-term spending stopgap and avert a shutdown. Conservatives derided the GOP’s partisan spending bill, which funded the Department of Justice and FBI, as “weak.” Even some centrist-leaning New Yorkers opposed the bill, arguing that the House shouldn’t waste its time on legislation that can’t pass.

Meanwhile, the hard-line Freedom Caucus and its allies — who successfully ground the House to a halt several times this year — are showing few signs of easing up on Johnson. Their red line: Johnson must show a larger plan for how he will cut spending and deliver on conservative policy wins, or they are done helping pass funding bills.

Johnson is trying to reassure conservatives, both in private meetings and on the House floor, telling them “he’s got a plan to actually cut spending and put the burden on the Senate,” according to Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

Still, Johnson could get squeezed by both sides of the spending fight simultaneously. His conservatives will demand steep cuts and policy wins, which Schumer and the White House are certain to reject.

Some Republicans worry that dynamic will doom the House GOP’s priorities all the way through a major deadline on Feb. 2 — or perhaps even longer, with internal conference politics getting even tougher as election season inches closer.

“We’re empowering Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden to keep doing what they’re doing,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). And if it seems difficult to get GOP centrists to back a conservative spending plan now, Roy warned: “Wait until it’s about three weeks out before primary season is kicking off.”

Rep. Dean Phillips is forgoing a reelection bid to Congress to focus on his presidential run, the Minnesota Democrat announced Friday.

Phillips, 54, announced in October that he would launch a longshot bid to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination citing a need for generational change.

Phillips said Friday that after seven years in Congress, it’s time to pass the torch.

“My journey to public service began the morning after the 2016 election, when I faced the reality that democracy requires participation — not observation,” Phillips said in a statement. “Seven years have passed, each presenting historic opportunities to practice a brand of optimistic politics that repairs relationships and improves people’s lives. We have met those moments, and after three terms it is time to pass the torch.”

State Sen. Kelly Morrison and Democratic National Committee member Ron Harris have both announced campaigns for Phillips’ congressional seat.

Phillips’ decision to not run for reelection comes amid a flurry of departures in Congress.

To the able members of Congress considering the exits (and those who can still change their mind about leaving):

I get it. Most everyone reading this column does, too. The hassles are adding up: the travel, the looming primary and general election and, especially, the chaos and toxicity that has characterized life on the Hill since January 6, 2021.

You’re wondering if it’s worth another term.

It is.

After your turkey today, you may take in some football, relax on the couch and contemplate your future. As you discuss with your loved ones whether to run for office again — or just ponder it in your own mind as you drift off in a tryptophanian haze — here’s something to consider: guilt.

Your decision isn’t taking place in isolation. The collective exodus — November has brought the most congressional retirements in any single month for over a decade — poses a direct threat to the institution. The more capable people like you who leave, the more you’re consigning the fate of Congress to those who have no business being there at all. You will only exacerbate the contagion that is prompting you to consider leaving.

Before you fling a drumstick my way and bellow about not understanding just how frustrating it can be to serve as a member of Congress today, I say this: don’t take it from me.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, with the retirements piling up and rumors of more on the way, I reached out to a group of your colleagues in both parties to help present this plea. As you will see below, they appeal to most every political impulse — patriotism, ambition and, yes, shame.

First, a few caveats.

There’s no sin in considering quitting. None of your colleagues believe this is a high-water mark in representative democracy. Norma Desmond was right, actually: The pictures have gotten smaller.

There was always a rogue’s gallery to be found in Congress, and especially in the House, but they were usually eclipsed by bigger people in both parties. Now you’re starting to wonder (Same).

And it’s the anecdotes and the moments that stick with you.

A pair of House Republicans told me separately earlier this year about a remarkable scene from Kevin McCarthy’s first battle for the speakership in January. In one of the closed-door negotiations with the holdouts, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) grew frustrated as the conversation turned to roles on “HASC.” We’re talking about “the Armed Services Committee,” Boebert exclaimed. Nobody in the room had the heart to tell her that “HASC” is an acronym for House Armed Services Committee.

Further, if you’ve had a productive run and you’re well into AARP eligibility this appeal is not for you. Enjoy those grandchildren. But before you go, please help groom and elect a capable successor, particularly if you’re in a seat where the primary is tantamount to victory.

Lastly, this does not apply to Mr. Santos of New York. You’re good to go.

For the rest of you, though, please listen. I know it’s still Thanksgiving, but consider a Christmas picture: must you be George Bailey and shown the Congress you’ll leave behind had you not been there?

The institutional memory of Congress is being hollowed out. As Paul Kane noted in The Washington Post last weekend, nearly 46 percent of House members had served less than five years as of 2021.

Consider who will take your seat if you don’t run again or if — looking at you House Class of 2018 members — you join the stampede to run for other offices.

Is that person going to be a serious-minded, dedicated legislator?

What really stung Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) was when Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) said earlier this month he would not run again, an announcement that has prompted a cascade of other retirements.

Only 49, Kilmer has a coveted slot on the House Appropriations Committee. Just as notable, he had also spent the last few years allied with a Kentucky Republican, Rep. Andy Barr, in a congressional working group to confront polarization and find ways to make Congress work better.

“It’s exactly the wrong people who are wanting to leave,” Boyle told me. “The performance artists love the circus, it’s what they crave.”

Boyle’s message to those considering the exits: “If you all leave now, you’ll only make it worse here.”

Representative Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who knows something about the value of institutional memory, was even more direct: “Don’t let the bad guys win.”

It’s not just Democrats who are angst-ridden about what more turnover could mean to Congress.

Representative Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) was impassioned, mixing patriotism with shame in her entreaty.

“It’s a function of duty — to our country, our democratic republic, our communities and our families,” Wagner, the mother of a West Point graduate, told me. “If rational, common sense, get-it-done, consensus-building conservatives give up, the do-nothing, click-bait, self-serving, chaos caucus wins. And America and the world loses.”

She wasn’t done.

“It can be rewarding, if you know you are making a difference in real people’s lives,” Wagner added. “We can’t let the noise distract us from our mission, serving a cause greater than oneself, standing up for the most vulnerable and being true selfless servants.”

Barr, the Kentuckian, pointed to the demands of this moment. “The challenges are enormous and we need the best, most experienced members who have the right temperament to come back.”

Barr’s GOP colleague from North Carolina, Patrick McHenry, offered this appeal, somewhat more to the vanity of the ambitious politician.

“The Congress is on the edge of the next great turn,” said McHenry. “And if you’re in a position to lead change for the long term, it’s desperately needed. That’s why you should stay. To lead that change. Make things better. Not because of how things are now, but because of how they can be.”

Hear that, the opportunity for greatness is there? (Students of the gentleman from North Carolina can debate whether he sees himself leading the House into this hopeful future, is genuinely torn or is merely hoping to coax his colleagues to stay while he plots private sector life after 2024.)

In all seriousness, though, this moment demands bigness. Former President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede defeat and the Capitol riot he incited are seared in the minds of lawmakers. Next year’s election and its aftermath could prove even more trying. We must, to borrow a phrase, send our best.

“Our democracy is more fragile than at any other time since the Civil War, and we need men and women dedicated to preserving our democracy in office who put the needs of the country and their constituents above their own self-interest,” said Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.), one of the newest members of Congress.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) was just as direct.

“The country is in serious trouble and it needs serious people now,” Peters said. “People have literally died defending democracy; can’t you please put up with the shit schedule, meh compensation and terrible parties to help us get it right?”

He may have lost his gavel at the Rules Committee, but Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) — whose congressional service dates to his years as a top aide to his legendary Rules predecessor Joe Moakley — said he’s never “felt a greater sense of purpose than I do right now.”

This, McGovern said, “is the time for people who love this country to stick around and fight.”

Lawmakers, adds Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), are in office to find solutions and solve problems — troubleshooting is essential to the job.

“If I was an oncologist, I wouldn’t say I only want to treat people with no disease,” Pingree said, a metaphor which itself says something about the health of our body politic. “We get hired to do our jobs in the majority or minority and they’re just as important when you’re fighting the bad guys as when you’re in charge.”

In closing, I will claim a moment of personal privilege.

As he concluded his farewell speech just over a year ago, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who served with distinction in both chambers of Congress, said something that has stayed with me. And I hope it will resonate with you.

“What we do here,” said Blunt, “is more important than who we are.”

Benjamin Johansen contributed to this report.

John Fetterman was walking past a group of pro-Palestinian protesters at the Capitol this month when, according to his aides, they accused him of having blood on his hands for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas.

The Pennsylvania Democrat then went into his Senate office and grabbed an Israeli flag, his staff said, so he could wave it at the activists while they were being arrested.

The video of him doing just that quickly went viral. Not only because of the surrealness of a shorts-and-hoodie-clad senator taunting protesters being cuffed by U.S. Capitol police, but also because, at its core, the image shocked progressives who assumed the senator was their ally.

Fetterman is known for draping himself in the pro-LGBTQ+ rainbow flag at Pride festivals, endorsing Bernie Sanders for president, and sticking it to the establishment. But when it comes to Israel, he has not simply bucked his progressive brethren, he has made it a point to show he rejects the activist left’s position.

While other pro-Israel Democrats have modified their stances amid weeks of gruesome fighting in Gaza, Fetterman has literally wrapped himself in an Israeli flag and hung up photos of the nation’s hostages outside his office. On X, formerly known as Twitter, he’s called “Free Palestine” graffiti that was sprayed outside a high school in a largely Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh “reprehensible.” He’s told a pro-Palestinian activist to her face that she should “be protesting Hamas.”

The more critical interpretation for Fetterman’s unabashed embrace of Israel, expressed by progressives, is that he has made a political calculation. In the 2022 Senate race, he earned the support of Democratic Majority of Israel, one of the more forceful pro-Israel super PACs in politics. Fetterman, the reasoning from pro-Palestinian liberals goes, is trying to keep that faction in his corner.

“He took a good amount of money from DMFI,” said Jules Berkman-Hill, a volunteer with the progressive Jewish group IfNotNow, who added that other pro-Israel groups supported him financially. “Those are all organizations that are opposing a political solution right now, and I think that speaks volumes.”

But those who have followed his career say people shouldn’t be surprised: It was always wrong to pigeonhole Fetterman ideologically.

“Whether it’s a positive or negative, I don’t think he necessarily cares about being in any club,” said Larry Ceisler, a Pennsylvania-based public relations executive.

The more sympathetic explanation, offered by Fetterman’s allies, friends and longtime observers, is that he has always been pro-Israel; he unequivocally laid out his position in last year’s Senate race; and he has been deeply affected by communities close to home.

Pennsylvania has the fifth-largest Jewish population of any state in the nation. Even more critically, his aides said the 2018 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where a gunman killed 11 people, left him distraught and forced him to confront the presence of violent antisemitism so close to home.

The synagogue is a 15-minute drive from Fetterman’s house. While it was still in the midst of an active shooter situation, staffers said, he got calls from people who lived nearby asking him if he knew what was going on. Adam Jentleson, Fetterman’s chief of staff, described the tragedy as “the formative event on this issue for him.”

It changed him politically, too. In the immediate aftermath, Fetterman forged a close relationship with a top GOP politician in the state. Fetterman was the incumbent lieutenant governor at the time, facing a challenge by Republican Jeff Bartos. Despite their feud, Fetterman personally dialed Bartos, who is Jewish, to warn him of the horror that would soon blanket the news.

“John and I became friends because he called me the morning just minutes after the shooting started at Tree of Life,” said Bartos. “He’s like, ‘I’m so sorry to be the one to call you, but I just got off the phone with the governor. There’s a shooting happening right now at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. It’s going to be bad.’”

Later that day, Bartos said he reached back out to Fetterman to thank him. “I said I’m calling to let you know that you’re a mensch. And he chuckled and said, ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’”

The Pennsylvania electorate didn’t split over the Tree of Life shooting. The war is different. Still, Fetterman’s supporters and other people who have closely followed his career said it is no coincidence that the positions where he has parted ways with progressives have often been issues that matter to constituents in his home of western Pennsylvania. His biggest departure from the left prior to Israel came on energy policy: He opposes a ban on fracking, a major priority for that region of his state.

He also has privately and, at times, publicly chafed at what he sees as progressive litmus tests and academic left-wing language. Last year, he described himself as “pro-policing” and said the call to “defund the police” was an “absurd phrase.”

“There’s a lot of things about John, honestly, that never fit into the traditional progressive image,” said Jentleson. “And this has always been one of them.”

Progressives who long viewed Fetterman as one of their own have had to reconcile their adoration for the senator with his irreverence toward their position on the war. Their backlash has been swift.

Last month, pro-Palestinian activists shut down the street in front of Fetterman’s office in Philadelphia for hours, parading around a giant puppet of him wearing a shirt that read “silent on genocide.” A group of Fetterman’s former campaign aides also signed on to a letter that called his unabashed embrace of Israel in the war a “gutting betrayal.”

Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said Fetterman’s “positions on Israel have always leaned toward the hawkish.” But, she added, “I am still a bit shocked by the level of disdain that he has been giving to a growing anti-war movement.”

It’s that trollish style that frustrates Fetterman’s opponents the most.

Matt Howard is a board member of the group About Face: Veterans Against the War, the group of activists that Fetterman ridiculed earlier this month as they were arrested at the Capitol.

“I honestly felt frustrated,” Howard said. “If he disagreed with them, that’s one thing. It didn’t totally make sense to me that he would resort to mocking folks.”

Another member of the group, Brittany DeBarros, said Fetterman smirked and waved sarcastically at her during the arrests. Earlier in the day, she had prodded him on camera over his refusal to back a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas (to which he told her to go protest Hamas). She disputed the idea that activists verbally attacked him first.

But to people on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Fetterman’s in-your-face approach has been a revelation: Ideologies — or at least the public perception of them — aren’t rigid and allies can be found in unexpected places.

“He gets out there and fights for his views,” said Mark Mellman, president of DMFI, “whatever the issue.”

Myah Ward and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.