Wittman serves big donors, not you

No wonder he doesn’t bother with town hall meetings

Greetings from Wittman Watch HQ!

• Last week we wrote about why Wittman refuses to hold town hall meetings.

• On Tuesday we continued our Myth of the Week series: Does Wittman help families?

• Scroll down to see our social media roundup for the week.

(This post was updated on 17 February to include data about candidate Jason Knapp.)

He who pays the piper calls the tune. So who pays Wittman? We looked at his campaign finance filings to find out, and the answer is: almost no individuals in VA-01 at all, and mostly defense companies and single-issue lobbyists. What does that mean? Wittman doesn’t feel accountable to us, the regular people of VA-01.

In the American political system, money does buy influence. Every electoral candidate’s campaign files quarterly financial reports with the FEC. The reports identify which individuals and organizations contributed to each candidate, as well as when and how much. An examination of these facts shows us where a candidate’s loyalties lie.

(Note: The latest campaign finance reports preceded the release of Virginia’s proposed redistricting maps, which won’t be approved before late April. Until the new maps are finalized or discarded, we’ll continue to compare Wittman to the Democratic candidates running in VA-01 as it exists today.)

When we take a look at the numbers, there are some very clear conclusions to draw from Wittman’s campaign funding.

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Wittman has minimal popular support in VA-01

** Grassroots support for Wittman is astonishingly low. Just 1.5% of his funds came from individuals donating less than $200. A typical candidate might get 15-20% from small donors. Wittman’s 1.5% is a damning indictment of how disconnected he is from people in VA-01.

Defense companies pay to play — conflicts of interest be damned

The FEC lists the individuals and entities that donate to candidates, but it doesn’t code them by industry. Fortunately, OpenSecrets.org does! They’re working on the 2025 data now, but we can see from 2024 data that 21% of Wittman’s money came from defense or defense aerospace companies (and individuals associated with those industries). Wittman is Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee. Surely Wittman wouldn’t accept money from companies whose work he oversees as a legislator…? Come on, you know the answer to that. Even worse: many of these corporate donors aren’t even based in Virginia, let alone the First District, so his influence is being bought to benefit people he doesn’t even represent!

Lobbyists and Political Action Committees (PACs) use their funds to influence Wittman

The Netanyahu-supporting American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was his second-largest contributor organization. Is it coincidental that Wittman has supported Israel military aid packages and NDAA provisions funding joint U.S.-Israeli military AI development? No, we don’t think so, either.

Wealthy folks donate heavily. People associated with defense, real estate, and finance/insurance, as well as retirees, dominate his individual donations.

Cash advantage but diminishing grassroots momentum

Wittman has large cash reserves…

… But he lacks momentum for November.

Wittman has $3.2 million on hand right now, but he raised only $309,356 in Q4. Shannon Taylor alone raised $376,520 in that same time period.

Wittman’s fundraising efforts are slowing down just when we would expect them to be accelerating

In Q4, he raised 12.5% of his whole year’s funds, while Taylor got 49.1%, Melvin Tull achieved 28.9%, Salaam Bhatti hit 19.2%, and Jason Knapp kicked off his campaign fundraising. As a group, Wittman’s opponents handily outraised him in Q4. Remember: Wittman’s an incumbent whose party has the House majority, the Senate majority, AND the Presidency. He should be raking in the donations right now in the run-up to the election, but he’s not — contributions are slowing down. That’s an ominous sign for Wittman’s ambitions to retain our seat in Congress, whether or not Virginia is redistricted.

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Wittman’s money comes from large donors, organizations, and companies he oversees as a legislator, as well as from lobbyists — and almost nothing comes from grassroots contributions from the people of VA-01.

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It’s clear that regular people haven’t given Wittman money. But do they give anyone money? Yes — they absolutely do!

Regular people in VA-01 overwhelmingly favor Wittman’s opponents

Let’s look at some of the candidates running against Wittman whose data was made available by the FEC. (Data for Jason Knapp was not complete at the time of our initial review, and we added it on 2/17/26; Elizabeth Dempsey-Beggs, Ericka Kopp, Tim Cywinski, and Lewis Littlepage had minimal or zero donations in the past quarter.)

• Shannon Taylor: 17.4% of her funds came from individuals donating less than $200 (look for “Unitemized individual contributions” on the report, and divide that by “Total receipts”).

• Melvin Tull, Jason Knapp, and Salaam Bhatti: 17.3%, 20.4%, and 27.5% respectively.

So Taylor, Tull, Knapp, and Bhatti are handily meeting or (in Bhatti’s case) exceeding expectations on their share of small donors, which is extremely promising.

Of these donations, most arise from the reputations and professional backgrounds of the candidates — Taylor as a prosecutor, Tull as a business lawyer, Knapp as a veteran and business owner, and Bhatti as a public interest lawyer — and the local VA-01 communities in which they’ve served and worked. Donations are also coming from professional organizations such as legal professional groups. These are candidates who know and are powered by the people they aim to serve — the exact opposite of Rob Wittman, who refuses to even hold a town hall in our district.

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Accountability is key

If we want to uphold and improve America’s democracy, we need to begin with what the people of VA-01 want and need, NOT what Wittman’s big donors and puppet-masters are paying him to deliver.

So what do you want? Wittman, who relies on PACs and defense‑industry money, and doesn’t try to listen to regular people in VA-01 at all? Or someone like Taylor, Tull, or Bhatti, whose fundraising is driven by small contributions, local professionals, and communities whose identities and livelihoods are directly tied to the issues at stake?

Money isn’t the whole story. But it is the clearest, most verifiable sign of whose calls get answered first by whoever occupies VA-01’s seat in Congress. The fundraising data makes one thing undeniable:

Wittman has the money machine. His opponents have the people of this district.

Will that be enough to overcome a seven‑figure incumbent war chest? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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You can ensure your priorities are advanced by donating to whichever candidate(s) you are excited about. We recommend checking out the candidates in this Speed Dating video from mid-January, and then using the links below to donate to whomever best reflects your values, hopes, and needs. (The list is ordered by candidate’s last name.)

• Salaam Bhatti

• Tim Cywinski

• Elizabeth Dempsey-Beggs

• Jason Knapp

• Ericka Kopp

• Lewis Littlepage

• Shannon Taylor

• Melvin Tull

• Rob Wittman (yes, we’re including him too; he’s running in VA-01, after all!)

** This graph was updated on 2/12/26 12:06pm to correctly match the numbers in the text.

As seen on our socials

Our social media channels respond quickest to whatever Wittman does or says. Here’s a selection from the past week. Click on each post to see them on BlueSky (no account necessary). Follow us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit to get immediate updates each time we post.

That’s a wrap

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This November, we’ll make sure our seat is filled by someone who’ll work for us.