Paul Ryan's Democratic challenger raked in campaign cash after Ryan deleted a tweet touting a $1.50 weekly paycheck raise

(Image credit: Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images for Politicon)

published 5 February 2018

A Democratic challenger to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has profited handsomely from a misguided tweet Ryan sent over the weekend. The Hill reported Monday that Ryan's potential foe, Randy Bryce, raised more than $130,000 in nearly 24 hours after Ryan wrote on Twitter touting a woman's $1.50 weekly raise as evidence of the good the Republican tax bill has done.

The since-deleted tweet prompted blowback from critics who felt Ryan's praising of an extra $1.50 per week was laughable. Bryce screenshotted the tweet before Ryan could scrub it, and used it to ask for donations, specifically prompting supporters to "chip in $1.50." Many donors did just that, as Bryce told Politico that nearly half of the nearly $130,000 sum came in increments of $1.50.

In total, The Hill reported that by Sunday afternoon, Bryce had received more than 10,000 contributions after calling attention to Ryan's deleted tweet. Bryce's haul is fairly impressive, given that it equates to about 10 percent of the $1.3 million in funds he had left at the end of 2017. But it's a modest bump compared to Ryan's war chest: The House speaker ended 2017 with about $10 million on hand, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.

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