House Speaker Mike Johnson’s joint fundraising committee, Grow the Majority, raised more than $24.1 million in the first quarter of the year, led by billionaires in the fossil fuel and investment industries. The donations, mostly from two dozen big donors, help House Republicans protect their razor-thin majority as they work to pass energy legislation cheered by the fossil industry lobby and extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Overall, Johnson said he raised $32.3 million in Q1, which he touted in a press release as his largest quarterly haul as speaker.
Formed in 2023 after he became speaker, the committee gives Johnson a way to accept large donations of up to low-seven-figure amounts that get split out to dozens of participating PACs, including Johnson’s campaign, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and the campaigns of numerous front-line members like Arizona’s Rep. David Schweikert.
The largest donors were oil and gas billionaire Tim Dunn and retired investor Rex Sinquefeld, each of whom gave $1.1 million in March. Dunn, the CEO of Texas fracking company Crownquest, reportedly banked around $2.2 billion from the sale of his fracking company to Occidental Petroleum, a deal that closed in August 2024. Occidental bills itself as a top producer in the U.S. Permian Basin and belongs to lobbying groups like the American Petroleum Institute (API) that are cheering Trump’s deregulatory energy policies.
