In December 2023, a woman living in a small community near Austin, Texas, made a $78.08 contribution through WinRed. A few weeks later, she made another.
Then came four more contributions in January 2024.
Those were the first six entries under her name in Federal Election Commission records stretching back decades. Since then, her name has appeared 126,739 times — including 1,011 times in reports filed by U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri.
And she is one of 13 donors with numerous contributions flagged in three letters the FEC sent this year to Schmitt’s campaign committee asking about donations that appear to exceed federal limits and other issues with his reports.
None of the 13 donors flagged in the FEC letters live in Missouri, and none gave to Schmitt when he sought election to his first term in the Senate in 2022. He has raised $4.3 million since the start of 2025 for the 2028 election.
Those 13 donors are, collectively, listed in Schmitt’s FEC reports almost 5,700 times, donating $85,672 after accounting for negative amounts entered for each donor in subsequent and amended reports. The totals for each donor range from just over the donation limit of $3,500 to more than $10,500.
The Independent unsuccessfully attempted to contact the donors to understand why their names had been listed so many times.
The records offer a window into the increasingly automated world of online political fundraising, where a small number of donors can generate thousands of transactions and campaigns must keep track of whether those contributions exceed federal limits.
Online fundraising platforms can process recurring contributions automatically, and a single donation can generate multiple entries in federal records as money moves through a platform, political committee and candidate campaign. That can leave regulators sorting out whether unusual patterns reflect legitimate giving, reporting errors or contributions a donor may not have intended to continue.
The issue is familiar in Missouri. Lawmakers this year tightened state campaign finance rules after The Independent reported that a 92-year-old Nebraska veteran had become an unwitting recurring donor to former state Sen. Bill Eigel’s campaign for St. Charles County executive. State and local candidates now must obtain clear consent for recurring contributions, send a receipt after every donation and stop them when asked or after the election. No such restrictions exist at the federal level.
Schmitt’s campaign did not respond to a request for comments on the FEC letters.
The first FEC letter raising concerns about Schmitt’s fundraising listed 10 contributors with at least 20 donations during 2025. The second, sent after Schmitt’s campaign filed its report for the first quarter of the year, included inquiries about seven donors, six of whom were also listed in the first letter.
The third letter, sent after the report for the second quarter of the year, listed 10 donors, including eight listed in one or more of the previous letters.
The FEC letters do not establish that Schmitt’s campaign or any donor violated federal law. They are requests from commission staff seeking corrections or explanations for apparent problems in campaign finance reports.
“It does not mean there’s been a violation of the law,” Bradley Smith, a former chairman of the FEC, told The Independent. “It does not mean there’s going to be a fine on the campaign. It’s simply saying you’ve got reporting problems, and we’d like to either have this corrected or explained.”
The letters raise other issues as well, including incomplete information about some donors, donors who made single or a handful of donations that exceed the limits and information about the source of donations passed through a conduit to the campaign.
Federal candidate campaigns are allowed to accept donations of up to $3,500 from individuals for each election. A campaign can collect that amount for the primary election and again for the general election and can accept funds for the general election before the primary is held.
The letters said Schmitt’s campaign had the option of redesignating excessive amounts for the primary to the general, splitting the donations from joint banking accounts between the individuals on the account, refunding the money or, when the donor could not be reached, turning it over to the U.S. Treasury.
“Although the commission may take further legal action concerning the acceptance of excessive contributions, your prompt action to refund, redesignate, and/or reattribute the excessive amount will be taken into consideration,” the first letter stated.
In response to the first letter, Janna Rutland, Schmitt’s campaign treasurer, wrote that an amended report was filed addressing the issues.
“After filing the original report, the committee discovered that a software error caused donor information to be mismatched, which resulted in reporting errors,” Rutland wrote.
The amended report included “any necessary reattributions, redesignations, or refunds,” Rutland wrote.
Rutland has submitted similar letters responding to the FEC’s other letters.
Recurring contributions
Most of the 13 people the FEC inquired about had infrequent, if any, contributions to federal candidates prior to the advent of online donation portals.
Democrats launched the first one, ActBlue, in 2004. The Republican alternative, WinRed, was founded in 2019. Both platforms have faced scrutiny over online fundraising practices, including recurring contributions and whether donors always understand how frequently they have agreed to give.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a 2021 article, wrote that many times, the design of the donation page is intended to draw your eyes away from the notice that it will be a recurring donation.
“A pre-checked box to donate more than you intended is just one example of a ‘dark pattern’ — a term coined by user experience (UX) designer Harry Brignull to define tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn’t mean to, such as buying a service,” the organization reported.
During the 2015-16 election cycle, the 13 Schmitt donors were listed 128 times in FEC reports, with seven not appearing at all. For the 2025-26 election cycle, those 13 donors are listed almost 600,000 times across federal campaign finance records.
The number includes multiple entries tied to the same donation, with initial recipients reporting, as well as the campaigns and PACs that receive a share.
Smith was a Republican member of the FEC from 2000 to 2005 and was appointed chairman by President George W. Bush. After leaving the commission, Smith founded the Center for Competitive Politics, now the Institute for Free Speech, and his academic work was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision allowing corporations to spend directly in political campaigns.
The practices of both parties’ online fundraising efforts need to be investigated, Smith said.
“My sort of vague sense,” Smith said, “is that the FEC has probably not done enough to either investigate these items or ask campaigns to install certain safeguards to make sure that you don’t end up with people sending multiple contributions.”
The case of the woman from Texas who had no donations before 2023 and more than 125,000 entries in the records in the past two years is particularly troubling, he said.
“This kind of thing, were I still sitting on the commission, it would raise my eyebrows,” Smith said.
There are many explanations for why a particular donor would have duplicate entries associated with the same contribution, Smith said.
That would explain some, but not all, of the entries associated with each name, he said.
“When you have a number as large as you have in this case, certainly this should raise questions,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison of Springfield, a Republican seeking reelection this year in the 7th District, said he opposes trying to ban or limit recurring donations.
“Whether you’re using your credit card online to make any kind of contribution or purchase anything, I’ve always fallen under the belief that people are intelligent agents,” Burlison said. “They know what they’re doing. It’s their money. They have every right to make those decisions. And as long as you’re being clear on the form and giving everybody the ability to choose, I don’t see what the problem is.”
Not alone
Schmitt is not alone in receiving recurring campaign donations. And four other Republicans from Missouri — Burlison, U.S. Reps. Jason Smith of Salem and Ann Wagner of St. Louis County as well as U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley — have received numerous contributions from some of the same donors listed on the letters to Schmitt.
The WinRed site is a great help to campaigns, Burlison said.
“It’s a very effective tool, and it’s easier for people to be able to make contributions,” he said. “As candidates, we’re able to save money on our fees for credit card fees.”
But the volume of small donations it creates means campaigns must watch whether another $5 or $10 contribution will push a donor over the federal limit.
Like Schmitt, Burlison has received letters from the FEC seeking information, and one included a list of his donations from the Texas woman with more than 125,000 donations nationally also highlighted in FEC letters to Schmitt.
The letter was troubling, Burlison said.
“We blocked her back in July because of the volume of the transactions. It just seemed when we got the letter, we agreed that, yeah, that’s a strange volume of contributions,” Burlison said.
The 286 donations listed in his reports were coming daily, sometimes twice a day, he said. The smallest contribution was 25 cents. The largest was $30.
“In her case,” Burlison said, “we blocked her because it was so continuous and it was almost like being spammed with these small dollar donations.”
