The party launched the campaign for cash in hopes of rebounding from internal strife that reached its zenith last year with the defeat of then-U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary and is playing out in the Virginia House speaker's primary race.
At stake is the party's ability to retain its majority in the state Senate this year and deliver the swing state for the Republican presidential nominee in 2016.
More than 1,000 donors raised about $145,000, according to the party, and two deep pockets supporters pitched in another $50,000 each: venture capitalist Pete Snyder and Curtis Colgate, a party leader from Virginia Beach.
"We have a huge new donor base that didn't exist before. That is gold to any political operation. It shows that our base is fired up for 2015 and 2016," said Snyder, who is serving as the party's finance chairman through the end of the year. The numbers show they are "slowly but surely righting financial ship of the party," he said.
The state parties don't have to file reports listing their donors to their state operations until later this summer. Federal filings from April show the state GOP maintains about $193,000 in debt compared to the state Democrats' $52,000 in debt.
In response to the Republicans' push, Morgan Finkelstein, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia, noted Hillary Rodham Clinton will make her first scheduled stop in Virginia on June 26 in Fairfax.
"If the RPV wants to see what real grassroots fundraising looks like, they should come to our Hillary Clinton event in June," she said.
Like state parties around the country, the Virginia GOP has seen its fundraising base diminish with the proliferation of groups that do not have to disclose their donors.
Cantor's loss also discouraged some business-oriented Republicans from opening their checkbooks for a party whose internal governing body is controlled by a coalition of activists calling themselves the Conservative Fellowship.
