A Republican gathering that has been described as a midterm convention, a rally and a fundraiser will be held at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Sept. 9 and 10. (neiu20001/Getty Images)
The Republican National Committee is promoting its September gathering in Dallas as both a midterm convention and a fundraiser with no official business being conducted.
That lack of clarity reflects a broader pattern: Straightforward questions have produced few straight answers.
The new nonprofit hosting the Texas gathering is registered with the IRS from a mailing address nearly 1,800 miles away in Massachusetts – the same address listed for MAGA Inc., the pro-Donald Trump super PAC whose treasurer is also the listed custodian of the event’s nonprofit and a treasurer for several Republican committees. Despite the clear ties to the GOP, the host committee claims to be nonpartisan.
Even the name of the event depends on who you ask. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters termed it “Trumpapalooza.” The RNC labeled it a midterm convention while a county GOP party in Texas said the parent organization actually considers it a “ticketed fundraiser and rally.” The state party calls it a “convention rally.” Trump has described it as a rally. Experts say it’s a fundraiser.
“The problem with it is, it’s not really a convention,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution, told OpenSecrets.
One thing it hasn’t been – transparent.
Roughly four months have passed since Gruters unveiled plans for the convention in late April, and two months since Trump’s June announcement that the event would take place in Dallas on Sept. 9 and 10. Yet with the gathering approaching, key financial details remain undisclosed – from the basic cost of renting the arena to how much of the security and policing bill may ultimately fall on taxpayers to how the RNC is paying for it.
“Whenever a political committee is spending money to host an event, people need to know who has given funds to pay for that event,” Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for campaign finance at Campaign Legal Center, told OpenSecrets. Noting that donors could potentially exert influence over candidates benefiting from the event, she added that it’s “also important to know who parties and candidates are associating with and to make sure they’re spending their funds properly and in compliance with the law.”
Without a presidential nomination, convention account is off limits
The biggest questions center on who is paying for the event. OpenSecrets reached out to multiple RNC spokespeople across the party’s hierarchy with questions about the financial architecture supporting the event but did not receive any responses.
Experts say one thing the GOP cannot do is use funds from its convention account. A law passed in 2014 allows parties to set up separate fundraising accounts dedicated to paying for certain expenses related to presidential nominating conventions– which the September event is not.
The Dallas 2026 Host Committee, the private group supporting the event, told The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 19 that it raised $45 million in 27 days from local, state and national individuals and companies. It did not identify donors or contribution amounts. OpenSecrets found no donation records in IRS or FEC databases – which in itself is not surprising, because any filings would not be due for months. Co-chair Ray Washburne later told Reuters that organizers will fully fund the event but did not provide specifics.
“It does not appear that we’re going to have [a financial report] with this entity, because though it’s calling itself a host committee, I think it is not viewing itself or behaving as a host committee would in the legal sense,” Ports said. “Because this is not a true presidential nominating convention.”
The only active group listed in the IRS’ database of nonprofits with the terms “Dallas” and “host” in its name is an entity called the Dallas Host Committee. Its mailing address is in Beverly, Mass. As of Aug. 31, its lone publicly available IRS records include a letter notifying the group – and custodian Charles Gantt – that it had been approved as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a note stating that contributions to the group are tax-deductible.
The letter lists an incorporation date of April 28 – the same day an identically named organization registered both with the Texas Comptroller’s Office and the Texas Secretary of State’s office. The three directors listed in the secretary of state’s database – former Trump administration official Trent Morse and Washburne and his wife Heather, both GOP donors – are among those identified as co-chairs on the committee’s website. OpenSecrets reached out to Gantt and the three co-chairs but did not receive responses.
Gantt runs Bulldog Compliance from the same Beverly address that appears in IRS records for the Dallas Host Committee and in FEC records for MAGA Inc., which as of July 31 held $403 million in cash on hand. Gantt’s firm helped establish more than a dozen conservative nonprofit groups that collectively raised $488 million during the 2024 election cycle, a March 2026 WBUR investigation found. FEC records also show Gantt as treasurer of SAG PAC, which supported Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign, along with a number of Republican political committees.
The Dallas committee’s 501(c)(3) designation prevents it from campaigning for political candidates. Under IRS rules, 501(c)(3) groups are prohibited from spending to intervene in elections. “They’re not even supposed to be able to spend a penny on politics,” Ports said. The committee told The Dallas Morning News that the money it raises will promote the city and its economy and help with government-related costs.
“This Dallas Host Committee, if it stuck to just promoting Dallas, making Dallas look good, that would be permissible – as long as it’s not crossing that line to making contributions to the RNC or the state party,” Ports said. “Then, it would be operating within the realm of campaign finance laws and tax status.”
One section of the committee’s website states that it is a “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support the City of Dallas and the State of Texas.” Yet its web address – GOPDallas2026.com – features the party’s partisan-by-definition nickname.
The price of admission to ‘Trumpapalooza’
The event stands in contrast to a traditional party convention – where selected delegates convene to elect the party’s presidential nominee. On July 7, the GOP in Denton County, Texas, posted that the RNC says this event is “a ticketed fundraiser and rally, not a traditional national convention” with no party business being conducted.
“Political party conventions generally have rules of the road for who gets to go, and there’s generally competition to be able to go,” Kamarck said. “There’s nothing like that. It’s just a gathering. Who knows who these people will be?”
Several GOP groups across the country offered access to the event at varying price points. The Texas GOP advertised several ticketing tiers ranging from a $20,000 “honorary delegate” credential to a $5,000 “honorary guest” tier, with orders due by mid-July, according to a flyer accompanying the Denton County Facebook post. The North Dakota GOP offered three VIP-level packages, including an “honorary presidential delegate” package with two floor-seat tickets for $5,000, along with ticket prices ranging from $200 for an “honorary convention guest” ticket to $500 for a pair of “honorary president delegate” tickets. Michigan Republicans were offering 20 “honorary delegate” credentials, which include floor access, hotel accommodations and ground transportation at rates of $5,000 for one or $7,500 for two.
In late August, however, the GOP began offering free tickets through a lottery with some recipients also receiving unspecified “VIP access.”
The nonprofit host committee also offered a VIP package but did not publicly disclose its price. The “White Glove Experience” includes luxury hotel accommodations, private airport transfers and transportation and access to exclusive receptions, hospitality and VIP experiences.
Additionally, USA Today, citing an unidentified source familiar with the situation, reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee is asking House members who are attending to help with fundraising by contributing at least $25,000. It was unclear whether those contributions would come from members’ campaign accounts or other funds. OpenSecrets reached out to the NRCC for clarification but did not receive a response.
“Those ticket prices … and the absence of any sort of party-run process for electing who goes there, the combination makes it sound to me like it’s one great big fundraiser – you know, it’s a fundraiser in the sky,” Kamarck said.
City leaders have ‘process’ to track safety costs
City projections indicate costs for police, transportation and public works to reach roughly $2 million.
Those estimates include $1.8 million for Dallas Police and $14,000 for transportation and public works, Kevin Odom, the city’s director of emergency management crisis response, told City Council’s finance committee during an Aug. 24 meeting. Some of those costs may be deferred by special event permits and could be “potentially reimbursable” by existing contracts, he said.
“We have a process for tracking all of the costs associated with the event,” he continued.
Exactly how the reimbursement process will work remains unclear. The RNC says it will help with those expenses and Dallas City Manager Kimberly Tolbert said the bill will not fall to city residents, KXAS-TV in Dallas reported Aug. 27.
Who’s paying to rent the arena?
Finally, there’s the issue of “where” – the American Airlines Center. Few details have been disclosed about the finances surrounding the agreement with the arena, home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and NHL’s Dallas Stars.
OpenSecrets made repeated requests for the facility rental agreement between event organizers and the Dallas-owned venue. In response to one such request, a spokesperson for the city secretary’s office acknowledged that the city owns the facility, but the arena’s management company books events, sets prices and “determines all logistics.”
The spokesperson referred the inquiry to the arena and Visit Dallas, an independent nonprofit that promotes the city’s tourism efforts. Visit Dallas spokesperson Zane Harrington told OpenSecrets that his organization does not have a copy of the lease, has no access to the rental-fee terms or any other subsidies or allocations connected to arena operations related to the event, and directed inquiries to arena management – which did not respond to OpenSecrets’ requests for comment or the document.
In the broadest sense, with the event drawing near, many of those basic financial questions – who paid, how much and what they received in return – remain unanswered.
“It’s kind of a mystery to me as to what they expect to accomplish here, other than a big rally,” Kamarck said.
