President Joe Biden only took office a week ago, but some members of the Washington University community are already looking beyond the 2022 midterms to a 2024 Senate race. A group of University alumni has created a political action committee (PAC) aimed at defeating Senator Josh Hawley in his potential 2024 re-election bid.

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The PAC, U Against Hawley, is the latest form of opposition to Hawley after the senator helped incite the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by being the first senator to announce an objection to the certification of the 2020 electoral college results.

U Against Hawley hit its initial goal of raising $5,000 within one week of last Wednesday’s launch, PAC founder Dan Gaynor, a member of the class of 2010, said. However, he has much higher hopes for the future.

“I’m hoping we can get to $1 million by 2024 and knock the socks off that guy at the ballot box,” Gaynor said. He declined to provide specific fundraising numbers, but said Tuesday morning that more than forty donors had contributed to the PAC.

After the group’s first Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing deadline in April, the public will be able to access fundraising totals, a list of donors and other spending information.

Other opponents of the senator formed Just Oust Seditious Hacks (JOSH), a PAC with similar goals, Jan. 13, but Gaynor and others thought that other sorts of fundraising could be beneficial in the efforts against Hawley as well. U Against Hawley is a multicandidate PAC, meaning that, unlike super PACs, the organization can donate directly to individual candidates.

For Jordan Roberts, a graduate of the class of 2010 who has been handling FEC compliance for the PAC, the possibility that even an extensive advertising and advocacy campaign could get Hawley to resign did not seem realistic. A PAC seemed like a better way to push for long-term change.

“Ultimately, this is a strategy that we think can be most impactful and have an actual result, because I don’t think any of us were fully confident that [Hawley] would just voluntarily remove himself from the situation,” Roberts said.

He and Gaynor framed the PAC’s work as a way of having an impact on the state that they say had an incredible impact on their own lives while at Washington University.

“Even if they don’t live there now, I think everyone has an affinity and connection to the school and a certain pride in standing up for and wanting to see the best for St. Louis, specifically in our case, and the state at large,” Roberts said, noting that this PAC could be one part of a broader effort to make sure that Missouri’s elected officials better represent the state’s people going forward.

The group cannot give more than $10,000 to any individual candidate ($5,000 for a primary election and $5,000 for a general election). Still, Gaynor maintained that those direct donations could make a difference. “I’ve worked in offices where 50 people are sharing the bathroom [and where] the only food available is a Costco bucket of pretzels,” he said, referring to past experience on political campaigns. “$10,000 makes an enormous difference in a campaign that is combating an incumbent.”

The PAC’s tools extend beyond direct donations to campaigns. Multicandidate PACs can give up to $15,000 per year to a party national committee, and the organization can sponsor advertisements, flyers and other campaign materials.

While PAC leadership expects that most viable challengers to Hawley will be Democrats, organizers remain open to donating to Republicans. Teddy White, a member of the class of 2011 who is an informal advisor to the PAC, stressed that the organization’s goal is more about defending democractic principles than anything partisan in nature. “We want to have representatives that have a higher baseline of integrity, and Hawley very clearly showed that he doesn’t meet the bar,” he said.

The group plans to consider Republicans on a case-by-case basis. “If you take, for example, somebody who has displayed the courage of [Utah Senator] Mitt Romney, for example, or Jeff Flake, the former senator from Arizona, we certainly would consider supporting that candidate,” Gaynor said.

Eventually, a steering committee will determine how to disburse the money, and Gaynor said the PAC will be transparent with its donation strategy. For the time being, however, the PAC will wait and build up resources for future candidates. The PAC might extend support beyond 2024 Senate candidates to include other politicians who could help challenge Hawley in the future, such as House candidates or state and local elected officials, though the latter would both require the creation of a state-based PAC.

“Regardless of which candidates emerge, we want to let those candidates know that they’re going to have support, as long as they abide by democratic principles, from U Against Hawley PAC from the start,” Gaynor said.

So far, the PAC has done no marketing—all of its fundraising has come from word-of-mouth as organizers reach out to their friends, acquaintances and networks. While the organizers are mainly University alumni (Gaynor, Roberts and White were all part of a KWUR political talk show in the late 2000s), they have made efforts to make the PAC as inclusive as possible. In addition to raising money from University alumni and others across the country, they said they had received donations from alumni of other Missouri institutions such as Saint Louis University, the University of Missouri and Fontbonne University.

“It strikes a chord with people,” White said. “Everyone seems to be very happy because it’s a step beyond just bemoaning the situation.”

The response has also impressed Gaynor. “It’s been really, really encouraging to see donations roll in from both Democrats and Republicans, people who make a lot of money and people who are just barely scratching by during the pandemic,” he said. “They understand that regardless of how this election turned out, we’ve got to set the standard for all future elections that the will of the people is upheld, and that political expediency or preparing for your own presidential run in 2024 isn’t an excuse to incite a mob to invade our capitol with zip ties and knives and guns.”

Some have mentioned Hawley as a potential candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, but Business Insider reported Tuesday that Hawley has said he will not run for president in 2024. However, Hawley campaigned for Missouri Attorney General in 2016 on the promise that he would not use the office as a springboard for political gain, but later announced his Senate run within a year of taking office.

In 2018, Hawley won his Senate race against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill by nearly six percentage points, 51.4-45.6. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, McCaskill’s campaign spent more than three times as much as Hawley’s—$38.7 million versus $11.4 million—and had more support from outside groups, $44.6 million versus $32.1 million respectively.

Hawley’s office did not respond to requests for comment.