Frank's tweet is funny, not because of the silly argument as I get what he's trying to say, the presidential campaigns don't need small donations as much as her campaign or ones like it. (Except for that part where they need high numbers of donations to get in the debates.)
The funny part is he so handwaves the hundreds of thousands of dollars it'd cost her to win the seat. It's probably closer to a million, maybe two. And this is in a district that doesn't have a real general election, although if Wu were to win the nomination the GOP might actually put up a candidate. (I haven't looked to see if Lynch could run independently and then destroy her.)
Brianna's already spent $100,000 this cycle, Lynch has spent $150,000. But Lynch is sitting on a warchest of $1.5 million. Brianna's spent $50,000 of her Frank's money again. We're basically a year from the primary which is September 15th, 2020. In 2018, Brianna spent $150,000 of which $100,000 was Frank's money. How much are they willing to spend for this cycle? Lynch hasn't even started fundraising seriously, as last time he pulled in $800,000 that he barely touched.
I'm not saying you can't win a congressional primary on the cheap, but in certain states you definitely cannot. AOC's little spunky out of nowhere campaign spent $1.7 million to win her primary. And she infamously worked the district by foot. Brianna can barely stay in hers. Brianna's funding split actually looks like AOC's does now, in terms of being 20/80 in-state/out-state. And AOC is the most famous freshman congresswoman in the country. Her first campaign didn't look like that, she raised $400,000 in New York City crushing every other place she got money from even after she started to take off on the internet.
Wu's raised $900 more in Boston than in Seattle. Wu has raised more money in Seattle and San Francisco than Lynch has in DC, and she's raised more from New York and San Jose than Lynch has from literally anywhere else. Without Frank's money, she's raised a pathetic $12,443 in the Boston area. Lynch already has $80,219. And again he's got that $1.5 million sitting around.
I get the impression that Frank is really into this, but they can't afford their burn rate. I highly doubt Brianna can tap HUGE amounts from out of state as she's toxic outside of her niche which she's probably already squeezed for donations once.
You know how candidates like John Kerry and Mitt Romney have self-funded presidential campaigns in the past? Even Trump was asked by campaign experts just how much of his own money he was willing to put in. If you don't know this before hand you run a danger of what Kerry did, he overpromised, then needed to get the money and it ballooned to where even he was starting to penny pinch everywhere at the worst times. Both Trump and Romney were much more restrained. (Hence why the Trump campaign barely existed for much of 2015 and he maximized free media at every chance.)
Is Frank willing to spend a million dollars? $500,000? $250,000? It's not that he has to, it's that Lynch can start throwing that kind of cash around. And Brianna is totally incapable of running the sort of low cost campaign that can rack up high vote per dollar totals.
Remember when I said she spent $150,000 in 2018? That got her 16,878 votes. That's nearly $9 a vote. That's remarkably high for such a losing campaign. Lynch chose to take no chances and bury her, spending three times as much in total. He still spent less per vote. And in the end he made a "profit" (left the campaign with more cash on hand than he started with) of $300,000 on the campaign as he didn't have to spend anything in the general.
This is why as goofy and fun as he is, somebody like Warren was so important to her campaign in that he could look at and do campaign stuff. Lynch obviously doesn't do that, he has people for it, especially as an incumbent. Every candidate at this level should be like that. The impression they give is Frank is handling all that stuff now and that's totally going to wreck them even if he has a remarkable track record of bailing Brianna out.
Of course you can disregard all of this because it's pretty much just another grift of Brianna's rather than a serious attempt at winning an election. I just read Frank's tweet and got caught up in wondering how much the man is willing to spend on this and what that amount is going to have to look like if he is serious.