Money Can’t Buy Me Votes

Having exhausted the possibilities of “doing a good job” and “making Americans happy,” Republicans have resorted to swamping the opposition with cash in a bid to salvage what is shaping up to be a disastrous midterm election. This has become most apparent in Senate races, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) outspent its Democratic counterpart (the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, or DSCC) in August by 46-to-1. If you add up the ten most competitive Senate races, the Republican lead in outside spending is $269 million, an almost unthinkable number. Republicans were way behind in spending for Ken Paxton in Texas, and now they have a $102 million lead in money deployed. That money’s going to go further thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that gives joint campaign ads between a candidate and an outside committee the lowest unit rate.

More from David Dayen

President Trump’s affiliated super PACs, No Going Back and Safety and Affordability, are on track to spend well over $130 million across House and Senate races over the next six weeks. But that sentence offers a key tell about why none of this is going to work. Like AIPAC before them, the Trump umbrella group MAGA Inc. is concealing itself by routing its support through neutral-sounding PACs, a maneuver that only needs to be attempted when the donor is absolutely toxic. And with a 32 percent approval rating, a failed war in limbo that is peaking gas and diesel prices, and stances on AI and data centers way out of step with the rest of the nation, toxic is an accurate descriptor of the president of the United States.

Some of this money would be better spent by literally throwing it down a well. The Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC, has surprisingly reserved nearly $5 million to rescue Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who has faced allegations of domestic abuse from his estranged wife, in his race against ironworker Brian Poindexter. Polling last month in the red Seventh District showed Poindexter up by eight points, when a generic Republican would be beating him by five. I just don’t think $5 million, or Miller’s defamation threats against a Poindexter ad that calmly recites the actual allegations filed in court records, is going to move the needle.

Democrats have been “sounding the alarm” about all this spending, and certainly candidates who think they have a chance in this environment (as well as the media placement consultants who get rich off these ads) would rather have some outside support. But it’s just as notable that House Democrats have canceled ads in Kristen McDonald Rivet’s Michigan district, a seat Republicans have dumped nearly $800,000 into so far, because they’re confident she won’t be defeated. Sometimes the money you don’t spend matters more.

Meanwhile, as I’ve written, the location of Republican spending signals that they are flinging around this money just to mitigate the damage rather than win the election. In the House, between the Congressional Leadership Fund, Trump’s PACs, and other Republican groups, spending is occurring in 21 seats that Trump won by double digits in 2024. Meanwhile, only eight seats out of the 58 being contested were won by Harris at all.

Now the crypto industry, sore about losing the deregulatory CLARITY Act vote in the Senate, is trying to take revenge on Sherrod Brown again, dumping another $30 million into Ohio to teach Democrats a lesson. (Somehow Susan Collins, who also voted against CLARITY, was spared; funny how that goes.) But what we have learned this election cycle is that money can only buy so many votes. Democrats won the highest percentage of primary votes in any election of the past 100 years, and that spread usually travels to the general election. Democrats may be scrambling like they’re several points down; that’s how smart campaigns operate. But lots of their candidates should be scrolling the travel sites for tickets to Washington in January.