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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Outgunned, Outmanned, Outnumbered, Outplanned

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  Campaign finance is a big part of the story.

 Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:
For the final two weeks of the election, Democratic campaigns and outside groups are on track to substantially outspend Republicans, strategists on both sides say. Democrats are set to spend $143 million on television advertising in House races, compared with $86 million for Republicans, according to one analysis by a Democratic strategist tracking media buys.
Democratic super PACs and other outside groups are poised to outspend their Republican counterparts by a wide margin, erasing an advantage Republicans planned on having.

Much of the Democrats’ unanticipated firepower comes from one source: Michael R. Bloomberg, the liberal former New York City mayor who may run for president, plans to spend about $20 million on House advertising through his super PAC, Independence USA, in the final week of the campaign, a Bloomberg adviser said.
...
“It’s the suburban seats and it’s the flow of money,” Representative Tom Cole, a longtime Oklahoma Republican and former House campaign chairman, said of the party’s two overriding concerns.

...
“Some of the guys who should be in trouble are doing O.K.,” said Michael Steel, a longtime House Republican strategist, alluding to lawmakers in districts Mr. Trump lost or only narrowly carried. “But there appear to be little fires everywhere.”
...
“I think we’ll have a suburban wave,” said Liesl Hickey, a former executive director of the N.R.C.C. “A lot of the districts that we are most likely to lose are Democratic-leaning, they’re just going to what their modern DNA is.”

Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC has run ads all over the country. 

Jordan Graham at the Orange County Register:
Wall Street billionaire Michael Bloomberg spent $4.3 million this week to help Democrat Harley Rouda in his effort to unseat 30-year GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in their fight to represent much of coastal Orange County.

In the process, Bloomberg, a former Republican, helped make the 48th Congressional District the nation’s most expensive active House campaign in terms of outside spending, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

More than $18.2 million has been spent on the race by interested partisan groups, nearly three quarters coming from Democrats. The race’s price tag swells to $29 million when including money from candidate committees.