Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.
Campaign costs are increasing much faster than inflation, with the richest Americans increasingly dominating election finance. Does this make our democracy more robust & resilient, or does it undermine trust, accelerate alienation & drive populism?
Source: Americans for Tax Fairness
Wealthy Americans have spent hundreds of millions from their fortunes in their quests to join Congress. It usually doesn’t pay off.
The most recent example came Tuesday in Maryland, when billionaire and former congressman David Trone’s record-breaking $25 million comeback bid ended in defeat in the Democratic primary. Trone, who amassed his fortune by co-founding a national alcohol retailer, has been one of the most prolific self-funders of congressional campaigns. He spent $134 million across six races over the course of a decade, winning three terms in the House but spending $101 million on contests he lost.
This year, voters gave mixed results to self-funded candidates on the ballot for state offices too. In California, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer spent $218 million on his Democratic campaign for governor but narrowly failed to advance to the general election. In Georgia, billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson won the Republican gubernatorial primary after spending more than $100 million on his campaign. the Republican gubernatorial primary after spending more than $100 million on his campaign.
Of the top 20 self-funded congressional campaigns since 2000 by spending, only four were successful, according to a Washington Post analysis of publicly available campaign finance data from OpenSecrets and the Federal Election Commission. Together, the candidates spent more than $600 million on their campaigns.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies swept a series of congressional primaries in New York City on Tuesday in a remarkable show of strength for the insurgent left that sent shock waves through the Democratic Party.
Mr. Mamdani’s candidates toppled a pair of incumbents backed by the city’s political establishment, including major labor unions and the House Democratic leader. Another candidate backed by the mayor won an open House seat, and a handful of democratic socialist challengers he supported were winning down the ballot.
For months, Mr. Mamdani threw himself and his energized political organization into the three marquee congressional contests, campaigning late into the night in the race’s final days and calling the election a referendum on the direction of the party.
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Brad Lander, 56, a close ally whom Mr. Mamdani urged to run for Congress, ran up a staggering 30-point margin in the affluent 10th District in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. He defeated Representative Daniel Goldman, a wealthy Levi Strauss heir who had opposed the mayor in last year’s elections and had close ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby.
Claire Valdez, 36, a little-known state assemblywoman also recruited by Mr. Mamdani to run, ran up larger than expected margins for the open seat in the Seventh District in a gentrifying swath of Brooklyn and Queens so far left it has been nicknamed the “Commie Corridor.”
She defeated Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, who had far deeper roots in the district and the support of the popular congresswoman, Representative Nydia Velázquez, who is retiring; the left-leaning Working Families Party; and nearly every major labor union in the city.
And Mr. Mamdani’s allies even won in the predominantly Black and Dominican 13th District in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. In perhaps the night’s most surprising victory, Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, another democratic socialist who entered the race as a political unknown, narrowly knocked off Representative Adriano Espaillat, the influential chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
A network of purportedly progressive super PACs, spending millions in Democratic primaries across the country, is funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance (APA).
Newly filed FEC documents reveal that three PACs that claim to oppose Trump and Republican policies — Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC — are wholly funded by Conservative Americans PAC, another super PAC. Conservative Americans PAC, in turn, received all of its funding this cycle, over $30 million, from the APA.
The APA is a key part of the GOP financial infrastructure. It was established in 2022 and received $5.5 million in seed funding from the American Action Network, a non-profit associated with the House Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund. Brian Walsh, a top aide to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R), is a senior advisor to the APA, according to a 2024 report in NBC News. Walsh was a founder and former president of the Congressional Leadership Fund and former president of the American Action Network.
Since 2022, the APA has raised over $100 million from undisclosed sources. Millions of dollars were routed from the APA, usually through intermediaries, to the Congressional Leadership Fund and its sister organization, the Senate Leadership Fund. The APA has also funneled cash to MAGA Inc, President Trump’s super PAC, the Republican Convention, and a host of other Republican groups. The APA does not have to disclose its donors because it is organized as a 501(c)(4) non-profit group.
David Wright and Patrick Svitekat CNN:
Despite the group’s name and messaging, filings show that Lead Left PAC received more than $3 million in May from Conservative Americans PAC — itself funded by American Prosperity Alliance, the influential Republican nonprofit.
In a statement, Conservative Americans PAC acknowledged its role in seeking to shape the Democratic primaries.“Republicans are leveling the playing field after over a decade of Democrats meddling in our primaries, and with the Democrat Party in the midst of a civil war, Republicans would be stupid not to take advantage while pushing their candidates farther left,” spokesperson Samantha Bullock said.
Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Megan Messerly, Alex Gangitano and Myah Ward at POLITICO:
President Donald Trump believes he handed Republicans a winning playbook for the midterms — if only they’d follow it.
Gerrymander everywhere possible, get rid of the filibuster, fire the Senate parliamentarian and pass the SAVE America Act.
None of it is likely to happen, and the gap between what is likely and what is possible explains Trump’s frustrations with many in Congress and the anger the White House channels at operatives and pundits who say the president isn’t doing enough to help retain control of Congress.
“If everyone just follows his lead, follows the blueprints he’s laid out, and runs on the record that he has, then I think we’ll fare well,” said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The divide reflects irreconcilable views of political power: Trump’s ends-justify-the-means approach is colliding with the protect-the-norms posture of Republicans on the Hill and in statehouses. Unlike Trump, rank-and-file Republicans are staring down years of electoral consequences and hedging their bets on institutions they will have to operate within long after he’s gone.
And, with five months until the midterms, the president and many in his party have been left talking past one another.
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A person familiar with Senate dynamics, granted anonymity to speak candidly, shot back that Thune’s eye is on the ball and that Trump’s focus on election integrity does more harm than good.
“Poll after poll shows that voters — the ones who decide general elections — are increasingly driven by the economy, not the SAVE America Act or arcane Senate rules, which is why John Thune has been practically begging his colleagues and the president to focus on wins like the president’s signature achievement: The One Big Beautiful Bill,” the person said. “It’s hard to turn on CSPAN2 these days without seeing Thune on the floor talking about the litany of pro-growth policies that are positively affecting American families – lower tax rates, no tax on tips and overtime, a bigger child tax credit. It’s no accident that he’s clearly trying to reset the narrative amid the litany of daily distractions.”
Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Just as an authoritarian regime would, it is abusing the legal process to punish opponents.
Trump lost the Iran War, but his spin is revealing. Dave Lawler at Axios:
President Trump denied that the Iran war revealed the limits of his ability to exert power, telling "The Axios Show" he still believes there are "no limits."
The big picture: Trump entered the war demanding "unconditional surrender." He ended it with a limited memorandum of understanding instead.Trump acknowledged to Axios' Marc Caputo that he'd negotiated that deal to keep the war from turning into a global economic depression.
Still, Trump denied he was in any way humbled by that experience. Asked what he'd learned from the war about the limits to his power, he said: "There are no limits."
What he's saying: "I haven't learned that lesson yet. I know there are, but there are no limits," he continued.
Trump claimed that "we defeated them totally militarily," and even that the MOU "probably is unconditional surrender."He argued the war had actually demonstrated America's military strength. "Who else could have done a blockade like that? I did a naval blockade where not one ship was able to get through. Some tried. It didn't last very long."
Tim Bauk at NYT with takeaways from Regime Change:
In an interview that Ms. Haberman and Mr. Swan conducted with Mr. Trump for the book, the president, who had started the war with Iran two weeks earlier, reflected on his power.
The president listed a series of powerful figures from history, drawn from a two-page document that an acquaintance had given him, and then explained why he thought their power paled in comparison to his, since they lacked global reach.
Rattling off names including Alexander the Great and William the Conqueror, the president noted, “They didn’t have airplanes,” according to the book.
He continued, reciting more names: Napoleon, Hitler, Mao, Stalin. Those leaders, Mr. Trump told the authors, “maintained power through fear.”
“Who would ever do a thing like that?” Mr. Trump asked, according to the book. “Right?”
(The paper was by Gary Player's caddie.)
Brian Schwartz, Natalie Andrews and Alexander Ward at WSJ:
President Trump has delivered the same retort to political allies who have offered him strategic advice in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the conversations: “I’m the president and you’re not.”
Seventeen months into his second term, Trump is increasingly relying on his own gut instincts, dismissing the counsel of aides, conservative lawmakers and longtime associates. The result has been a series of decisions that have confounded and frustrated Republicans—heightening fears that voters will punish the GOP in the November elections and testing Trump’s iron grip on the party.