Democratic Senate Candidates Haul in Campaign Money

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

If money is momentum, Democratic Senate candidates are poised for a monumental Election Day."Oh my god, holy crap," said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) when informed of Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico's $64 million haul in the third quarter of the year. "I mean, that's a number that's mind-blowing."

Why it matters: Republicans are awash in super PAC cash, but Democrats' advantage in hard dollars reveals a yawning enthusiasm gap — the kind of energy money can't buy.

Texas      

            James Talarico (D): $64 million
            Ken Paxton (R): $18 million

Georgia

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D): $33.1 million
Mike Collins (R): $2.8 million

Michigan   

            Abdul El-Sayed (D): $30.7 million
            Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R): $9.7 million

Ohio

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D): $23 million
Sen. Jon Husted (R): $5 million

Maine

Troy Jackson (D): $20.4 million
Sen. Susan Collins (R): $5.2 million

Alaska

Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D): $17 million
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R): $2 million

Iowa

Josh Turek (D): $12 million
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R): $3 million

North Carolina

Roy Cooper (D): $20 million
Michael Whatley (R): $2 million

Kansas 

Adam Hamilton (D): $11 million
Sen. Roger Marshall (R): $800,000

Between the lines: The figures reflect FEC filings as well as totals reported by the campaigns, some of which include money raised through affiliated joint fundraising committees.

Even accounting for those differences, Democratic Senate candidates are dramatically outraising their Republican opponents in several of the country's most competitive races

Less GOP Bang for the Buck

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections

Calen Razor at POLITICO:

Republicans have a massive campaign cash advantage going into the final stretch before Election Day, but a new POLITICO poll shows they aren't yet capturing voters’ attention.

More than 70% of poll respondents who had seen ads said they’d either seen more spots in support of Democrats or an equal amount between the parties over the past week — including ads on television, social media, or any other platform. Only 24% said they’d seen more ads for Republicans.

The numbers are striking considering Republican-aligned groups had triple the amount of cash on hand compared to their Democratic rivals going into the final months of the campaign. That figure includes the $400 million war chest that President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC reported over the summer, for which Dems have no equivalent.

Republicans have been racing to saturate key battlegrounds — and even some deep-red districts and states — with GOP messages in the final weeks before the midterms to counterbalance the favorable political environment for Democrats.

One reason GOP ad dollars could be getting less bang for their buck may lie in ad rates: direct campaign accounts from prolific individual fundraisers — Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff or Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, for example — can buy ads at cheaper rates.

Timing may be another reason: Trump’s super PAC waited until recent weeks to start buying ads through affiliate groups, when rates were already high close to the election.

...

The poll was conducted by surveying U.S. adults online between Oct. 3-5 with PF Global.

Triage

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections

Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty and Lisa Kashinsky at POLITICO:

Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.

In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.

After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.

In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

NRSC v. FEC

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

 Rick Hasen at Slate:

As disastrous Supreme Court election cases go, Tuesday’s decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission doesn’t make the list of complete abominations, like the court’s decision this term in Louisiana v. Callais killing off the remaining key part of the Voting Rights Act, or earlier decisions like 2010’s Citizens United that kicked off the unraveling of our campaign finance system. Indeed, it’s possible that the NRSC decision makes our campaign finance system a bit less distorted in bringing candidates and parties closer together. But NRSC, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the six Republican-appointed justices, is an excellent example of the Roberts court’s “deregulatory bootstrapping,” in which the court relies on its earlier partial overruling of precedents—that only makes things worse—to justify more changes in the law. Fundamental change to campaign finance will have to wait for a new Supreme Court.

...

The court went through a period in the early 2000s when it was deferential to Congress’ judgments as to the need for contribution limits and for spending limits on corporations and unions, and in one of those cases, Colorado II, from 2001, the Supreme Court held that Congress could limit how much money political parties may spend in coordination and cooperation with candidates. The court reasoned that without these limits, large donors could seek improper influence over candidates by giving money through political parties.

...

In Tuesday’s opinion in NRSC, the court overturned Colorado II, and said that the part of federal campaign finance law limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates violates the First Amendment. The court pointed to the “unique” role that political parties play in helping candidates win, and that they have their own First Amendment rights.

But the court also pointed to the development of super PACs as a reason to overturn the limits. All of these outside groups are unaccountable, spreading negative messages. Parties help preserve democracy in the court majority’s view, and it was only fair to free the parties of limits on them.

Billionaire Bucks

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.

Bruce Mehlman:

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 

Plotzing Plutocrats

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional,  state, and local elections.

Wealthy, self-financing candidates are hardly shoo-ins.  Michael Bloomberg (president, 2020) and Meg Whitman (CA governor 2010) are examples of plutocrats who plotzed.

Praveena Somasundaram, Clara Ence Morse and Erin Cox at WP:

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.

 

GOP Groups Meddling in Democratic Primaries

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.  And it has happened in 2025 and 2026. (See the LA Mayor race.)

A network of GOP groups is supporting beatable candidates in Democratic primaries.

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

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.

 

Bag of Tricks

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

1. Real Change PAC, a super PAC that purports to be "committed to progressive values," has spent millions of dollars in Democratic primaries.

It is actually a Republican front closely tied to House Republican leadership.

An email completely exposed the dirty tricks operation. pic.twitter.com/xrXxvd9kDG

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 2, 2026

3. According to FEC filings analyzed by Popular Information, the CLF -- the primary super PAC of the House Republicans -- spent over $10 million in the 2024 cycle buying digital ads through Cavalry.

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 2, 2026

Buying Influencers

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Lia Russell at the Sacramento Bee:

 Isaiah “Zay Dante” Washington normally posts about pop culture and sports to his 1.8 million TikTok followers as @zayydante. His most viral videos include skits about dueling Drake and Kendrick Lamar tracks and parodies amplifying more serious lyrical messages in popular party music. 

In March, he briefly pivoted by interviewing governor candidate Tom Steyer, asking the billionaire climate change activist to square his populist platform with his wealth and how he intended to fight his fellow patricians knowing “how capitalism has scorned young people.” 

Steyer’s campaign paid Washington $10,000 to post to Instagram, YouTube and TikTok under his former handle @relatableisaiah, which now links to @zayydante, per campaign expenditures. According to a strategy memo obtained by The Sacramento Bee, Steyer’s campaign has approached other content creators to boost him online for $10 per video, with more promised if they reach a certain threshold of views. 

...

“Many voters are critical of Tom Steyer because of his billionaire status, lack of experience and previous investments. Rather than pretending that these things don’t exist, acknowledge and relate to voters’ concerns and explain why you still believe Steyer is the strongest candidate despite them,” the Steyer memo read. It asks creators to post three to four videos weekly without mentioning him or the governor’s race. “

This content should still be related to policies he supports, for instance, videos about abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, AI regulation, climate change, free universal education, ending corporate influence in politics, etc. This will help your content reach more audiences and build audience trust,” the memo said.

The memo instructs creators who sign on to make new social media accounts under usernames that reflect their names or a nickname, avoiding brands, random numbers or anything that looks like spam. They then upload them for approval to the app SideShift, which recruits creators to make content for companies like the Kalshi prediction market, Paramount and the Wasserman Group.

California Redboxing

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Seema Mehta at LAT:

Intriguing updates emerged on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra’s campaign website on Tuesday.

Highlighted in bright red text, and boxed by a red outline, was a game plan for attacking one of Becerra’s top rivals in the California governor’s race, billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer.

But was that message meant for California voters or, perhaps, a more specific audience — the operatives running the newly formed big-money independent committees that are backing his campaign?

Becerra’s website may be using a practice known as “red boxing,” a nod to how campaigns signal what they want outside groups supporting them to focus on in their ads and other tactics. That strategy is used to avoid running afoul of laws prohibiting campaigns from directly coordinating with “independent” expenditure committees.

“What we’re looking at with the Becerra web page is a textbook example” of efforts to circumvent rules that disallow such coordination, said Aaron McKean, senior legal counsel for campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on fair elections. “It’s specifically calling out particular messaging and particular ways of communicating with voters ... as a way to get Super PACs, nominally independent spenders, to do the bidding of the campaign.”

...

Such practices are growing increasingly common — and increasingly lucrative. According to a 2024 article titled “Coordination in Plain Sight: The Breadth and Uses of ‘Redboxing’ in Congressional Elections” published in the Election Law Journal, more than 200 candidates for federal office used the tactic during the 2022 midterm election, and often received greater financial support from independent expenditure committees than candidates who did not embrace the strategy.

 

Shell Super PACs

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

 Clara Ence Morse and Dan Merica at WP:

The political arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee funneled over $5 million to other groups as part of its work to defeat Illinois Democrats critical of Israel in House primaries held Tuesday, filings made public late Friday show. The secretive giving is the latest example of how outside groups are obscuring their spending in competitive campaigns.

The contributions, which didn’t have to be disclosed until after Election Day under federal campaign finance regulations, funded part of a record-breaking total of outside spending: $225 million has been spent to influence midterm elections so far, according to a Post analysis of federal election data. Special interest groups, including AIPAC, have sometimes tried to veil their spending by using affiliated organizations that appear unrelated to the parent organization’s stated policy goals.

AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that has grown increasingly unpopular with Democratic primary voters, cloaked its spending in a trio of innocuously named organizations — Chicago Progressive Partnership, Affordable Chicago Now and Elect Chicago Women — and ran ads that attacked candidates, including Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, for a variety of reasons other than his position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

“It’s awful for politics,” said Jim Kessler, an executive at Third Way, a center-left think tank and advocacy organization. The use of shell super PACs, he added, shows these groups know “what you’re peddling is not popular with voters.”

The groups behind the spending argue they are using legal tools to further their goals and hinted they will do so in future primaries. Critics argue that the masking is underhanded, noting that the practice suggests the groups know their policy objectives are unpopular, or they would otherwise be willing to reveal the spending before the races are decided

Non-Coordination Coordination in Texas

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Shane Dolmacher at NYT:

“Running out of money,” read the post on the social media platform X, “less than $400 remains in my pocket.” It landed on Nov. 13, from an obscure account called @pie0myWesley with just three followers. Anyone else stumbling upon it might have assumed it was a random musing from someone who had seen better days.

The account instead appears to be connected to the Republican Senate campaign of Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas. And one of its followers is @TxGopFighter, with seeming connections to an outside group helping Mr. Hunt’s candidacy. The two anonymous accounts have spent months sharing strategic information, private polling, messaging advice and media-buying data in what may be an effort to skirt federal law.

That law prohibits candidates from coordinating in private with independent groups such as super PACs. The Hunt campaign and those allies, however, are doing so with a pair of social media accounts in plain sight for those who know where to look.

...

Dozens of candidates use so-called red boxes on their websites to make suggestions for how super PACs should spend money to support them. They include both top Democratic candidates in the Texas Senate race: James Talarico, a state legislator, and Representative Jasmine Crockett.

“Spanish speaking voters need to hear radio ads in the RGV, San Antonio and El Paso that there is no Democrat who Donald Trump fears more than Jasmine Crockett,” read the instructions on Ms. Crockett’s website.


The 2022 Senate campaign of JD Vance in Ohio pushed past a previous boundary, when an allied super PAC with more cash than the campaign committee posted reams of private data to a Medium account. In 2023, a super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in his presidential bid posted research, polling and messaging advice.

Usually, such communication goes in one direction. The Hunt accounts are distinctive in that they appear to include communications by people on both sides of the supposed firewall. At least two times, the accounts replied to each other on X.

Trump Corruption

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  Its corruption is unprecedented.  Qatar's gift of a jet is just one example. His memecoin is another.

Kenneth P. Vogel and David Yaffe-Bellany at NYT:

[L]obbyists, political consultants and others in the influence industry have capitalized on Mr. Trump’s aggressive fund-raising while in office to deliver for clients and earn chits with a president who keeps close tabs on who is delivering cash and listens to their appeals. It is a cycle that has helped Mr. Trump fill the coffers of his political groups, defying the gravity that sometimes drags down the fund-raising of term-limited presidents.

The degree to which this dynamic has benefited Mr. Trump, his donors and their lobbyists — while shutting out regular people seeking assistance from their government — was laid bare in MAGA Inc.’s financial report. The group, which can accept unlimited donations, raised an astounding $177 million in the first half of the year. That was nearly twice as much as the amount raised during the same period by the Republican National Committee, which is subject to contribution limits.

MAGA Inc.’s report included donations from a mother seeking a pardon for her son, as well as people who had been, or would later be, appointed to posts in his administration and companies in industries seeking more lenient treatment than they had gotten under the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

It is not just MAGA Inc. that benefits.

Since Mr. Trump’s election last fall, fund-raisers and lobbyists have been steering corporations and donors to a buffet of options for unlimited giving, some of which are less overtly political or allow anonymous donations, that can bring access to the president.

The president’s inaugural committee raised a record-shattering $239 million, including about $18 million from crypto interests and $1 million each from tech giants like Meta and Amazon that had drawn his ire in the past and were looking to smooth things over headed into his second term.

A nonprofit group called Securing American Greatness, which is affiliated with MAGA Inc. but is not required to disclose its donors, can accept cash from interests willing to pay for access without the controversy that can come with having that known.

Trump 2026

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

A Democratic takeover of the House in 2026 would mean investigations and possibly even impeachment. Mike Allen at Axios reports that Trump is taking five steps to protect the thin GOP majority.

1. Trying to prevent retirements. The White House is targeting several Republicans in politically divided swing districts and urging them not to ditch their seats or run for higher office.Incumbent lawmakers with established fundraising and campaigning networks are almost always better positioned to win than any challengers. It has sent a clear message to New York Rep. Mike Lawler that Trump wants him to stay in the House rather than run for governor.

2. Spending big. Trump has built a $500 million-plus political apparatus, and he's already unloading some of it with 2026 in mind.Securing American Greatness, a pro-Trump group that works with the White House, has launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign touting his economic agenda in the districts of eight vulnerable House Republicans. Trump also has a leadership PAC, Never Surrender, planning to give directly to Republican candidates.

 3. Taking primary challengers off the table. Besides Lawler, Trump has endorsed a slate of swing-district GOP incumbents in a series of moves aimed at shutting down would-be primary challengers before they get off the ground, people close to the president tell Axios....

 4. Raising gobs more money. Trump is the GOP's most powerful fundraiser, and he's begun helping the party fill its coffers.He headlined an April dinner benefiting the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) that raked in more than $35 million.

 5. Ramping up recruiting. Trump's political operation and the NRCC are seeking out candidates in swing-district contests with no incumbents.Their goal is to get the party to coalesce around a Trump-and-GOP-backed candidate to avoid a bloody primary, a Trump ally said.

Wisconsin and Florida: Bad Signs for GOP

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Alex Isenstadt at  Axios:

The GOP also survived a late scare in a Florida special election. But losing in Wisconsin — letting Democrats keep their 4-3 court majority — has major ramifications for voting and abortion rights, along with future House redistricting.Republicans kept the House seat in Florida formerly held by national security adviser Mike Waltz, with Randy Fine holding off Democrat Josh Weil.

Republicans also held the Florida seat formerly held by Rep. Matt Gaetz before he resigned from Congress in November. Jimmy Patronis defeated Democratic candidate Gay Valimont.

1. 2026 looks scary for MAGA without Trump on the ballot.Republican House candidates in Florida fell far short of Trump's performance in November. The margins of victory for Patronis and Fine were about half of the margins for Waltz and Gaetz.

...

Republicans lost in Wisconsin, even with $25 million poured in by Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world and the face of DOGE. Musk campaigned in Wisconsin and cast the race in apocalyptic terms.

2. Democrats are flooding cash into races

In FL-1, Patronis was outraised 3-1.
In FL-6, Fine was outraised by nearly 10-1.
In Wisconsin, Crawford outraised Schimel nearly 2-1.

3. Republicans dodged a bullet in Florida. Last week Republicans were sweating the race for Waltz's seat, where a poll conducted by Trump strategist Tony Fabrizio showed Fine narrowly trailing. But Fine won by 15 points.  Florida defeat would have raised alarms among Republicans about the political impact of Trump's agenda. Speaker Mike Johnson's narrow House majority won't shrink, and there won't be headlines about a special election shocker.

Using Government Against the Left

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start

Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

Executive actions intended to cripple top Democratic law firms. Investigations of Democratic fund-raising and organizing platforms. Ominous suggestions that nonprofits aligned with Democrats or critical of President Trump should have their tax exemptions revoked.

Mr. Trump and his allies are aggressively attacking the players and machinery that power the left, taking a series of highly partisan official actions that, if successful, will threaten to hobble Democrats’ ability to compete in elections for years to come.

...

Undermining the left would amount to follow-through on Mr. Trump’s campaign promises to seek “retribution” against his perceived enemies.

The sentiment has been echoed and expanded upon by some of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers.

The billionaire Elon Musk, the top Trump donor leading the administration’s cost-cutting initiative, has appeared to encourage investigations of institutions that form the financial backbone of the left. They include ActBlue, the donation platform that helps fund virtually the entire Democratic Party and that congressional Republicans are already probing, and Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm that manages difficult-to-trace “dark money” groups that collectively have spent billions of dollars helping Democrats and their cause

...

Congressional officials say the Trump administration has signaled that it intends to throw its weight behind investigations of ActBlue in the House. And Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has suggested that ActBlue might have criminal exposure. He has also demanded documents from and threatened to subpoena another key company providing digital infrastructure for the left, Bonterra, which runs a crucial Democratic voter database system and supplies much of the party’s organizing software.

Some of the president’s allies have welcomed the moves as payback for Democratic congressional investigations of Mr. Trump and Republican political networks.

Trump's Enforcement Machine

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  He is using his power to punish his perceived enemies.

Alex Isenstadt at Axios:

Anyone who thinks President Trump's mesmerizing hold over the GOP will slip if his poll numbers slide is missing one of his biggest innovations in American politics:The creation of a cash-flush political operation that has raked in around a half-billion dollars — about the same amount the GOP's House and Senate campaign arms spent during the entirety of the last midterm campaign.

Why it matters: It's unheard of for a president not running for reelection to raise that kind of money. But the cash is just one piece of a bigger power play that's arguably the most powerful, well-funded political apparatus ever.The day after Election Day, Trump — at a time most presidents-elect are scrambling to get their transitions rolling — started calling major donors to start building an enforcement machine for his agenda.

"Right now, there's a huge price to pay by crossing Donald Trump," said Republican strategist Corry Bliss, who formerly led the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC. "When you combine a 92% approval rating among Republican voters with unlimited money, that equals: 'Yes, sir.'"

Zoom in: Two Trump-aligned outside groups, MAGA Inc. and Securing American Greatness, are poised to play big in 2026, including by helping Republicans expand their congressional majorities. The groups also have another focus: Reward Republicans who support Trump — and punish those who don't.Elon Musk has his own super PAC, America PAC, which he can use to target Republicans who cross Trump.

The big picture: Trump lacked a well-funded political operation after the 2016 election, hampering his ability to put pressure on Republicans who waffled over backing his agenda and to support or oppose candidates of his choosing. Trump advisers say that won't be the case this time.Now, combine Trump's super PACs with Musk's resources, then toss in Musk's control of X plus Trump's control of Truth Social. Any GOP skeptics or critics could instantly face a dangerous primary challenge — and unending waves of critical messaging.

Erin Mulvaney and C. Ryan Barber at WSJ:

Elite law firms formed a proud part of the opposition to the first Trump administration. This time around, the industry is fearful of taking on a president who hasn’t shied away from punishing his enemies.

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order directing agencies to strip security clearances, government contracts and federal-building access from a top law firm with Democratic ties, Perkins Coie. It followed a similar, but more narrowly tailored, order late last month against attorneys at Covington & Burling representing former special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw the investigation and federal prosecutions of Trump.

“We have a lot of law firms that we’re going to be going after because they were very dishonest people,” Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News.

The White House moves have sent a chill through the world of Big Law, at a time when litigation has emerged as one of the few checks on the president.

 

Midterms on the Horizon

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Abby Livingston at Puck:

The midterms are already here: In normal times, the first quarter of the off-year congressional election cycle is sleepy and sluggish. But these, obviously, are not normal times. Hakeem Jeffries and his Democratic caucus are already steeped in the fundraising and recruitment fight, and last month, House Dems raised $9.2 million—their largest haul ever in an off-year January—compared to the N.R.C.C.’s $6 million. This isn’t just because of the committee’s storied digital fundraising: Many members, including Massachusetts’ Richard Neal and New Jersey’s Frank Pallone, have been hosting fundraising dinners. A group of House progressives hosted one last night, and the Congressional Black Caucus’s
political arm will host one in early March. Along with member dues, I’m told by a senior House Democratic campaign aide that this extra push has brought in $2.8 million, or nearly a third of the January haul.

But the more pressing task for both parties is recruitment, which will lay the foundation for the next two years. As Politico’s Elena Schneider reported this week, federal workers who fell victim to DOGE cuts might become a new talent pool of House candidates. Meanwhile, the Dems are also eyeing a huge potential get: Jimmy McCain, the Marine veteran and son of the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, to run against David Schweikert in Arizona’s 1st congressional district. Of course, the defection of the so-called McCain Republicans has been partly credited with flipping the state to Joe Biden in 2020, and for some high-profile statewide losses—Blake Masters and Kari Lake—for the party’s right wing.

For the Republicans, the recruitment picture is murkier: A party consultant told me there’s talent in the wings, but potential candidates are waiting on two developments. The first is the fate of the shutdown/debt ceiling/tax-and-spending-cuts negotiations this spring. The second is the price of eggs, which has supplanted the price of gasoline as the leading political economic indicator in my conversations. Republicans might also have to spend some of their recruitment energy on their incumbents. I’m hearing that, for a smattering of pre-Trump Republican members, this congressional term is turning out to be even more miserable than the last one—which, of course, included the defenestration of Kevin McCarthy. My impression is that if it weren’t for their party’s micro-margin in
the House, some Republican reps would be considering resignation.

Max Cohen at Punchbowl News:

House Majority Forward, the HMP-aligned organization, will launch a national cable ad Monday that attacks Republicans for threatening Medicaid. The HMF ad acts as the initial salvo in the Medicaid messaging wars ahead of the 2026 midterms, where House Democrats have forecasted that they will focus on health care access.

The ad centers on the recently adopted House GOP budget resolution, which the narrator says “opens the door to $880 billion in Medicaid cuts.”

The spot also argues that the potential Medicaid changes are “all to fund massive tax cuts for Elon Musk and billionaires.”

Next week, House Majority Forward will run similar ads in 20 battleground districts nationwide.

In other ad news: Liberal outside group Unrig Our Economy is running two new ads targeting vulnerable Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) and Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) for supporting the House GOP budget resolution.

 

Intimidated Donors

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. 

 Lisa Lerer, Reid J. Epstein and Theodore Schleifer at NYT:

The demoralization and fear gripping blue America in the early weeks of President Trump’s administration have left liberal groups and their allies struggling for cash, hurting their ability to effectively combat the right-wing transformation of the federal government.

The small-dollar online spigot that powered opposition to the first Trump administration has slowed to a trickle as shaken liberal voters withhold their donations.

Charitable foundations that have long supported causes like voting rights, L.G.B.T.Q. equality and immigrants’ rights are pulling back, devoting time to prepare for expected investigations from the Republican-led Congress.

And some of the country’s biggest liberal donors have paused giving, frustrated with what they see as Democrats’ lack of vision and worried about retaliation from a vengeful president. Some Democrats say a few of their reliable donors are now openly supporting Mr. Trump, or at least looking to curry favor with him.

Fund-raising slowdowns are common after a presidential defeat and before marquee midterm races fully begin. But interviews with more than 50 donors, strategists and leaders of activist organizations show that many Democrats believe this year is different.

While Mr. Trump has not taken action against any liberal groups or lawmakers, Democrats worry his frequent threats of retribution during the campaign have led to a chilling effect on the charitable foundations and nonprofit advocacy groups that have long been pillars of the country’s civil society.

...

Some donors are hiring additional legal counsel to address worries about tax audits, congressional investigations and lawsuits. Others are moving assets overseas, or at least their foundations to Democratic-controlled states.

Donors increasingly want to stay anonymous, which could slow the flow of cash to Democratic super PACs because they must eventually disclose their donors.

Donors have reason to be afraid.

Alan Rappeport, Andrew Duehren and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a team member working with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive taxpayer data, people familiar with the matter said.

The systems at the I.R.S. contain the private financial data tied to millions of Americans, including their tax returns, Social Security numbers, addresses, banking details and employment information.

“Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”

 

Boardrooms Drift Left (a Bit)

 Our more recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics and the diploma divide.

The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001-2022
Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 4974868
118 Pages Posted: 9 Oct 2024 Last revised: 17 Oct 2024
Reilly Steel
Columbia Law School; Princeton University
Date Written: October 02, 2024

Abstract

This article reconciles conflicting views about the political landscape of corporate America with new data on the revealed political preferences of 97,469 corporate directors and executives at 9,005 different U.S. companies. I find that average ideology for these individuals has shifted meaningfully to the left over time, changing from modestly conservative in 2001 to roughly centrist by 2022. This finding supports a middle-ground position between conventional wisdom casting "big business" as a conservative stronghold and revisionist views holding the opposite. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences design suggest multifaceted causes for these changes, and hand-collected data on corporate stances on LGBTQ-related legislation coupled with an instrumental variables design indicate that individual ideology has large effects on firm-level political activity. Overall, this transformation has profound implications for American politics, as the individuals comprising one of the most powerful interest groups—corporate elites—appear to be fracturing ideologically and to some degree even switching sides.

Suggested Citation:
Steel, Reilly, The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001-2022 (October 02, 2024). Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 4974868, Available at SSRN: