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Inside Washington
Dems and GOP differ in one big way when it comes to cash
With just two weeks to go until the midterm elections, competitive races are blowing through cash at unprecedented rates. “This is a whole new world, even in the post-Citizens United era,” said Jake Grumbach, a professor at UC Berkeley, about the amount of money raised and spent in the 2026 cycle. More than $15 billion has already been raised, and AdImpact predicts ad spending will hit a record-shattering $11.6 billion.
So far, Democratic candidates in the most competitive races have raised the most money. In some races, the difference is massive: In the Georgia Senate contest, Senator Jon Ossoff has outraised his competitor, Representative Mike Collins, by more than a factor of 10. But add super PACs and party spending into the mix, and suddenly Republicans have the advantage. “Republican megadonors and the super PACs they’re funding are more than making up that gap, and in our system, money matters,” said Eric Petry, counsel in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “It’s helping to keep Republicans in some of these key states, key races, competitive.”
Elon Musk is one such Republican megadonor. Musk, the richest person in the world, has poured more than a quarter of a billion dollars into super PACs and Republican groups. Over the summer, Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP’s PAC for Senate candidates. That single donation was more than the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC raised from all its donors during that quarter.
The flood of money from wealthy donors like Musk has made this a uniquely expensive election. “In the past, it’s typically been not complete parity between Democratic and Republican candidates, but by and large, the two parties have kind of raised and spent relatively equal amounts,” Petry explained. “So far this election cycle, Republicans are on track to dramatically outspend Democrats in a way that we just really haven’t seen before.”
Super PACs like Fairshake, which is aligned with the cryptocurrency industry, and AI-focused Leading the Future, which is backed by tech giants like OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, have also spent millions to support their preferred candidates and oppose those they see as hostile to their agendas. Experts worry that this unbridled industry spending will ultimately affect the legislation that Congress pursues, particularly now, when Americans want to see the AI industry regulated. “When you’ve got major tech titans spending just gobs of money to influence the political process, that sends a real message to members of Congress to think twice about how they’re approaching these issues,” said Michael Beckel, the director of money in politics reform at Issue One.
PAC money has been a lifeline to Republicans like Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, who has raised far less than his opponent, James Talarico. Between July and September, the GOP’s main Senate super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, raised a record $272.9 million, about $122 million more than its Democratic counterpart. In turn, the Senate Leadership Fund funneled $158 million into Texas PAC, which backs Paxton.
Republicans have also benefited from a June Supreme Court decision that struck down limits on the amounts that parties could spend in coordination with candidates. National parties, like the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), can accept much larger donations than individual candidates can, and they can now coordinate their spending of that money with their preferred candidates. At the end of August, the RNC had more than seven times the amount that the DNC had in cash on hand, and the June decision made that advantage all the more powerful.
“Both parties feel like they’re in a political fundraising arms race that they don’t want to fight with one hand tied behind their back, and so they’re using every weapon available,” Beckel said. That’s led Democrats to engage in some strategies that others find unsavory, such as constant spam texts asking for donations and an embrace of their own megadonors like George Soros. (He and his family have given $103 million to support Democrats this cycle.)
Whether Republican spending is enough to counter the mounting blue wave remains to be seen. But no matter the outcome, experts say, this election should change how we think about money in politics. “This election cycle is really kind of shining a spotlight on just how unequal our campaign finance system has become,” Petry said.
—Emma Janssen
Outside Washington
Josh Turek had a busy weekend in his campaign for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat, knocking on doors with former Senator Tom Harkin. Talking to the Iowa Capital Dispatch’s Robin Opsahl, both politicians argued that they don’t see Iowa as an inherently red state: “I just think that a lot of Iowans felt—rightfully so—that people maybe in both parties were not really paying attention to their basic needs,” Harkin told Opsahl. “They then sort of said, ‘Well, we’ll try something new and maybe flashy, like Trump.’” Turek added: “I think that Iowans, more than almost any other state, they vote for the person, not just the party.” He contends that Trump “accurately identified the problem” that Iowans face, with lots of talk on the campaign trail about bringing prices down. But then he did “the opposite.”
Turek has been polling neck and neck with Republican Representative Ashley Hinson so far—some polls putting one a couple points ahead, some the other. Democrat Rob Sand, who is running for governor, by contrast has consistently polled between four and 12 percentage points ahead of Republican Zach Lahn. Newsweek’s Anna Skinner on Monday tackled the question of why Turek seems to be lagging behind Sand right now. One big factor that experts identified was name recognition—not just for Turek and Sand but for their opponents. Many people don’t know who Lahn is, which gives Sand an advantage. Turek’s opponent, Hinson, on the other hand, is much better known, since she currently holds one of the state’s four seats in Congress, while Turek as state legislator represents a “district on the far western part of the state,” University of Iowa professor Timothy Hagle told Skinner.
Elsewhere:
- A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds, alongside the usual dismal Trump approval rating, that 66 percent of likely voters think the president “is using the presidency to enrich himself, up from 56 percent last fall.” Also of note: For the first time since this poll began in 2014, more voters trust Democrats than Republicans to handle the economy—but that’s only 40 percent of people trusting Dems versus 33 percent trusting Republicans. A more useful way to think about this might be that voters think neither party is especially good at managing the economy!
—Heather Souvaine Horn
The Ideas Factory
On Wednesday at 10 a.m., the Brookings Institution hosts “AI on the ballot: Data centers and the 2026 midterms,” an in-person and online conversation with Elham Tabassi, Representative James A. Himes, Kyle Chan, Anthony F. Pipa, Mark Muro, Thomas Wright, Valerie Wirtschafter, and Sanjay Patnaik, probing “how decisions about where AI is built and how it is used have become part of the choices facing voters this fall.”
Government watchdog Public Citizen releases a report quantifying the strangeness of the Make America Healthy Again movement’s alliance with the Trump administration. In May 2025, Public Citizen notes, the Trump admin published a “MAHA report” on the dangers of various environmental contaminants. Yet “for 20 of 21 environmental chemical substances that the MAHA report focused on,” Public Citizen notes, “the administration has either moved toward loosening regulations that protect public health (nine chemicals), done nothing (ten chemicals), and endorsed one chemical’s use despite its links to cancer.”
—Heather Souvaine Horn
In Closing
Political Trivia Question of the Day
For a few days in October 2008, Ashley Todd seemed like she might loom large in that year’s election. But her story turned out to be false. What did she allege happened to her, and what was the bizarre tell that she was lying? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)
—Michael Tomasky
* An earlier version of this piece misstated the tool used to create the charts.