Democratic Senate candidates are burying Republicans in ad spending after raising historic amounts of money.
In mid-April, senior advisers to a dozen Republican senators gathered on the second floor of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s offices, where NRSC executive director Kevin McLaughlin detailed the stark online fundraising disparities that led to eight GOP incumbents getting outraised by Democrats in the first three months of 2020.
McLaughlin concluded his presentation with a dire warning: If campaigns didn’t improve their digital fundraising dramatically, they’d have no way to counter a “green tsunami” of Democratic spending in the fall, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
Six months later, the green tsunami is here. And it’s threatening to wipe out the Republican Senate majority.
The online fundraising edge that Democrats have enjoyed for years has mushroomed into an overpowering force, with small-dollar donors smashing “donate” buttons over the last three months to process their disgust for President Donald Trump, fury with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and grief for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Propelled by the wave of money, Democrats have suddenly expanded the Senate battlefield to a dozen competitive races, burying long-contested states like Iowa and Maine in TV ads while also overwhelming Republican opponents in states like Alaska, Kansas and South Carolina that are suddenly tightening.
Where most of the top Democratic Senate candidates two years ago raised $4 million to $7 million in the third quarter of 2018, their contenders this year are multiplying those totals. Colorado’s John Hickenlooper raised $22 million, more than six times what his presidential campaign raised before he dropped out of that race in 2019. Iowa’s Theresa Greenfield and North Carolina’s Cal Cunningham each cleared $28 million.
And on Sunday, South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison announced a record $57 million third-quarter haul for his race against GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, where the most favorable public polling for Graham in the last month has shown him leading by a single point. Altogether, the money has given Democrats a TV spending edge in 12 of the 13 most expensive Senate races.
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Democratic Senate candidates are burying Republicans in ad spending after raising historic amounts of money. https://t.co/53SVOs3J36
— POLITICO (@politico) October 12, 2020
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