Nov 1, 2023
As we noted last month, September saw a surprisingly significant decline in spending. October is still short of August but not by much, $39.5M in October vs $24.2M in Sept and $41.3M in August. This is partly due to the draw down in candidates, there are just less viable candidates left in the GOP Primary so there are less groups spending…and IE spending in the congressional races hasn’t picked up yet.
So what can we see in the spending numbers? Some of it is obvious, some of it is not. To start, the Doug Burgum supporting, Best of America PAC, went from being the top spender in August and September to the 7th highest in October. Burgum hasn’t made the debate stage for the Miami debate next week, and the spending is slowing because the campaign is slowing.
Other notable spending events in October:
-Nikki Haley supporting Stand For America started running negative advertising for the first time against Ron DeSantis. In what is I’m sure a clerical error they filed one expenditure as supporting Ron DeSantis.
-On the same day that Mike Pence dropped out of the race, the Super PAC supporting him spent $75,000 on canvassing.
-Despite canceling all ad reservations and saying they were going to focus exclusively on canvassing, Tim Scott supporting Trust in the Mission PAC has since placed $122K in additional advertising.
-Trump does not feel the need to spend against Haley even as she takes on DeSantis. This is likely because they do not believe she is pulling any votes from trump.
To the numbers:
The numbers presented below are from October1 to October 31
Top Lines:
$39,567,310.23 was spent on IE in October.
Stand For America (Gov. Haley Aligned)
$9,501,011.70 spent in October. SFA PAC went from the lowest spending in September to the highest in October. In addition, the PAC filed its first expenditures in opposition to Ron DeSantis with $564,867.34, although comedically, $200K of it was filed in support
Never Back Down (Gov. DeSantis aligned)
$9,159,291.92 spent in October.
$6,658,147.93 spent supporting DeSantis
$2,449,943.99 spent opposing Haley
$51,200.00 spent opposing Trump
NBD is a long way from spending the $200M they pledged earlier this year, so far they’ve spent $30.4M year to date.
Americans for Prosperity - $6,071,411.02 spent in October.
$2,990,105.91 spent opposing Trump
$2,990,105.90 spent opposing Biden
Make America Great Again Inc. (Trump Aligned)
$3,926,444.07 was spent in October.
$1,449,249.06 spent supporting Trump
$1,415,005.11 spent opposing Biden
$1,062,189.90 spent opposing DeSantis
One interesting note, MAGA is not spending in opposition to Haley. Although DeSantis also isn’t taking any support away from Trump at the moment, this is a clear indication that MAGA does not see Haley taking any support away from Trump.
Trust in the Mission PAC (Sen. Scott Aligned)
$2,677,101.27 was spent in October.
TIM PAC had $15M cash on hand at the end of the last reporting quarter and they have spent $11.5M since 7/1. We cant know for sure but in theory there is still $3.5M in the bank even without raising any more money.
American Exceptionalism (Vivek Ramaswamy aligned)
$1,872,454.23 was spent in October supporting Vivek
Best of America PAC (Gov. Burgum aligned)
was the big spender of the month in August and September but is the 7th big spending in October indicating the state of the campaign.
$1,351,428.00 was spent in October supporting Burgum.
Tell It Like It Is PAC (Christie Aligned) -
$1,249,528.26 was spent supporting Christie in October, which is a pretty substantial increase over September. Strangely $500k of it was spent in Alabama, not surprisingly $600k spent in NH.
Committed to America (Pence Aligned)–
$235,672.65 was spent in October and Pence is now out.
We are finally beginning to see these Super PACs act their old selves. Stand for America is attacking DeSantis, Never Back Down is attaching Haley. and MAGA Inc is attacking Biden and DeSantis. We are less than 3 months from the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, the fun is just beginning.
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These numbers are being generated by the 527tracker, a data platform developed by Perspective Strategies that aggregates, analyzes, and alerts to all federal Super PAC spending in real time. If these types of numbers or analysis are important to you, or if you are on a campaign and need real-time spending alerts, go check out the dashboard.
