On September 5th, President Trump's Super PAC, MAGA Inc., sent $10 million to the political media company Del Ray Media to fund two attack ads for Ken Paxton's Senate campaign in Texas, according to Federal Election Commission filings. That is the ledger's first entry: insurance paid on a seat nobody had yet called close.
Seventeen days later, on September 22nd, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia moved three Senate races and four governor's races toward Democrats, citing the "persistently poor national environment" for the party. The next day, September 23rd, the Cook Political Report moved two more: Kansas, where Roger Marshall's race slid from "likely Republican" to "lean Republican," and South Carolina, where Darline Graham's seat moved the same direction. Nine races, two trackers, two days.…
…(cont) On October 2nd, the Senate Leadership Fund, the campaign arm run out of Majority Leader John Thune's office, pulled its ad spending for Michael Whatley in North Carolina and redirected it elsewhere, a move reported as triage "amid increasingly dire midterm polling."
Five days after that, on October 7th, a Republican Super PAC put $5 million into South Carolina's Senate race, the same seat Cook had downgraded two weeks earlier, in the same week President Trump escalated his attacks on Graham's opponent, Annie Andrews.
Run the ledger against the forecast and the gap sits in plain sight. Texas, by contrast, got its ten million in early September, before either tracker had moved a single race — money spent before the bad news, not after it.
The pattern a skimmer can check for themselves: the party does not spend where the forecast says the race is already lost. It spends where the forecast says the race is still close enough to buy back. North Carolina crossed that line on October 2nd. South Carolina, as of October 7th, has not crossed it yet, hon — that is the whole difference five million dollars is paying for.
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“They're not funding candidates, they're funding odds — write off North Carolina the day the polling turns ugly, then double down on South Carolina the day after their own guy says that one's slipping too. Follow the five million and the ten million and you know exactly which seats they still think they can buy and which voters already got sold off.”
“Look, pulling out of North Carolina isn't retreat, it's disciplined resource allocation — you reinforce your strongest positions and let the weaker ones — okay, South Carolina is also sliding, so I guess we're reinforcing a weak position too. That's not panic spending, that's a layered defense. Did I say layered defense? Forget I said that.”
Democrats are gaining ground in multiple key races as they look to take control of Congress with only 4 weeks to go before the midterms. Caitlin Huey-Burns, Anthony Salvanto and Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for The Cook Political Report, join "The Daily Report" to discuss the top races to watch.
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