Can $700 Million Buy Republicans the US Senate?

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Sarah Holder (0:07)

Bill Allison and Bill Faries, I have to address the fact that we have two Bills in the proverbial room. And Bill Allison, we were sort of joking behind the scenes here that we could call you Dollar Bill, just given your focus on campaign finance. Has anyone ever called you that before?

Bill Allison (0:23)

I don't think anyone's ever called me that, at least not in a long, long time.

Bill Faries (0:27)

We're going to start.

Sarah Holder (0:31)

I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, I sit down with Bill Allison, who covers campaign finance, and Bill Faries, who's managing Bloomberg's coverage of the 2026 US midterms to make sense of the money fueling the battle to control the Senate, and how it could shape the US presidential race.

So Bill F, I'll start with you. Democrats need to pick up four seats in the US Senate to capture a majority there. Even a few months ago, it seemed like Republicans had a good chance of holding on to their majority. But now, a bit more than a month before the midterm elections, there are more states that are seen as toss-ups.

Bill Faries (1:16)

Yeah, I think it's one of the big surprises of this campaign cycle, because if you step back six months or a year ago and looked at the prospects of the 2026 midterms, you would have said this is going to be a much harder case for Democrats.

Four seats, a four-seat pickup seemed like a real stretch even this spring, when you started to see some of the frustration build nationally over the economy and the war in Iran and things like that, all those things that have continued. But now, we're at the point where the map still is shifting almost every week, I think there's about nine seats that are kind of in that toss-up or lean Democrat, lean Republican category. And it's not states that we expect. I mean, we're now looking at Kansas as a state where Democrats potentially have a shot at winning a seat that they haven't held since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president.

Sarah Holder (2:12)

Well, Bill Allison, we are on track for record spending this year on midterms against this backdrop of sort of a shifting map, really contentious races, a lot at stake. What kind of numbers are we talking about here and what's driving all the spending?

Bill Allison (2:28)

It's really through the roof. I mean, and a lot of it is focused on the Senate too. I mean, if you look at the House side, it's pretty even. I'm talking from September 1st, which I just ran the numbers, they were changing all the time. But if you look at the House side, it's about even 250 million to 250 million, obviously not evenly distributed over the competitive races. But that's where you're seeing the advertising in House races. In the Senate, it's like Republicans have this ridiculous 700 million to 450 million dollar advantage that they're spending. Republicans have really three big pieces, and maybe they're going to have four soon enough. But you have Donald Trump's super PAC, which raised well over 400 million dollars. There's never been a president that has done this, and he's trying to unload that money in various Senate contests. You had the Senate Leadership Fund, which is tied to Senate leadership, and that's just taken in 25, 20 million dollar contributions from some of the wealthiest Republicans.

You've got the parties, which have raised, Republican parties have raised probably 100 million dollars more than Democratic Party committees.

And then the last factor, which is kind of a wild card, which we're just starting to see a lot of spending, is Elon Musk's super PAC, which is put in about more than 20 million dollars. So that's where the money is coming from. And it's really focused on these, the same 10 or 11 races where there are toss ups or they're lean one way or the other. And there's a good chance that party control is going to rest on which of these states goes Republican and which goes Democrat.

Sarah Holder (4:03)

And how does this spending volume and these spending trends sort of compare to previous years? Why are we seeing so much more spending on this midterm election? What's changed?

Bill Allison (4:13)

I think it's a couple of factors. I mean, obviously the politics have become much more polarized. People feel like they have a lot more to lose if the other party wins.

But we're seeing things that we haven't seen in previous cycles. One of which is, and we saw last time with the crypto super PAC that basically just spent on that one issue. We're seeing the same thing this time around with gambling super PACs funded by gambling companies, sports betting companies. There's obviously the AI super PACs, which are different from the other industry super PACs, is that there's two sides there, so they're spending sometimes on different sides of races, sometimes on the same side of races.