Why Big Donors Aren’t Translating to Big Success in the US Midterms

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Sarah Holder** (0:09)
You've been following the money all election season. Big picture, what makes this midterm season different?

**Amanda Gordon** (0:15)
Well, there is more money than ever, and that's true on a campaign level to individual candidates. It's true on a PAC level, and it's true in this dark money category as well.

**Sarah Holder** (0:28)
So far, federal political action committees have brought in more than $4.7 billion, according to a Bloomberg analysis from May.
Just the top 50 megadonors have spent more than $1.6 billion, according to a Washington Post analysis of FEC filings out this month. But there's also hundreds of millions of dollars coming from companies and industries that want their interests represented in political office.

**Emily Birnbaum** (0:56)
There is a new corporate-influenced playbook that is being honed in this year's midterms. It was incited by crypto's unprecedented spending in the 2024 midterm elections, especially cutting edge industries like AI, sports gambling. They saw the effectiveness of crypto's playbook spending millions and millions in favor of both Democrats and Republicans in order to elect friends and oust enemies to their regulatory agenda. And they said, okay, we're going to try it out this cycle in 2026 So US companies have spent $517 million on the 2026 US. House and Senate races in the last 15 months. That exceeds the record set in 2024

**Sarah Holder** (1:49)
But for candidates on both sides of the aisle, having powerful donors backing you doesn't guarantee success.

**Amanda Gordon** (1:56)
The fact is that money has not proven to be the definitive factor in winning an election.

**Sarah Holder** (2:03)
And already in some primaries, big spending is backfiring.

**Emily Birnbaum** (2:09)
It's very clear that candidates are benefiting from attacks on their opponents that focus on, you know, they are allied with special interests, corporate interests, and they're not for the people.

**Sarah Holder** (2:29)
I'm Sarah Holder and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, how political spending is shaping the US midterms. I'm joined by Bloomberg corporate lobbying and influence reporter Emily Birnbaum and wealth reporter Amanda Gordon, to talk about the donors funding candidates behind the scenes, and what's at stake for Republicans and Democrats.
Amanda, you've been tracking spending by big individual donors in US midterm races. How much money are we talking about and how does it compare to previous years?

**Amanda Gordon** (3:08)
In 2022, in the midterms, it was over a billion donated by top dollars, and this year, it is looking at 1.6 billion. That's where we're at. So we're far ahead and we haven't even come in to those last stretches. The fact is that the money increases every cycle. There's something a little bit inevitable about it.
You know, it's interesting because some of those tried and true donors, like Miriam Adelson, Jeff Yass, Richard Uline, Deborah Simon on the Democratic side, private equity titans like Steve Schwartzman and Mark Rowan and Paul Singer, who runs a hedge fund in New York, they have been known as early money. So we've seen their donations as early as at the end of 2025 in the cycle because that early money is very valuable for signaling where the interest is going to be. But at the same time, there are people who measure to measure might be giving less. Ken Griffin gave a huge amount, over 100 million in one cycle, and this cycle, it looks like it's going to be less. So some Democrats are just frustrated, and they're most interested in 2028 It's not that they don't want the Democrats to win, but they feel that there's enough money pouring in, that they're just on the sidelines waiting to see what happens.
And so it'll be interesting to see where that money goes.

**Sarah Holder** (4:47)
And on the corporate donation side, Emily, I want to talk about the role that AI has played in these races and AI spending has played, because you've been tracking two political action committees, both backed by leading AI voices with different aims, leading the future and public first action. Emily, who's putting money behind each of these packs, and how do their goals differ and align?

**Emily Birnbaum** (5:13)
Leading the future is backed primarily by AI billionaires, Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman.
Its aim is to pass one federal standard for regulating AI, that is light touch, business friendly, focused on allowing the AI companies to continue to innovate without excessive government intervention. And the creation of that pack then prompted the creation of an opposing force that is also backed by AI industry interests, so that is public first. Started by AI safety advocates, and its biggest donor so far has been Anthropic, one of the leading AI firms that promotes state by state regulation of AI, which allows for more intensive standards set at the state level. So to a lot of candidates, they don't understand the difference between these two superpacks. They say, okay, basically both of them support AI, but have differing visions for how to regulate it.