Topic
Money flowing through political action committees, corporations, and advocacy groups to influence elections, ballot measures, and policy fights.
Democratic Senate nominees in Texas, Michigan, Maine and Ohio out-raised their Republican rivals by $104.5 million from July through September. The GOP's main Senate super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, raised a record $272.9 million in the same quarter, CNBC reported.
Reality
Elon Musk gave the Senate Leadership Fund $158 million in September through a Texas PAC created to support Ken Paxton, CNBC reported. Crypto Briefing said a Kalshi market had Democrat James Talarico at 62.5% to win, relatively stable over the past week.
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Fairshake's affiliate Defend American Jobs has reported $46.7 million in Ohio Senate spending, 55.6% above its $30 million pledge. Added to $5.9 million from the Winklevoss-backed Digital Freedom Fund, the total is $52.6 million.
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Tech billionaires have raised more than $340m to defeat California's Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on billionaires. Californians vote in early November, and two countermeasures on the same ballot can block the tax even if Prop 40 passes.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom endorsed Prop. 42, which voids the Prop. 40 billionaire tax if both pass and Prop. 42 gets more yes votes. SFGATE reports polls consistently lean toward Prop. 42, so a Prop. 40 majority would not settle the question.
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More than 60% of the estimated $11.6 billion in 2026 political spending will go to broadcast and cable TV, Business Insider reported. Strategist Rob Flaherty says operatives copy one another and consultants earn more as the TV share rises.
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Elon Musk gave more than $276 million to Republican groups since July, making him the biggest known donor of the 2026 midterms, CNBC and SCMP reported. CNBC put his known 2025-26 federal giving at roughly $366 million, 26% above the roughly $290 million he spent in 2024.
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Super PACs in the Leading the Future network paid two Nevada LLCs about $33 million, according to WIRED's review of federal filings. The Campaign Legal Center alleges the LLCs hide the real payees, and the FEC has lacked a quorum to hear its complaint since May 2025.
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International IDEA's review of 39 national elections in 2025 recorded disinformation narratives in at least 62% of them. Its authors still judge election quality broadly stable and offer 20 case studies as lessons for other countries.
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Republicans hold $1 billion to Democrats' $579 million, but Trump-aligned groups booking in September sometimes pay over five times earlier rates. At those prices the cash lead buys less airtime than its size suggests, though the record cannot say how much less nationally.
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4 publishersReality
Sergey Brin has given $102 million to defeat California's Prop 40, a one-time 5% billionaire tax that could cost him about $13 billion. The state's $100 billion estimate depends as much on how many of its 200 billionaires stay resident as on the November vote.
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Public companies and their trade groups supplied over 40% of the $2.5 billion raised by party 527 committees in 25 years, a Wharton-CPA primer finds. Its authors want boards to govern that giving on purpose before possible post-midterm investigations.
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Abortion runs in fewer than 5 percent of Democratic Senate ads nationally and about 15 percent of the $40.8 million spent in Maine, where Planned Parenthood Votes has placed its largest buy of 2026 against Susan Collins.
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Three unions supplied about $6 million of the $7.8 million raised to defend Washington's 9.9% levy on household income above $1 million, six times what the repeal campaign has, for revenue the state starts billing in 2029.
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Most of the money reached the South Dakota senator as outside spending from Defend American Jobs, a group funded by a super PAC financed by Andreessen Horowitz, in a state whose legislature has already made hyperscalers pay more for water and power.
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The Department of Revenue scores Washington's new 9.9% tax on annual income above $1 million at $3.1 billion in its first fiscal year. A ballot measure this fall will decide whether it stands.
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Ahead of Tuesday's cloture vote the White House is answering bank lobbyists with a scenario tool, while Fairshake's $30 million to Democrats is already spent and Republicans including John Cornyn weigh a no.
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More than $3.4 billion is chasing a chamber that decides who staffs the administration and who fills open court seats for the rest of the term, and the spending so far shows the two sides pricing the same seats very differently.
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A 5% levy on about 200 people was costed against wealth that has already moved. Fortune counts roughly $29 billion gone, and the two men at the top were 28.5% of the base.
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