Outside Groups Pour $10 Million a Week Into Key Senate Races

With less than a month until Election Day, super political action committees and other outside groups are spending nearly $10 million per week on campaign ads and other efforts to mobilize voters in the states where control of the Senate will be decided.

Non-candidate campaign spending topped $50 million in Missouri this week, and surpassed $40 million in each of four other states: Nevada, Florida, Indiana and Arizona, according to independent expenditure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. The Senate race in Tennessee has now exceeded $30 million in spending by interest groups.

The Florida Senate race overall is the most expensive in the nation, according to quarterly reports of candidates’ campaign finances received by the FEC before an Oct. 15 deadline. Total spending of $113 million in the race included almost $70 million from the campaigns of incumbent Bill Nelson(D) and Gov. Rick Scott (R), plus $43 million from outside groups.

Of 17 groups that reported independent expenditures disseminated between Sept. 18 and Sept. 30, the end of the reporting period, only four have provided any new information about their donors, according to an analysis by Brendan Fischer of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.

Three labor-oriented groups, Unite Here Arizona, Working People Rising, and Working America, reported contributions totaling almost $1.3 million in the form of transfers from unions and a nonprofit group. Another group, Mi Familia Vota, reported that it received contributions of $45,000 from a nonprofit called Arizona Wins.

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