Super PACs were biggest spenders in 2018 midterms, report finds

Super PACs aligned with the two major political parties spent more in the 2018 midterms than the parties’ congressional committees did, the first time that’s happened in a midterm election cycle and a milestone that shows the power amassed by the big-money outside groups, a new report released Thursday found.

During other midterm elections, party committees like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have been the biggest spenders. But in 2018, preliminary totals indicate the three biggest spenders in the election were all super PACs, the Campaign Legal Center’s review found.

“At the same time that more money was becoming concentrated in a handful of politically connected super PACs, those same super PACs were finding new ways to disguise their spending,” the report said. 

Chief among those tactics, it said, were an increased tendency among super PACs to delay naming their donors and a habit among some groups of obscuring their identities while placing political ads on the internet, which is possible due to gaps in disclosure rules.

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