President Biden likes to quote his father telling him, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget — and I’ll tell you what you value.” The Democrats and their allies would like you to believe that their chances of keeping control of the Senate are still good, in large part because Republican incumbents in Texas, Florida, and Nebraska are in trouble. I’ve been skeptical of this spin for a long time, but now we’ve got another clue — where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s WinSenate PAC is spending its money in the final weeks of the campaign.
This week, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s WinSenate PAC is spending more than $35 million on advertising in nine U.S. Senate races. The biggest expenditures are in Ohio, where incumbent Sherrod Brown is in the fight of his life, and in Pennsylvania, where Bob Casey is in a similarly precarious state. (Both Brown and Casey recently released commercials touting their ability to reach across the aisle and work with Donald Trump.)
After that, this week WinSenate PAC is spending $4.5 million in Nevada, $4.3 million in Wisconsin, $3.6 million in Michigan, $2.8 million in Montana, $2.3 million in Arizona, $2 million in Maryland . . . and a whole $60,000 in the Texas Senate race, where Colin Allred is taking on incumbent Republican Ted Cruz. (No, I did not leave off a zero.)
As mentioned before, Texas is an expensive state in which to run a Senate race, with a lot of media markets, some with fairly high advertising rates. Five-figure sums are going to be a drop in the bucket. In a state where the last guy who took on Cruz spent more than $79 million, this week, Schumer’s PAC is spending roughly the cost of a Land Rover LR4. (Note that according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, more than 1.6 million Texans have already voted.)
This is a sign that whatever other spin you hear, Schumer’s PAC does not believe that Allred is within striking distance. The purpose of Schumer’s PAC is to win Senate races — to minimize losses and maximize gains. If the people running the PAC thought spending a couple million in Texas, Florida, or Nebraska would make a difference, they would do it.
Cruz is up by 4.2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average and ahead by 3.5 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight average. Four years ago, more than 11 million people voted in Texas’s U.S. Senate race, so each percentage point is roughly 110,000 people.
Also note that this week Schumer’s PAC isn’t spending a dime to help Florida Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, or the Bernie Sanders-admiring “independent” Dan Osborn in Nebraska. In fact, Schumer’s PAC hasn’t spent a penny in Florida or Nebraska the entire cycle.
So far, for the cycle, Schumer’s WinSenate PAC has spent $220 million, according to OpenSecrets. The PAC has spent $803,000 on ads touting Allred, and $42,000 on ads criticizing Cruz.
It is egregiously easy for Democratic campaigns in red states to persuade credulous journalists that they’re on the verge of a big upset, or that anything that happens in that campaign is an omen that some longshot liberal is about to score the win of the century. For example, here is an actual headline from Newsweek: “Ted Cruz Suffers Blow as Texas’ Biggest Newspaper Endorses Opponent.”
They’re referring to the Dallas Morning News. But if you’re doubtful that the Dallas Morning News would ever endorse Cruz, you are correct. It endorsed Democrat Beto O’Rourke over Cruz in 2018. It endorsed Democrat Paul Sadler over Cruz back in 2012. Cruz has never needed the DMN endorsement before, and he’s not going to need the DMN endorsement this year.
“Big city newspaper editorial board endorses liberal Democrat over conservative Republican” is just about the most predictable event in a typical campaign. That’s why it’s actual news when a big city newspaper editorial board doesn’t endorse a liberal Democrat over a conservative Republican, like earlier this week when Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong decided to block the paper’s editorial board from going forward with a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. (The editorial page editor, Mariel Garza, resigned afterwards.)
Touting the DMN endorsement of Allred as a big deal is what happens when you have U.S. political campaigns covered by people who do not know anything about the history of the state, or the candidates, or the local newspapers. Obama aide Ben Rhodes famously declared in 2016, “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Now those reporters don’t even know much about political campaigns!
A lot of Democrats are enormously excited by an Emerson poll that had Allred trailing by just 1 percentage point. Harris is heading to Houston on Friday for a rally with Allred.
Cruz is a recognizable Republican, and lots of Democrats hate him. Lots of progressives want to believe, “This is the year that Cruz is going down!”
But Schumer’s PAC, which has spent more than $45 million on ads tearing down Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and more than $56 million on ads tearing down Bernie Moreno in Ohio this cycle, doesn’t think Allred deserves much more help than the metaphorical change behind the couch cushions.
What, you think Allred’s got a good shot, and Schumer just didn’t notice? You think Schumer’s whole team, whose sole professional purpose is to figure out how to use its resources to maximize the odds of victory and preserving a Democratic majority, just overlooked not one but three really good shots to pick up a GOP-held Senate seat?
Interestingly, Schumer’s PAC has spent more than $18 million against Arizona Republican Kari Lake, and . . . I don’t know, did that Senate race ever look competitive? Did Ruben Gallego ever need that much help?
Also, it feels like the Nevada Senate race never really turned all that competitive, but Schumer’s PAC has spent more than $31 million this cycle in ads hitting Republican Sam Brown. Eh, considering how it has allocated resources, maybe Schumer’s team really is a bunch of stumblebums.
Also . . . could some independent pollster, before Election Day, poll the state of Nebraska? Every publicly available survey in that race has been sponsored by either the Osborn campaign or Republican incumbent Deb Fischer’s campaign. Unsurprisingly, the Osborn campaign surveys show him ahead (by as much as six percentage points!) and the Fischer campaign polls show her ahead (by as much as seven percentage points).
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