This midterm election cycle is on track to be the most expensive in American history. $11.6 billion in projected political ad spending, more than we saw during the 2024 presidential race. $517 million in corporate spending in the first 15 months of this cycle, which tops all of 2024.
Part of this funding is designed so you can’t see where it came from. This morning, The New York Times published its own tally: about $1 billion in anonymous money moving through the 2026 landscape, a figure the Times says is likely an undercount, since hiding the money is the whole point. In Maine’s Senate race alone, secret money on both sides works out to more than $80 per registered voter.
How it works: A donor gives to a “social welfare” nonprofit, a 501(c)(4). The nonprofit gives to a super PAC. The super PAC buys the ads. The super PAC discloses its donor, technically. But the donor it discloses is the nonprofit, which discloses no one. The original name never surfaces.
Another trick in play: pop-up PACs that register so late their donor reports aren’t due until after Election Day. Politico found that AIPAC’s super PAC shielded more than 40 percent of its 2026 primary spending this way. In Chicago’s March primaries, shell PACs with friendly names like “Elect Chicago Women” spent over $16 million before voters could tell who paid for it.
Who’s policing this? Nobody, functionally. The Federal Election Commission currently has two of its six seats filled. It can’t hold a formal meeting, let alone enforce the law. And the IRS, which oversees the nonprofits, has rarely policed political spending and has even less capacity after recent cuts.
The money is real, it’s record-breaking, and much of it is deliberately hidden.
Keeping score
In Michigan, roughly $60 million in outside money backed Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary. It was the most expensive Democratic primary in American history, including about $30 million from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project. Abdul El-Sayed answered with 12,000 volunteers knocking doors. He won. “The power of our many is greater than the power of their money,” he said afterward.
In Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan ran against an AIPAC-endorsed congresswoman under a slogan that says it all: “the many versus the money.” She won by 19 points.
In New York, Brad Lander beat Dan Goldman 64 to 36. In Colorado, Melat Kiros retired a 15-term incumbent despite $2.1 million in late attack ads. In Michigan’s 13th, Donavan McKinney beat an opponent who dramatically outspent him from his own pocket.
And the template for all of it came last year, when Zohran Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo despite a $25 million super PAC, the largest in New York City history. An analysis by The CITY put Cuomo’s combined spending at roughly $87 per vote. He lost by nearly 13 points.
Add it up and AIPAC’s super PAC finished this primary season with roughly 7 wins against 10 losses, its worst cycle ever, despite entering with more than $90 million on hand. In several races, the money itself became the argument against the candidate it was supposed to help.
Money still talks
Big money won races this year too. It helped Wesley Bell beat Cori Bush again in Missouri. It combined with a Trump endorsement to take out Thomas Massie in Kentucky, in the most expensive House primary ever. In Maryland’s 5th, $5.7 million lifted one candidate out of a 24-person field to a 15-point win. And in California, $6.3 million nearly erased a 20-point lead. The candidate survived, but the money moved real votes.
Secrecy won a race too. In Maine’s 2nd District, the seat Jared Golden is vacating, a Republican-funded group called Real Change PAC spent a half million dollars against state Sen. Joe Baldacci, the Democrat the GOP feared most in his own primary. The money traced back through Conservative Americans PAC to a nonprofit called the American Prosperity Alliance, which discloses no donors. Their ad accused Baldacci, without irony, of being “dark money’s choice.” He lost by a few hundred votes. It was a deceptive strategy, and it worked.
Historically, in general elections, the bigger spender wins around 90 percent of House races. Some of that is money chasing candidates who were already going to win. Money follows strength as much as it creates it. Still, money matters in November.
So what happened this year?
Why the many beat the money
Primaries are where dollars are weakest. Turnout is low. There’s no party label to fall back on, so ads can’t do the deciding for you. What matters is who shows up, and showing up is the one thing money can’t purchase. It has to be given.
Political scientists have known for decades that campaign spending hits diminishing returns fast. The tenth million buys far less than the first. A door knock from a neighbor, a small-dollar donation, a ride to the polls: those don’t diminish. They compound.
That’s the fairest version of this year’s story. In 2026’s Democratic primaries, organized people beat tens of millions of dollars, over and over, in the exact arena where organization matters most. That is a fact, and it should put steel in your spine.
November is the real test
El-Sayed now faces a well-funded Republican in a true swing state. So do others who won their primaries on shoe leather. General elections are money’s home turf, and the secret spending is accelerating: in a single week this month, two Republican-linked nonprofits rolled out $22 million ad campaigns apiece across dozens of battleground districts, all of it untraceable. What worked during the summer has to work harder in November.
The lesson of this primary season is that the machine is beatable, and we now know exactly how to beat it. Volunteers. Small donors. Neighbors talking to neighbors. Turnout.
They can hide the donors.
We won’t let them hide our votes.
Slade Wentworth | The Dad Briefs covers the civic, political, and quietly human stories shaping family life in America — with recipes along the way.