Continuing our analysis of House race expenditures of the 05/06 elections cycle (we looked at the top ten non-party committee expenditures of the cycle on Tuesday), today I’ll be posting total expenditures from the 22 races where a Democratic challenger beat a Republican incumbent (with the exception of TX-23, where I haven’t been able to accumulate all the relevant data yet). And by total, I mean everything except expenditures from the shadowy 527s: candidate expenditures (listed under the “Spent” column), party committee expenditures, and independent expenditures from all sources.
Here’s what I’ve tallied up:
| District | Candidate | Spent | DCCC IEs | Other IEs | Incumbent | Spent | NRCC IEs | Other IEs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AZ-05 | Mitchell | $1.89M | $2.12M | $1.02M | Hayworth | $2.94M | $2.25M | $7k |
| CA-11 | McNerney | $2.34M | $216k | $1.1M | Pombo | $4.51M | $1.43M | $18k |
| CT-02 | Courtney | $2.37M | $2.07M | $1k | Simmons | $3.09M | $2.74M | $14k |
| CT-05 | Murphy | $2.44M | $2.08M | $975k | Johnson | $4.98M | $1.88M | $456k |
| FL-22 | Klein | $4.14M | $2.31M | $25k | Shaw | $5.19M | $3.35M | $217k |
| IN-02 | Donnelly | $1.49M | $918k | $355k | Chocola | $3.39M | $383k | $43k |
| IN-08 | Ellsworth | $1.72M | $2.21M | $166k | Hostettler | $530k | $1.87M | $21k |
| IN-09 | Hill | $1.86M | $3.08M | $75k | Sodrel | $2.64M | $3.25M | $69k |
| IA-02 | Loebsack | $443k | (none) | (none) | Leach | $519k | $21k | (none) |
| KS-02 | Boyda | $655k | $652k | (none) | Ryun | $1.03M | $272k | (none) |
| KY-03 | Yarmuth | $2.2M | $321k | $5k | Northup | $3.4M | $248k | $1.01M |
| MN-01 | Walz | $1.23M | $371k | $722k | Gutknecht | $1.69M | $409k | $22k |
| NC-11 | Shuler | $1.75M | $171k | $267k | Taylor | $4.11M | $1.54M | $19k |
| NH-01 | Shea-Porter | $286k | (none) | (none) | Bradley | $856k | $21k | (none) |
| NH-02 | Hodes | $1.47M | $1.12M | $198k | Bass | $1.21M | $472k | $24k |
| NY-19 | Hall | $1.57M | (none) | $5k | Kelly | $2.46M | $19k | (none) |
| NY-20 | Gillibrand | $2.47M | $789k | $333k | Sweeney | $3.38M | $592k | (none) |
| PA-04 | Altmire | $1M | $399k | $739k | Hart | $2.17M | $619k | $19k |
| PA-07 | Sestak | $2.92M | $1.93M | $277k | Weldon | $2.89M | $3.56M | $13k |
| PA-08 | Murphy | $2.35M | $1.72M | $189k | Fitzpatrick | $3.13M | $3.62M | $11k |
| PA-10 | Carney | $1.51M | $1.11M | $683k | Sherwood | $2.27M | $1.51M | $10k |
| Total | $38.1M | $23.6M | $7.1M | $56.4M | $30.1M | $2M |
Now, obviously, these numbers don’t tell anything close to the full story–they don’t discern between positive and negative expenditures, the nature of the expenditures, and the time frame of the expenditures. But the basic framework makes it a decent starting point for our discussion. Note that total expenditures from all sources gave the Republicans a nearly $20 million edge ($89M to $69M) in these 21 districts. Also note how the mediocre fundraising of former New Hampshire Reps. Bass ($1.2M) and Bradley ($0.86M) foreshadowed their surprise defeats last November. Another interesting fact: in this top tier of House races, Republican-allied PACs were almost nowhere to be found–in fact, if it weren’t for the $1 million spent by the National Association of Realtors PAC in support of Anne Northup (KY-03), Democrats would’ve enjoyed a 7-to-1 non-party IE advantage in these districts. Instead, they settled for 7-to-2.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting part two of this discussion, featuring expenditures from open seats, competitive races where Democratic challengers fell short, and the few races where Republican House challengers put Democratic incumbents on the defensive.
I believe the “Other IEs” is wrong for NY-19/John Hall. The group Majority Action spent some $500,000 on that race on behalf of Hall.
I noticed the roughly 20k the NRCC spent in NY-19, IA-02 and NH-01. Was this money for polling? If so, why didn’t they spend more in these districts? Were they worried it would tip off the DCCC to the competitiveness of the districts?
I look forward to seeing how much the NRCC spent in NJ-07, NV-03, WY-AL, and NC-08.