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.
