Control of the U.S. Senate revolves around Georgia’s two Senate runoffs, turning the state into the battleground of all battlegrounds and an immense money pit.
As of the most recent campaign finance reports, the four candidates have raised more than $100 million apiece on average, and outside spending has topped $310 million. Given the stakes, no donor or PAC has any reason to hold back, and as a result, these twin races are accelerating the trend of Senate seats becoming increasingly expensive with each passing cycle.
With the campaign fundraising energy of both parties focused exclusively on Georgia, the Senate contests serve as a useful who’s-who guide to which Democratic groups have resources to burn at this strange 2020-is-still-happening point in the election process. Here are the biggest outside spenders in Georgia as of late December. (This list excludes single-candidate PACs that exist just to assist Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.)
Majority Forward/Senate Majority PAC
These two entities combined are the Democrats’ premier dark money weapon. Senate Majority PAC has burned through $228 million in 2020—more than 2018 and 2016 combined—including $31 million attacking Georgia incumbent David Perdue and $1.2 million on the Warnock-Kelly Loeffler matchup. (The Perdue-Ossoff race is where most of the money has settled.) Majority Forward, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, has chipped in $1.7 million in support of both Georgia Democrats, but really, it exists as a vehicle to move money to Senate Majority PAC, to which it has sent over $55.5 million in the 2020 cycle according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It’s a classic dark money setup since, as a c4, Majority Forward does not have to disclose its donors (the GOP has a parallel setup on its side).
You can maybe get a sense of what kind of donor Majority Forward attracts from the names who have given directly to Senate Majority PAC. These include the Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner, who has given $8 million to the PAC this cycle; hedge fund manager James Simons ($5 million); and Jeff Skoll, a billionaire who was eBay’s first employee ($4.5 million). Given Democrats’ lackluster record in competitive Senate races this year, it’s possible to question whether all this money is having much of an effect, but a good chunk of the cash flowing through Georgia right now belongs to Majority Forward and its shadowy, deep-pocketed donors.
Take Back 2020
This PAC can’t hold a candle to Majority Forward, but it has spent $1.9 million each on the Georgia Senate races. Take Back 2020—a project of UNITE HERE, a union of mainly hospitality workers—is primarily a get-out-the-vote operation that brags on its website that it has knocked on 3 million doors and dialed 10 million numbers. In particular, Take Back 2020 contacted Black and brown voters, including many infrequent voters. The canvassers were often hospitality workers, and the operations were funded by a variety of major Democratic donors, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund and America Votes (both dark-money c4s), and Michael Bloomberg, who chipped in $1 million to the group’s Florida campaign. It wasn’t focused on Georgia during the general election, instead targeting Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida (the bulk of its $10.6 million spent on the 2020 election targeted the presidential race). But like many progressive organizations, it has pivoted to Georgia.
BlackPAC
As its name suggests, this PAC is focused on driving turnout among Black voters. Originally incubated at the SEIU, the group made a splash in the 2017 Alabama Senate race, canvassing aggressively on behalf of Doug Jones. In 2018, its biggest operations were in red states, including Florida, Tennessee, Indiana and Missouri, where it worked on behalf of Democratic Senate candidates who ultimately lost. From the 2018 to 2020 cycle, its independent expenditures surged from $3 million to over $27 million; most of that latter money was spent on the presidential race, though it also spent $3.3 million re-electing Senator Gary Peters in Michigan. In Georgia, BlackPAC has spent $2.3 million to support Warnock and $1.9 million to back Ossoff.
The group intends to build lasting campaign infrastructure using all available communications methods, from TV to direct mail and in-person outreach. In many ways, its goals mirror those of Take Back 2020 and it shares the same funding sources. In the 2020 cycle, BlackPAC has received over $6 million from Bloomberg, over $4.3 million from America votes, and $2.25 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
American Bridge 21st Century
David Brock founded American Bridge 21st Century in 2010 as an oppo shop devoted to uncovering and highlighting as many instances of Republican malfeasance and hypocrisy as its team of researchers could. It mostly spread these nuggets through social media or by placing them with reporters, but in 2020, it stepped up its own PAC operation in a big way, spending over $50 million to oppose President Donald Trump. This operation included extensive swing state ad buys that leaned on testimonials from regretful 2016 Trump voters. During the general election, the group, which is primarily funded by its own foundation and a handful of mega-donors, was laser-focused on presidential politics, but it has shifted to launching attack ads on Perdue and Loeffler, emphasizing their corruption and their stock trades profiting from the pandemic. So far, the PAC has spent $2.4 million apiece opposing both Republicans. (The PAC doesn’t really do “positive” ads.)
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
As labor unions have declined in power, AFSCME remains a powerful player in Democratic politics, as government workers remain more unionized than their private-sector counterparts. Unions of all sorts are organizing and spending money in Georgia via groups like Take Back 2020, but AFSCME stands out for the amount it’s spent directly through its two main spending arms, which have spent a combined $2.2 million on the Georgia elections.
Like other unions, AFSCME has been active in swing states and has largely targeted voters of color, including ads that emphasize Trump’s inaction on COVID, which led to the deaths of Black people. In Georgia, AFSCME is one of many organizations leading canvassing and phone banking efforts.
Notably, these big outside spenders can be called “dark money” due to the opacity of their donors. Even organizations devoted to motivating voters of color are funded in ways that would appall campaign finance reformers; the Sixteen Thirty Fund and other nonprofits that exist mostly to hide the names of political donors may serve progressive ends, but they are ultimately anti-transparency. On the other hand, outside expenditures from Republican-aligned sources are pouring into the state at an even greater rate. This isn’t really the time to be precious about where, precisely, the money is coming from.
