Ever since Super PACs entered the political scene a decade ago, the Senate Majority PAC has been one of—if not the—leading fundraisers for Democrats each election cycle. And yet, after Republicans won a majority in 2014, SMP for six years was unable to deliver on the promise of its namesake. Now, after two narrow wins in the Georgia Senate run-off elections, Democrats finally have control of the Senate, but it was hardly the resounding victory the party hoped for in 2020—and it came at the expense of tens of millions of dollars of fruitless campaign donations.
Run by former staffers of top-level Democrats, SMP serves as the center of the party’s Senate strategy. The PAC is a favorite of liberal mega-donors, many of whom make a habit of contributing millions of dollars year after year to help Democrats take control of the chamber. SMP is closely tied to Majority Forward, a dark money group that at one point shared the same president, J.B. Poersch. Both groups have grabbed headlines for their impressive fundraising numbers in recent years.
A river of dark money
Early in 2020, The Intercept reported on SMP’s network of dark money affiliates in key states where Democrats hoped to win Senate seats. With these 501(c)(4) groups, which aren’t required to report their donors, and with “pop-up” PACs that arrange their filing dates so they don’t have to reveal donors before election day, the Democrats built a wide network to pump money into Senate races and challenge the conservatives’ fundraising operation. Open Secrets noted that despite these pop-up PACs local-sounding names, many of them use the same advertising vendor, Waterfront Strategies, as SMP and other national-level PACs, tipping reporters off to the fact that these pop-ups are not necessarily locally-run.
One of the first pop-ups used by SMP appeared in Alabama in 2017 just ahead of the special election for Senate. A month before election day, a SMP and Priorities USA Action founded Highway 31, a seemingly local group that was almost entirely funded by its national “parent” PACs. SMP and Priorities pumped around $4 million into Highway 31 to fund ads slamming Republican Roy Moore for allegations of sexual assault, and helped propel Democrat Doug Jones to victory in the race.
Democrats used the pop-up strategy again in 2018 in Arizona, funding a PAC called Red and Gold that ran attack ads against Republican Martha McSally and only revealed its funders after voters went to the polls—turned out, the money came from SMP. Open Secrets notes that Democrats were hardly alone in using pop-up and relatively new PACs this cycle, but it appeared to have been the main avenue for getting aid to liberal candidates quickly and quietly.
In 2020, Democrats continued to employ this strategy in Alaska, with pop-up PAC North Star receiving nearly all of its $6.9 million in reported funding from Majority Forward, and a variety of recently-formed PACs in states like Colorado, Maine, and Iowa also received significant funding from SMP and affiliates. In Georgia, CNN reported the pop-up “Relation PAC” funded billboard trucks in Atlanta—the PAC was admittedly small, but contributed to making the Georgia run-offs the most expensive Senate races in history.
Deep pockets, high hopes
With plenty of money at their disposal, Democrats were highly optimistic before Election Day 2020. With the Trump administration bungling the pandemic response and the economy plummeting, liberals felt confident a blue wave was coming and SMP set its sights early on Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, and Arizona. As Election Day approached, Democrats generated urgency around a handful of races and brought in outsized funding totals to challenge incumbent Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.
When the dust settled, SMP spent nearly $230 million, and while Democrats were able to flip both Arizona seats, the only path to a Senate majority required winning two Georgia run-off races. SMP spent $100 million on those contests, helping make them two of the most expensive Senate races in history.
But it's not clear how much of a difference that money made.
Campaign staffers of both parties noted that Trump's insistence that he actually won the presidency hurt Republicans in Georgia as they tried to sell voters on electing conservatives to serve as a check on an incoming Democratic president, the Washington Post reported. In addition, the voter outreach and mobilization efforts of Abrahms and on-the-ground organizers seemed to have been the key factor in putting Democrats Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff over the top in tight races.
Lots of buck, little bang
Meanwhile, many liberals are still reviewing why so many of the most well-funded campaigns turned out to be flops.
Open Secrets reported that this cycle saw nine of the ten most expensive Senate races in history, and Republicans won five of them. As Democrats take stock of their big-money strategy, many are pointing out that the most successful races were the result of deep on-the-ground organizing, as was the case in Georgia. Stacey Abrams, who lost a campaign for governor of the state in 2018, founded voter registration and outreach groups that helped Democrats win the run-offs, which could indicate that the recipe for flipping more Senate seats blue lies in local outreach rather than large ad-buys from the top-down.
