Skip to content
Welcome, thoughtbot's Giant Robots listeners!Start here
US Midterms 2026
26JUL

NRSC accounts for $2.2m of July's $3.9m

3 min read
10:41UTC

FEC filings due on Thursday 20 August put coordinated party expenditure at $3,945,435 for 14 to 31 July, against $1,032,346 for the whole first half of the year. July is the first complete month since the Supreme Court struck the spending caps.

PoliticsDeveloping
Key takeaway

July is the first fully reported month of coordinated party spending; August figures arrive on 20 September.

Coordinated party expenditure ran to $3,945,435 across 40 records dated 14 to 31 July 2026, against $1,032,346 across 40 records for the whole of January to June. Both figures are compiled here from the Federal Election Commission's bulk transaction file `itpas2.txt`, cycle 2026, filtered to transaction type 24C, which marks a coordinated party buy.⁠1 The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) accounts for $2,230,472 of the July total across 13 records.

The committee said on 30 June that it would shut its independent-expenditure operation and told campaigns on 1 July to fold that spending into coordinated buys. The register now shows the money moving, which is the part nobody could report at the time.

A filing calendar explains why a September briefing is reporting July money. The August Monthly report closed its books on 31 July and was due on Thursday 20 August, which falls inside the gap between the last briefing and this one.⁠2 The September Monthly, covering August, is not due until 20 September. July therefore counts as a complete, fully reported month, and the empty August rows carry no information about August spending at all.

Alaska produces the sharpest line in the file. The Alaska Democratic Party recorded $884,835 in five coordinated expenditures between 17 and 30 July, every dollar on Mary Peltola and every dollar through one direct-mail payee, against $696,884 that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spread across eleven candidates nationwide in the same fortnight.⁠3 Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent Peltola is chasing, drew $136,570. Alaska spent its summer arguing over which Dan Sullivan belonged on the ballot, and its party committee has now answered a different question about which race is worth the money.

Hold that comparison to the July window. Across every 2026-dated record in the same file the two committees sit within $4,549 of each other, the DCCC marginally ahead on $889,384, because it spent $192,500 before July while the Alaska party spent nothing.⁠4 The state party did not out-spend the national committee over the cycle; it front-loaded into fourteen days while the DCCC did not. Both figures count coordinated expenditure alone, a narrow slice of what either committee spends. One further caution on the same data: all four congressional campaign committees show zero rows in the independent-expenditure file for this cycle, and that zero is a property of the file rather than a description of anyone's behaviour.⁠5

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A Supreme Court ruling this summer removed the legal limit on how much a political party committee can spend in direct coordination with its own candidates. The first full month of spending data under the new rules became public in August, and it shows a jump: over $3.9 million in coordinated spending in the second half of July alone, against just over $1 million for the entire first six months of the year. The national Republican Senate committee spent the most of any single group, but a state-level Democratic Party in Alaska spent almost as much on one candidate as the national Democratic House committee spent on eleven candidates combined.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The jump from January-June to July exists because NRSC v. FEC removed FECA's coordinated-spending caps only from the ruling date forward, so the first six months of the cycle were still capped while July, the first full month after the ruling, was not.

The size of the July number is a function of the ruling's timing relative to the FEC's monthly filing calendar, not of party committees suddenly finding new donors.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Individual state parties, not just the four national Hill committees, can now become decisive spenders in a single competitive race.

  • Opportunity

    Candidates who secure their state party's backing rather than the national committee's may find that route delivers comparable or greater coordinated spending.

First Reported In

Update #16 · Missouri suspends its map, and votes on it

Federal Election Commission· 7 Sept 2026
Read original →
Different Perspectives
Department of Justice (DOJ)
Department of Justice (DOJ)
DOJ appealed to the 9th Circuit after Judge David O. Carter did not rule by a noon deadline on 22 October that DOJ itself had set, seeking to have California set aside mail ballots from more than 20,000 listed voters. Its case is that ineligible votes cancel lawful ones; the panel dismissed the appeal 2-1 on 26 October.
Lower Costs Now
Lower Costs Now
Lower Costs Now reported $7.37m in Kansas on 24 and 25 October, part of $65.65m in Senate races since its first independent expenditure on 1 October, including $17.21m for Josh Turek in Iowa. Its FEC filings show $50.18m raised by 14 October.
MAGA Inc
MAGA Inc
MAGA Inc, the super PAC aligned with Donald Trump, filed $7.20m against James Talarico on 22 October, taking its Texas spending to $37.65m. Of that, $30.12m is against Talarico and $7.53m is for Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee.
Senate Majority PAC (SMP)
Senate Majority PAC (SMP)
SMP's pre-general report shows it spent $108.70m from 1 to 14 October, including $65.0m to WinSenate and $10.0m to Texas Forever, and ended with $32.72m. Texas Forever has reported $19.40m against Ken Paxton since 1 October.
Senate Leadership Fund (SLF)
Senate Leadership Fund (SLF)
SLF's pre-general report shows $88.42m in cash on 14 October and $18.98m raised in the fortnight, none of it from Elon Musk. It has since reported $12.07m against Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and its $2.7m to Plains PAC preceded that committee's first Kansas buy on 25 October.
National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)
National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)
The NRSC's pre-general report shows nothing spent with Ashley Hinson in Iowa, or with its nominees in six other states, from 1 to 14 October, after $5.54m with Hinson in September. It took no new loan and ended the fortnight with $25.20m in cash and $20m of debt.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.