Losses by Bollier and other red state Democrats show money can be a green mirage
Democrats in deep red states in the Midwest and South piled up stacks of cash heading into Election Day, wherewithal that activists hoped would help the party flip Senate seats that had been in GOP hands for decades.
But it was a mirage — a green one.
Kansas Democrat Bollier, a state senator from Mission Hills, raised $24.5 million for her U.S. Senate run through mid-October, a figure that far surpasses anything raised by a Kansas candidate. It was more than four times what Republican Rep. Roger Marshall collected.
But Marshall, a two-term congressman, won the race to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Roberts by more than 160,00 votes statewide. The final two weeks of fundraising won’t be reported until later this month, but based on their most recent filings Bollier appears to have spent roughly $36 per vote to Marshall’s $7.
“You reach the saturation point with money,” said Kansas Democratic National Committeeman Chris Reeves. “How much did it matter?”
Reeves said the focus on Bollier’s money, much of it coming from out of state, helped nationalize the race.
“The more national money pours into here, it becomes less about the candidate and more about ‘Team Red’ and ‘Team Blue.’ And in places like Kansas, that’s not necessarily a good thing,” he said.
Other record-setting candidates who fell short include South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison, who raised nearly $109 million through mid-October, about $30 million more than incumbent Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham.
Graham beat Harrison by 13.5 percentage points.
Democrat Cal Cunnigham in North Carolina raised $47.5 million, more than double Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ haul. He trailed Tillis by 2 percentage points as counting continued Thursday.
Cunningham may have been derailed by a sexting scandal that broke in early October, but highly touted Democratic candidates in Maine, Iowa and Montana also lost despite strong fundraising and promising poll numbers.
“It tells us a lot about the diminishing return value. You need a certain level of money to be credible and in the game, but after a while it becomes noise,” said Jared Suhn, a Kansas-based GOP consultant who has worked for Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran.
“Bollier was raising more in a quarter than had been raised in past U.S. Senate races,” Suhn said. “I seriously don’t know how you spend that level of money in an efficient way.”
Big money, no threat
Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath’s campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raised more than $90 million to McConnell’s $57 million. She lost by more than 20 points.
But unlike candidates in these other states, McGrath was never expected to pose a serious threat to McConnell. Her prodigious fundraising reflected national Democratic antipathy toward McConnell rather than strategic spending.
Democrats picked up seats in Arizona and Colorado, but appear poised to remain in the Senate minority after losing Alabama Sen. Doug Jones’ seat unless they can win the two up for grabs in Georgia. Those will likely be decided by expensive runoff elections.
With the exception of Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ victory over Democrat Sara Gideon in Maine, the results in Senate races appear closely tied to the presidential returns.
With Georgia still undecided at the presidential and Senate level, Collins is the only Senate candidate of either party to win in a state her presidential candidate lost.
Bollier barely edged out former vice president Joe Biden statewide by a little more than 1,800 votes.
Her fundraising was partially offset by money from outside GOP-leaning groups, which spent $24.7 million on attack ads and another $5.9 million for pro-Marshall spots, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Outside Democratic groups spent less than $1 million on ads promoting Bollier.
Marshall faced $15.6 million in attack ads from outside groups, going back to his contentious primary battle with former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Bollier’s spokeswoman Alexandra De Luca said before the election that “there is no candidate that Mitch McConnell is more annoyed by” than Marshall because of the millions in outside money that was needed for the Kansas race.
GOP spots attacked Bollier for her comments in praise of Australian gun regulations at an Olathe event in early October. Her campaign said that the quote was taken out of context and that Bollier supports the Second Amendment.
Jack Pandol, spokesman for the McConnell-linked Senate Leadership Fund, said the ads were a key to cementing the race’s final outcome.
“It seems like the best attacks reinforce things that voters already believe or think they know about the candidate,” he said.
Bollier’s own ads focused on her background as a doctor and featured testimonials from moderate Republican lawmakers who served alongside her in the Legislature.
One spot aimed at ticket splitting voters featured former state Rep. Larry Hibbard, a Toronto Republican, who said he planned to vote both Trump and Bollier.
The outside spending was essential to countering Bollier’s message, said David Kensinger, a GOP strategist who has managed campaigns for former Gov. Sam Brownback and Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts.
Do out-of-state donors help?
Bollier and other Democratic Senate candidates raised their record cash largely due to small dollar donors around the country who gave through the online portal ActBlue.
Small dollar fundraising helped Democrats win the House in 2018, but 2020 might reveal the limitations of the strategy. Bollier raised more raw dollars from Kansans than Marshall, but 78.4 % of her individual contributions came from donors from out of state.
“Once you make your campaign about appealing to leftist donors in California and New York you’ve pretty much made it impossible to use those votes for their intended purpose, which is to get votes in Kansas, Kentucky and South Carolina,” Kensinger said.
“It’s like gas for the car. You need gas, but it’s got to be a good car.”
Kensinger pointed to the GOP canvassing effort as an important factor in GOP victories that offset Democrats’ money advantage.
In Kansas and elsewhere, Democrats severely limited traditional door-to-door campaigning and rallies in favor of a more virtual approach because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republicans, for the most part, kept up business as usual.
“Kansas is still a state of neighbors. People expect to see their candidates. Trump even showed the importance of barnstorming on a national scale,” he said. “Huge, huge difference. Volunteers in Kansas beat donors in California and New York.”
