I keep coming back to one number.
$194 million.
That is how much was spent on advertising in Michigan’s U.S. Senate primary this year. Nobody had ever spent that much on a state midterm primary before.
About $64 million of it went toward helping Haley Stevens try to defeat Abdul El-Sayed.
Two Democrats.
In the closing stretch, the Stevens side was outspending El-Sayed’s campaign on television by 12 to 1.
Stop and think about that for a minute.
Michigan was going to nominate a Democrat either way. Meanwhile, Republicans control the White House, the House, the Senate, and the courts. Faced with that little national emergency, some of the smartest and richest people in Democratic politics decided the most urgent use of $64 million was settling a family argument.
I have been around politics long enough that very little surprises me anymore.
This did.
Whose money was it?
I did what I usually do when somebody tells me not to worry about the money.
I pulled the filings.
You should too. In fact, please do, because some of this sounds made up.
The biggest spender behind Stevens was United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC. It spent roughly $30 million on this one race, a record for the group.
AIPAC itself supplied about $30 million of UDP’s roughly $100 million cycle haul. Because AIPAC moves its money through a nonprofit, the public cannot see where a dime of that money originally came from.
It is a black box wearing a blue jersey, supposedly.
The money we can trace is not especially reassuring.
Paul Singer gave to UDP.
Yes, that Paul Singer, one of the largest Republican megadonors in America.
Robert Kraft gave. Marc Rowan gave.
Jan Koum gave Trump’s super PAC $5 million in Meta stock in 2024, then moved another $1.6 million into UDP through a pass-through organization.
When researchers examined UDP’s large contributions, they found that barely one-third came from people who reliably support Democrats. Nearly a quarter came from donors with Republican giving histories.
Then there was A Stronger Michigan, the second-largest spender in the race. It poured in about $16 million. Almost all of its money came from Center Forward, a dark-money group that tells the public essentially nothing about where its money originates.
Another organization, the Center for Democratic Priorities, spent roughly $6.5 million and apparently never bothered reporting its activity to the FEC at all.
And while all of this was happening, AIPAC sent a joint fundraising email for Haley Stevens and Susan Collins.
The same email.
A Michigan Democrat and a Maine Republican.
The biggest so-called pro-Democratic spender in the biggest Democratic primary in America was simultaneously raising money to protect a Republican Senate seat.
You do not need me to explain what that is.
The ads barely work
Here is the dirty little secret everybody in this business knows but few people with invoices are willing to say out loud.
Television persuasion in large federal races barely moves voters.
I am not saying every television ad is worthless. I am saying the research has been remarkably consistent. The effects are small. They fade quickly. And the more saturated the market becomes, the less each additional dollar accomplishes.
Michigan was the most saturated midterm advertising market in history.
By the end, the last $50 million might as well have been fed through a paper shredder.
So why keep spending?
Because consultants get paid from the ad buy. The larger the buy, the larger the check.
There is no commission on restraint.
There is certainly no commission on investigative journalism.
The ads are not merely the strategy.
The ads are the business.
Here is what about $305,000 did
I will use our own books because I know them cold, and every line is sitting at the FEC for anybody who wants to check my math.
Madison Cawthorn
We broke the video of him humping his cousin’s face. Roughly half a billion people saw the story worldwide. A sitting member of Congress lost his own primary.
Our cost was about $150,000.
Mark Robinson
We put his own NudeAfrica.com comments in front of North Carolina voters.
His words. His account. His history.
He was wiped out in November.
Cost: about $25,000.
Chuck Edwards
We exposed his messages to female staffers, the casino trips, and the late-night texts.
He is resigning.
Cost: about $5,000.
Five grand.
Lauren Boebert
Beetlejuice.
The theater’s own security cameras did most of the testifying. She survived her next election by 546 votes and then fled to another district to preserve her career.
We spent about $125,000.
And we are not finished with her.
Add those numbers together and you get approximately $305,000.
For roughly that amount, we helped defeat a sitting congressman, helped expose a statewide Republican candidate who was subsequently crushed, exposed another congressman who is now leaving office, and pushed a fourth into political survival mode.
The pro-Stevens operation in Michigan spent about 210 times that amount fighting another Democrat.
Yes, I know. A Senate primary is not the same thing as investigative work. Michigan is not North Carolina. Television advertising is not opposition research.
That is precisely the point.
Donors should stop comparing budget categories and start comparing results.
The part that makes me angry
That $305,000 did not come from billionaires.
It came five dollars at a time. Ten dollars. Twenty-five dollars.
It came from regular people who have mortgages, grocery bills, children, medical expenses, and plenty of better things they could be doing with their money. They gave anyway because they believed corrupt politicians should be exposed and removed from office.
Then we have to go back and ask those same people again.
Not because the institutional money does not exist. It plainly exists.
The foundations, megadonors, and political organizations sitting on nine-figure accounts simply will not fund this kind of work.
I do not mean they will not fund us specifically. That would be a complaint, and I am not interested in complaining.
They will not adequately fund anything like this.
There is a comparatively inexpensive, proven, public method for exposing corrupt politicians and helping remove them from office. The people controlling the largest pools of political money would still rather burn through $64 million choosing between two Democrats.
That is not a funding problem.
It is a judgment problem.
Even Kamala Harris said it
At the Louisiana Democratic Party gala in New Orleans, Kamala Harris said voters want leaders who know how to fight. She said the Democratic Party needs to become comfortable with “a certain kind of ruthlessness.”
She is right.
But ruthlessness is not a speech.
Ruthlessness is a budget line.
Ruthlessness means funding the work that removes corrupt Republicans from office instead of writing nine-figure checks to fight your own voters.
The machine heard Harris.
It applauded.
Then it went right back to billing.
Until Democratic donors, especially the real ones giving five, ten, and twenty-five dollars, demand that their institutions fund what demonstrably works instead of what reliably generates commissions, the results will not change.
The receipts are public.
The model works.
The excuse is gone. Help us defeat a couple more terrible politicians. Subscribe. Donate. Contact us with tips about nefarious actions.
DBW
About the Author
David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.
Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.
Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.
An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.
And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.
Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.
This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.
This is incredible reporting David. Thank you. I know you. I know you are saying exactly the truth.