We're past the traditional Labor Day start, when the 2026 midterm election campaigns begin in earnest. It's also the time when the various political action committees, or PACs, start not just opening the lids on their war chests, but pulling the lids off, dumping the contents on the floor, and then going through their couch cushions for loose change.
Trump-affiliated PACs are no exception. President Trump's own MAGA Inc. PAC is preparing to dump some serious cash into helping Republican candidates, to keep (we hope) the House of Representatives and the Senate in Republican hands. In the case of MAGA Inc., we're talking $138 million.
President Donald Trump's political operation is preparing to spend about $138 million to support Republican candidates in roughly 50 general-election races as the GOP fights to retain control of Congress in November.
The spending, much of it tied to Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC and two newly created political groups, includes more than $130 million in planned advertising as well as millions of dollars in direct mail and text messaging, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.
It seems baffling that many people can be swayed by shiny snail-mail cards and text messages, but if they didn't work, the PACs and the campaigns wouldn't keep spending money on them. And they are spending, bigly.
No Going Back PAC Inc., a new super PAC linked to MAGA Inc., has reserved more than $95 million in advertising, according to data from media-tracking firm AdImpact.
Another new group, Safety and Affordability PAC Inc., has reserved about $27 million in advertising. The New York Times reported, citing two people familiar with the arrangement, that MAGA Inc. is financially backing the group.
MAGA Inc. itself has booked another roughly $9 million in advertising, focused so far on the Texas Senate race.
I wouldn't complain about any of these groups tossing a few smackers our way to help keep Dan Sullivan (no, not that Dan Sullivan, the other Dan Sullivan, the Senator) in office, and to counter the nefarious machinations of Alaska Democrats.
A related piece in the Associated Press had this to say:
The spending comes after Republicans in vulnerable districts had begged the president and his team to come to their aid as the party fights to hold onto the House and Senate in a challenging political environment. The president’s approval ratings remain underwater as voters grapple with higher prices, especially for fuel, during the unpopular war with Iran.
Gas prices and the war with Iran are legitimate things for the GOP to be worried about right now. The degree to which these things will sway voters isn't yet clear and may not be until November, but any politician in any federal office, House, Senate, White House, whatever, would rather go into the last weeks of the campaign with lower gas prices rather than higher gas prices, unless the candidate in question is a complete climate scold who wants to put everyone afoot.
Here's the thing: Democrat groups are going to be spending bigly, too. Especially, it seems, in close races. As U.S. Polling Data puts it: "In 2026, Democrats have built a meaningful early fundraising lead driven by anti-Trump small-dollar energy — and they are translating it into ad reservations in the districts that matter most."
They aren't wrong. Mind you, in a political campaign, money isn't everything. Candidates have won after being outspent by wide margins. The candidate with the most money doesn't always win - but that's the way to bet.
This is, once again, almost certainly the most consequential midterm election in living memory. We will have to turn out to get every vote we can. If we fail to win this, we may yet have a Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries or a Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin to contend with. That's not good for us. It's not good for the country.