By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Since the US Supreme Court in June struck down federal caps on political party spending with input from candidates, Republican committees have surged past the former limits by more than $126 million while their Democratic counterparts have topped them by more than $46 million ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are seeking to retain control of Congress in the midterms. Coordinated spending by Republican and Democratic committees from July through September was nearly eight times what they spent during the same months of the last midterm elections in 2022.
Republican and Democratic committees supporting candidates in races for the House of Representatives and Senate disclosed their coordinated spending totals for September in filings on Tuesday night to the Federal Election Commission.
In July, August and September — the three months since the court’s ruling — the Republican committees poured a total of about $137 million of coordinated spending into House and Senate races across the country, according to their filings. Their Democratic counterparts spent a total of around $55 million during this period in coordinated spending, the filings showed.
Justice Elena Kagan, one of the nine-member court’s three liberals, in remarks on Tuesday criticized its conservative majority for failing to appreciate the real-world impact of striking down coordinated spending limits.
“The people of America look around this political system and think that all this money, chasing all these political candidates, is a nightmare, and they’re right,” Kagan told an audience at Catholic University’s law school in Washington.
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling on June 30 powered by its conservative majority, rejected coordinated-spending restrictions, agreeing with challengers including Trump’s Vice President JD Vance that the limits violated the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of freedom of speech.
Republican committees have sought to use newly unlimited coordinated spending to help level the playing field in key races in which individual Democratic candidates had outraised their Republican opponents, according to political analysts.
A NEW FCC POLICY
More than two in three dollars of recent coordinated spending, or $129 million, by Republicans and Democrats came in September, when party committees gained access to discounted TV and radio advertising rates long available to political candidates under a new Federal Communications Commission policy.
The FCC, which currently has a 2-1 Republican majority, extended its so-called “lowest unit charge” rule in March to include party committees, a move seen as a boost to Republicans.
The Supreme Court twice intervened in recent weeks to stymie challenges to the FCC policy brought by Democratic candidates, handing a legal victory to Republican committees, whose coordinated spending in September was around two-thirds higher than that of their Democratic counterparts.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, was one of the challengers in the case decided in June by the Supreme Court. It supports Republican Senate candidates, while the National Republican Congressional Committee, or NRCC, supports the party’s House candidates. Both can accept funding from the Republican National Committee.
These three national Republican committees ended September with about $187 million in cash and $20 million in debt, according to FEC filings. Their Democratic counterparts held roughly $100 million and carried nearly $15 million in debt.
A 1971 US law called the Federal Election Campaign Act imposed contribution limits and other restrictions on campaign spending, with the aim of preventing corruption. Under it, spending by a political party to advocate for or against a candidate that was not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign was considered an “independent expenditure” — and was not subject to a cap.
Spending coordinated between a party and a campaign was restricted. Before the Supreme Court’s ruling, the 2026 limits had ranged from $130,600 to about $4.1 million for Senate candidates and from $65,300 to $130,600 for House candidates, depending on a state’s population.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
