Bloomberg Money in 2018

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  Campaign finance is a big part of the story.

Stephanie Saul and Rachel Shorey at NYT:

Records filed so far show that organizations controlled and funded by Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $41 million on 24 House races, much of it on eye-catching ads rolled out on social media and broadcast on television in the crucial final days of the campaign.

And while it’s impossible to conclude that any one factor tipped the balance in a race, Mr. Bloomberg appears to have reaped the benefits of his millions in giving. Democrats won 21 of the 24 races he sought to influence. Of those, 12 had been considered either tossups or in Republican districts.

Since the money came directly out of Bloomberg's pocket, Bloomberg PACs did not have to spend time on fundraising.  All the attention went to the spending.

“I had a budget,’’ Mr. [Howard] Wolfson said. “It was a big budget. I didn’t have to raise it. I knew it was coming and that gave us real advantages in terms of spending late in these expensive markets. We were able to really come in and overwhelm at the last minute in some of these places.”

The group identified target districts based on a theory that highly educated voters were more likely to vote Democratic, even if they had previously voted Republican. Mr. Bloomberg’s operation hired two companies that analyzed educational achievement in Republican congressional districts, Mr. Wolfson said.

They identified districts previously ignored by national Democrats where there were opportunities to stretch the Democratic map.

One of those was Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, where an increasingly young and well-educated electorate had been lured by jobs and the urban conveniences of Oklahoma City, and where Ms. [Kendra] Horn was running.