Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet’s reelection campaign in Michigan isn’t looking as expensive as it once seemed it would be. (Credit: Kristen McDonald Rivet Facebook)
Leading Off
House
New ad reservations, spending reports, and triage maneuvers show the House battlefield is continuing to move in the Democrats’ favor with six weeks to go until Election Day.
Punchbowl News reported Friday that the House Majority PAC, the top pro-Democratic group involved in House races, was canceling a planned outlay to help Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet in Michigan’s 8th District, where Republicans last month nominated a political unknown named Tom Smith. The New York Times, citing data from AdImpact, subsequently reported on Monday that the total canceled was “around $1 million.”
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HMP reserved about $4.2 million for this race in the spring, so the group has millions booked that it can use if need be. The outfit, though, doesn’t seem to think McDonald Rivet needs the help right now. HMP, as the newest edition of our independent expenditure tracker shows, had not spent anything on the race as of Tuesday.
Michigan’s 8th, a constituency based in the Flint and Tri-Cities areas that Donald Trump carried 50-48, is now the second House race to get added to our 2026 House triage tracker. Just before Labor Day, the Congressional Leadership Fund, HMP’s counterpart on the right, zeroed out all its planned reservations intended to help Republican Peter Oberacker against Democratic Rep. Josh Riley in New York’s swingy 19th District.
But CLF hasn’t abandoned Smith despite a recent CNN report about his history of spreading racist posts on social media. The PAC has spent $720,000 here so far, with almost half of that coming last week.
CLF is also expanding its activities to a new seat in the Midwest, but not for any reasons that would make Republicans happy.
Punchbowl reports that the super PAC plans to spend $4.9 million in Ohio’s 7th District to help Republican Rep. Max Miller, whose ex-wife has accused him of abuse, against Democrat Brian Poindexter. HMP previously announced it had reserved $7 million to flip Miller’s seat, a suburban Cleveland constituency Trump would have carried 55-44. Neither group has begun spending here yet, however.
HMP, meanwhile, said Monday it was booking a total of $2.45 million to target New Jersey’s 7th District and New York’s 17th District, held by Republican Reps. Tom Kean and Mike Lawler, respectively. This reservation is HMP’s first in the New York City media market, the most expensive in the nation, though it had already spent close to $300,000 on digital advertising to help Democrat Rebecca Bennet against Kean.
Lawler also received a different type of help on Monday when retiring Rep. Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat who has often voted for GOP priorities during his fourth and final term, endorsed the New York Republican. Rep. Sam Liccardo of California responded by snarking to Axios, “That endorsement should get Mike an additional three votes—comprising most of the New Yorkers who have ever heard of Jared Golden.”
CLF has not yet begun its effort to protect Kean, who already faced a tough reelection battle even before he disappeared from public view for nearly four months for what he eventually said was hospitalization for depression. Kean isn’t being left to fend for himself, though: The New York Times reported last week that an affiliate of Trump’s MAGA Inc. had booked over $3 million to defend the congressman.
But while Republicans were always prepared for expensive battles in these two districts, the same cannot be said of a new race that’s suddenly receiving an infusion of cash: Nevada’s 2nd District, which has never elected a Democrat during its more than four decades of existence.
The Nevada Independent reported Tuesday that the hardline Club for Growth has booked just over $700,000 to protect this northern Nevada constituency, which Trump carried 56-42.
The effort comes three months after David Flippo, who began the year running to represent the 4th District around Las Vegas, prevailed in a nasty GOP primary. Retiring Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, who backed the losing candidate, has denounced Flippo as an interloper and hasn’t ruled out voting for Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson.
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A federal appeals court ordered Missouri to use a Republican-drawn congressional gerrymander in a ruling issued Monday evening, but legal experts predicted the Supreme Court would once again step in and ensure that elections would be held in November under the state’s previous map.
In a 34-page opinion, a panel of three Republican appointees on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that it would violate the federal Constitution if Missouri used one map for its primaries and a different map for the general election. It therefore ordered U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark to issue a permanent injunction barring Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using any map other than the GOP gerrymander.
Clark immediately did so, but at the 8th Circuit’s direction, he also stayed his new injunction until Monday to allow the appeals process to play out. People Not Politicians, the group seeking to stop the GOP map via a referendum, immediately said it would appeal to the Supreme Court.
The justices previously stayed a similar ruling by Clark that had come in the form of a temporary restraining order and said their stay would remain in effect until after they had a chance to review the case in full. The 8th Circuit appears to have tried to circumvent this stay by directing Clark to enter an injunction rather than a TRO, but the merits of the case remain unchanged.
That prompted one expert, Justin Levitt, to write that “you’ll get whiplash from the speed of the SCOTUS reprimand” at Election Law Blog. Another, Steve Vladeck, called the 8th Circuit’s move “both indefensible and not likely to be long for this world” in his newsletter One First.
Senate
ME-Sen
A previously unrevealed Department of Justice investigation involving Republican Sen. Susan Collins quietly died after Donald Trump returned to the White House and decimated the FBI’s anti-corruption unit, ProPublica reported Tuesday.
According to the outlet, Scott Reed, who led a super PAC to aid Collins’ 2020 reelection campaign, had asked executives of the defense contractor Navatek for large contributions the previous year.
The firm’s then-CEO Martin Kao received assurances from Reed that Collins would know the source of the funds and would help the company secure government contracts, ProPublica says.
Kao reportedly used a shell company to make a $150,000 donation to Reed’s PAC, even though government contractors are barred from making political donations. Kao sent an email to other Navatek officials two months later saying, “Excellent meeting. Total of $32M will be supported.” Records show that the Senate awarded at least $10 million in contracts in 2020 “based on Navatek’s proposals.”
Kao pled guilty to corruption charges in 2022, though ProPublica reports that he sought a lighter sentence by offering to tell law enforcement details about “a sprawling pay-to-play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress.”
The investigation, however, ended when Trump returned to office in January of last year. Kao was soon sentenced to 87 months in prison and received no leniency for cooperating with the government. Neither Collins, Reed, nor members of her staff were ever formally accused of wrongdoing.
The New York Times, which confirmed ProPublica’s account later on Tuesday, reported that unnamed sources say the probe “did not uncover much evidence to corroborate” Kao’s allegations about Collins or Reed. Those sources, though, said they might have learned more if the investigation hadn’t been so abruptly terminated.
Collins’ deputy chief of staff responded to ProPublica’s story on social media by calling it “categorically false” and saying Kao responded to his legal situation by “making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself and placing it on Senator Collins.”
Reed, who once again heads Collins’ main super PAC, likewise told the outlet, “I never had any communications with Senator Collins [or] her staff about Martin Kao and/or Navatek.”
NC-Sen, GA-Sen
A Republican outfit called Old North Action has canceled $6.5 million in reservations intended to help Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, Semafor reported Monday.
The group still has $14.5 million reserved to help Whatley, but his poor poll numbers against Democrat Roy Cooper have Republicans wondering just how long the GOP will keep spending on this race.
“There is still time, but even with at least $100 million, [Whatley] would need a campaign team capable of turning that money into actual points,” an unidentified GOP operative in the state told Politico earlier this month.
One prominent Republican has even gone public with his pessimism about Whatley’s prospects against Cooper, who served as governor from 2017 until he was termed out last year, as well as Mike Collins’ hopes of overcoming his large polling deficit against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in neighboring Georgia.
“Georgia looks like it’s pretty close to done,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas mused to Semafor last week. “And North Carolina seems to be close to that. I’m still hopeful that something will change. But you know, at some point things get baked in.”
That interview came less than a week before Cornyn and former President George W. Bush hosted a Monday fundraiser to benefit six Senate candidates—a list that notably did not include Whatley or Collins. Also missing from the lineup was Ken Paxton, who defeated Cornyn for renomination in May.
OH-Sen
The cryptocurrency industry is once again targeting Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, who faced a similar onslaught of crypto spending when he lost his bid for reelection in 2024.
Fairshake, a super PAC funded by crypto interests, tells the New York Times that it plans to spend $30 million on an ad blitz to thwart Brown, who declined to allow legislation favored by the industry to come up for a vote when he chaired the Senate Banking Committee during his final term.
That prompted a $41 million avalanche of crypto money seeking to bury Brown in his last race, which he lost to Republican Bernie Moreno 50-46. AdImpact recently tracked $90 million in future GOP ad reservations for Brown’s campaign against Sen. Jon Husted, so Fairshake’s infusion would represent a considerable increase.
TX-Sen
The Senate Leadership Fund’s Texas affiliate has now spent or reserved $100 million to help Republican Ken Paxton, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday. SLF’s Texas PAC only began booking time on Sept. 11 after it spent months hoping another deep-pocketed Republican organization would relieve it of the burden of having to help the scandal-ridden Paxton fend off Democrat James Talarico.
Governors
TN-Gov
Allies of Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn are airing TV ads attacking independent David Hatley, a wealthy businessman who has self-funded at least $7 million, ahead of a general election for governor that Blackburn appeared poised to win easily.
“[He] was sent behind bars, but now wants to sit behind the governor’s desk,” declares the narrator for a group called Choose Freedom PAC. “Hatley was sentenced to federal prison for bank fraud, and he was also convicted of petty larceny in Virginia.”
The ad targeting Hatley, who has written about his 1998 conviction and month-long prison sentence in a memoir, comes not long after Blackburn’s campaign debuted a website labeling him “Deadbeat Dave.” Hatley responded to that attack by telling Six Rivers Media, “Senator Blackburn’s team spent a lot of money to tell Tennessee a story I already told them myself. So, her packet isn’t a revelation. It’s a book report.”
Blackburn, who has represented the Volunteer State in the Senate since 2019, initially didn’t seem to have anything to worry about from Hatley or anyone else following her win in last month’s GOP primary. While Blackburn’s 44-33 victory over Rep. John Rose was much smaller than originally expected, she immediately became the heavy favorite to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Bill Lee in this deeply conservative state.
But supporters of Memphis Councilwoman Jerri Green, the Democratic nominee, released a poll this month arguing Hatley’s presence complicates Blackburn’s path to the governor’s mansion.
TargetSmart, polling on behalf of The Progress Fund, found Blackburn leading Green only 45-36, with Hatley taking 10%. The Progress Fund wrote that its survey showed Hatley “attracting support from both independent and Republican identifying voters, creating an additional dynamic within Blackburn’s coalition.”
Hatley, the founder of what he calls “the largest hot tub manufacturing operation on American soil,” told the Nashville Banner this month that he’s “certainly a conservative” who looks up to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Hatley also used that interview to tout himself as “a straight down the middle person who’s going to take the best idea.”
South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson, a Republican who lost her bid for renomination at a party convention earlier this year, has endorsed the Democrat running to succeed her, former state trooper Terrence Davis.
“I cannot remain silent when I believe the integrity, stability, and professionalism of this office is at stake,” she wrote in an essay published over the weekend. “I believe Terrence Davis is the candidate best prepared to protect the office and serve South Dakota with seriousness, steadiness, and integrity.”
Four years ago, Johnson defeated the previous Republican incumbent, Steve Barnett, by embracing the cause of “election integrity”—a rallying cry for conservatives who baselessly claim that American elections are plagued with fraud.
Johnson won that race with the support of activists who’ve demanded the state hand-count ballots—a method that studies have shown is slower, more expensive, and above all, less accurate than machine-counting.
But those activists felt betrayed after Johnson failed to implement hand-counting and instead turned to state Rep. Heather Baxter, a member of South Dakota’s Freedom Caucus. Baxter campaigned on instituting hand-counting and won the GOP nomination in June by a 60-40 margin among delegates.
Baxter, though, seems to have backed off her pledge somewhat. In a version of her website archived around the time of the Republican convention, she promised “to ensure every vote is counted accurately via paper ballots that are hand counted in small precincts, in one day on an election day holiday.”
But much of that pledge has now been truncated. Her site now says only that she will “ensure every vote is counted accurately via paper ballots.”
Despite his new cross-party endorsement, though, Davis faces a difficult task. No Democrat has won statewide in South Dakota since 2008, and the party has not won a race for secretary of state since 1974.
This poll was conducted for Protect Maryland Voters, which is leading the campaign to defeat this amendment to make it easier for lawmakers to pass a new congressional gerrymander.
Crypto spending against Brown, even after he backed away from some of his 2024 criticism, and in a year when the public has turned heavily against Crypto/AI/Data Centers, should signal to Democrats that there is little upside or gain from trying to compromise with this industry.
Texas Marist:
Talarico 50-44
Hinojosa 49-46
https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/2026-midterm-elections-in-texas-september-2026/
NY Gov Siena:
Hochul 50-41
https://sri.siena.edu/2026/09/23/siena-poll-of-likely-new-york-state-voters-hochul-50-blakeman-41/
Crypto spending against Brown, even after he backed away from some of his 2024 criticism, and in a year when the public has turned heavily against Crypto/AI/Data Centers, should signal to Democrats that there is little upside or gain from trying to compromise with this industry.