The 2014 federal elections were defined by super PACs and non-profits. Big win for conservative big money

Establishment Republican money finally got what it paid for — an electoral wave.

After two cycles during which conservative megadonors’ record spending was plagued by flawed candidates and internecine squabbling, their side’s big money operatives got to do some gloating on election night.


Conservatives tweaked their playbook to spend bigger and earlier to crush tea party insurgents and define Democratic candidates. And Republicans won most of the Senate races in which they prosecuted that plan — including Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.

( Full 2014 election results)

And they vowed to pick up the beat again in 2016, even as the party’s conservative wing pledged costly and damaging primary battles in response — starting with the presidential race. “We’ve entered a season of bloody Republican primaries where conservatives try to pick off Republicans and where Republicans try to pour as much money into the primaries as possible,” said Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger who allied with tea party groups that challenged establishment Republicans.

Erickson has become a leading voice of the tea party resistance to an attempted quashing by the business wing of the GOP, which grew weary of the brinkmanship championed by conservative Republicans in Congress. He has consulted with like-minded donors and he said “most of the conservatives I talked to were rather shocked by how much the establishment was willing to spend. And I think the donors who are more sympathetic to the conservatives are going to try to consolidate quickly around one presidential candidate,” he said, citing Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal as possible conservative presidential candidates who might challenge an establishment favorite.

Conservative outside groups — including establishment mainstays like Karl Rove’s Crossroads outfits and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as tea party outfits like the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks — combined to spend $62 million in primary and runoff elections in 2014, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission data. That dwarfed the $40 million spent by their Democratic counterparts, which had fewer primaries on their side and were able to conserve their smaller cash reserves for general election attacks on Republicans.

( WATCH: Worst campaigns of 2014)

Conservative early spending actually saved money in the long run, asserted Crossroads President Steven Law. “In 2010 and 2012, we watched weak candidates squander good opportunities and cost us a lot of money in the process,” said Law, who was subjected to all manner of tea party scorn early last year when he unveiled a Crossroads initiative to move aggressively into primaries for the first time to defeat flawed tea party candidates.

While Crossroads’ component organizations — American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS — spent a combined $100 million in 2014, only $3 million of that came in GOP primaries. Crossroads supported four GOP establishment favorites who defeated tea party primary challengers and emerged victorious Tuesday night — Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Sens.-elect Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Rep.-elect Elise Stefanik of New York.

( Also on POLITICO: Senate flips, Republicans ready to rule)

Late on Election Day, Law allowed himself the subtlest of victory laps. “In 2014, we concluded that improving candidate quality was the most impactful thing we could do to enhance our prospects in a midterm election.”

Scott Reed, a top strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was more blunt when asked about the takeaway from conservative big money efforts this year.

“Lesson No. 1: candidates matter,” said Reed. The Chamber spent $70 million in the midterms, including at least $11 million in GOP primaries. That marked by far its most aggressive foray into primaries — and Reed suggested that the Chamber isn’t going to shy away from repeat performances in 2016 or beyond. “We will be focused on candidates that can win in the fall and will be focused on economic growth and governing,” he said.

Neither the tea party nor the establishment has a perfect record on producing nominees, pointed out billionaire Minnesota megadonor Stan Hubbard, citing both Mitt Romney and GOP congressional candidates as flawed.

“That’s a problem — they pick losers,” said Hubbard, asserting it’s importance to continue devoting resources to weeding out problem candidates before the general election. “The work is just beginning,” said Hubbard, who, along with his family and their media company donated at least $763,000 in 2014. He said he bristled recently when he heard a commentator arguing that there was too much money spent in the 2014 election.

“What’s more important than who we elect?” he said. “More money is spent selling cosmetics than selling politics. So I don’t feel bad about that.”

The 2014 federal elections were perhaps more than any previous midterm defined by outside groups such as super PACs and nonprofits. They annexed many of the functions — and much of the cash — once controlled by the candidates and their party committees. Outside group spending soared to more than $554 million in 2014, according to an analysis of FEC data by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — with GOP-allied groups outspending Democrat-favoring ones $301 million to $225 million.

Such analyses are woefully incomplete, thanks to the more opaque spending of conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Chamber or even Crossroads nondisclosing arm, not to mention the similarly tough to track pro-Democrat spending by labor unions.

Still, the Center’s estimate of total spending would be 55 percent more than the amount spent through such avenues in 2010 — the first election after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision struck down laws limiting outside spending. By contrast, the Center predicted that candidates’ combined spending would actually finish at less than the $1 billion tally they spent in 2010.

Spending by the Democratic and Republican parties’ various committees similarly has not grown as quickly as that of their outside groups.

The Democrats’ lead outside spender, the Harry Reid-blessed Senate Majority PAC, expanded exponentially in 2014, and was the second-biggest spending super PAC behind American Crossroads. It similarly spent big money early trying to sully voters’ views of GOP Senate candidates, and in the closing days of the election, it sought to brace its donors for a potentially significant GOP victory, arguing that it succeeded by keeping races close into the homestretch.

It’s unclear, though, whether the GOP’s big-money establishment has cracked the code of success in the big money era or merely ridden historical trends and a wave of resentment toward President Barack Obama.

In addition to the primary spending, the Chamber and other deep-pocketed GOP-allied groups adjusted their tactics to include better synchronization and more data-based digital outreach and ground operations than they had in recent cycles.

The lead group in the political operation created by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, Americans for Prosperity, served as the advance guard. Of its total 2014 spending — which it says will reach $135 million, nearly $33 million came in the form of attacks linking vulnerable Democratic senators to Obamacare, which came between July 2013 and April 2014. That was before the general election races had taken shape, or other groups had weighed in. By the time the rest of the big money cavalry arrived — in the form of Crossroads, the Chamber and fellow unlimited money groups including American Action Network, the John Boehner-linked Congressional Leadership Fund and Ending Spending — AFP had begun shifting its focus to a field program implemented by a staff of than 500 that used the group’s database to make more than 7 million phone calls and knock on more than 2 million doors.

That left Crossroads and allied groups to use late-arriving big checks from megadonors like Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, to bombard damaged incumbents over the airwaves in the final month.

“Outside groups focused on October, forced Democrats to move their money, and expanded the battlefield,” said Dan Conston, a spokesman for Congressional Leadership Fund. “We won well before Election Day and then again tonight.