Democrats are increasingly relying on deep pockets. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Dems relying on big donors to win

Democrats love to cast Republicans as the party of big money, beholden to the out-of-touch billionaires bankrolling their campaigns.

But new numbers tell a very different story — one in which Democrats are actually raising more big money than their adversaries.


Among the groups reporting the biggest political ad spending, the 15 top Democrat-aligned committees have outraised the 15 top Republican ones $453 million to $289 million in the 2014 cycle, according to a POLITICO analysis of the most recent Federal Election Commission reports, including those filed over the weekend — which cover through the end of last month.

( Driving the Day: Fundraising season on the Hill)

The analysis shows the fundraising edge widening in August, when the Democratic groups pulled in more than twice as much as their GOP counterparts — $51 million to $21 million. That’s thanks to a spike in massive checks from increasingly energized labor unions and liberal billionaires like Tom Steyer and Fred Eychaner.

So, even as Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are working methodically to turn conservative megadonors like the big-giving conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch into the boogeymen of 2014, the party itself is increasingly relying on its deepest pockets as the best chance of staving off a midterm wipeout forecast by oddsmakers.

For example, Steyer, a retired San Francisco hedge fund billionaire, on Aug. 15 stroked a $15 million check to his own NextGen Climate Action super PAC that single-handedly exceeded the combined monthly total raised by the two GOP congressional campaign committees. And his political lieutenant, Chris Lehane, hinted that Steyer, one of the biggest individual donors of 2014, may give more to his super PAC than his $50 million pledge, which Lehane said “should not be seen as a ceiling.” Steyer’s spending — and that of other Democratic billionaires — has helped fuel an advertising gap favoring the party’s candidates in key races across the country.

( POLITICO's 2014 race ratings)

The surprising financial advantage, which has some leading Republicans nervous, is a state of affairs that would have been unthinkable during the 2010 midterms or even the 2012 election. Democrats were badly beaten in those cycles’ outside-spending derbies by rich conservatives.

Democratic megadonors and operatives attribute their big-money surge to a realization that they couldn’t compete without embracing the new environment, but they assert it’s inaccurate to suggest they’re ahead.

That’s because conservatives have a much more robust collection of big-money groups that do not reveal their donors or regularly disclose their finances and, as such, are not reflected in fundraising tallies gleaned from FEC filings. The deepest-pocketed such group, the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, intends to spend $125 million in 2014 and has already dropped $50 million on advertising — more than the $31 million spent so far by the biggest Democratic group, Senate Majority PAC.

( See more from POLITICO's Polling Center)

But the fact that Democrats are even in the same league is notable. They initially sat on the sidelines clucking their tongues when federal court decisions loosened or struck down campaign finance rules as unconstitutional infringements on free speech, creating a new unregulated big-money political landscape that conservatives dominated.

And, even as Democrats waded haltingly into big money spending in 2012, they continued scolding Republicans for their reliance on deep-pocketed benefactors. In this year’s races, Democrats have essentially adopted a plank attacking Republicans as in the pocket of the Koch brothers — with Reid repeatedly taking to the Senate floor to make the case — even as Democrats have in some ways surpassed Republicans in the big money chase.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said it’s tough to stomach continued sniping about GOP big money from Democrats. The party’s most vulnerable incumbent senators — such as Mark Begich, Kay Hagan and Mark Udall — are all benefiting greatly from major outside spending campaigns, Dayspring pointed out — including some anonymous spending of the sort they’ve railed against.

“Their complaints about money in politics bring back memories of Lance Armstrong decrying doping,” declared Dayspring. He noted that Democratic Party leaders and candidates maintain close connections to the outside groups, despite their rhetoric — and laws intended to keep them separate, which both sides have found legal ways around.

Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC run by Reid’s confidants, is perhaps the best example of the Democrats’ discordant approach to big money. The group’s $31 million in midterm advertising is more than any other group has disclosed to the FEC, and some of its spots have sought to cast Republicans as beholden to the Koch brothers’ political spending.

It’s difficult to directly compare the finances of Senate Majority PAC and other super PACs with those of the Koch-backed AFP, and other so-called 501(c) political nonprofit groups, since the latter are not required to disclose their donors or detailed information about their finances.

Yet television station data analyzed by Wesleyan University showed that Senate Majority PAC had actually aired more spots than even AFP. And Senate Majority PAC raised nearly $6 million in August — more than triple its closest GOP analogue, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC and nearly as much as Dayspring’s NRSC — from a collection of unions (which combined to give $2.3 million) and rich liberals like the Chicago media mogul Eychaner (who gave $1 million, bringing his midterm tally to the PAC to $5 million).

Senate Majority PAC’s ads, combined with those aired by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — which has far outraised Dayspring’s NRSC — have buoyed red-state Democratic senators Begich of Alaska, Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas against strong undercurrents from President Barack Obama’s plummeting approval rating. Hagan, who has benefited from a barrage of independent-group attacks on her GOP challenger, Thom Tillis, has surprised observers by pulling ahead in recent polls after months of being locked in a dead heat.

Senate Majority PAC considers itself a “firewall” against electoral and financial trends favoring Republicans, said the group’s campaigns director, Ty Matsdorf. “What we have been able to do is prevent the flood of money from the Koch entities, or Crossroads, from completely drowning out Democratic candidates,” he said, rejecting a question about whether benefiting from big spending undercuts Democratic efforts to characterize Republicans as the party of, by and for big money.

“Absolutely not, because Democrats are fighting to have less money in politics while Republicans want to have even more money,” he said. “We have to play by the rules as they exist not the rules we want.”

Matsdorf’s group is affiliated with a 501(c) secret-money nonprofit group called Patriot Majority that has reported spending more than $7 million boosting Democratic candidates. But, despite Democrats’ undeniable success in the 2014 big money race, there are more deep-pocketed 501(c) groups on the Republican side, and, if their fundraising could be fully tracked, Democrats might not be ahead in the big money race.

Three of the biggest such conservative groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and the Rove-affiliated Crossroads GPS — have already spent roughly $78 million combined on ads, according to FEC filings and interviews. But the biggest among them, AFP, has concluded its advertising campaign for the cycle and intends to spend primarily on get-out-the-vote organizing until Election Day.

Rove’s Crossroads groups, which focus almost exclusively on television advertising, have had some notable recent fundraising successes. Crossroads GPS collected a $10 million check from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson this month, while the group’s disclosing cousin, American Crossroads super PAC, in August received $500,000 — its biggest check of the month — from Bernie Marcus, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder who had largely avoided the new, super PAC world.

Still, the groups’ frontman, Rove, who has carved out a niche as a big money fundraiser par excellence, was sounding the alarm about Democrats’ big money success in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that seemed at least partly intended to scare his side’s donors into loosening their purse strings.

Between Labor Day and Election Day, he asserted, Democrats have booked $107 million in television advertising, compared with $82 million for Republicans — though such numbers often don’t yield apples-to-apples comparisons thanks to ad rate fluctuations.

“It’s going to be a very close contest,” Rove said. “The dynamics are good for Republicans — enthusiasm is high, Obama low, the desire to send a message to Obama is very high. The one advantage Democrats have had is a big cash advantage.”