The Senate Majority PAC is dropping a late $2 million into Wisconsin to help former Sen. Russ Feingold. | AP Photo Wisconsin Senate race becomes a battleground The late super PAC investments comes amid tightening polls in Senate race.

Wisconsin's Senate race is suddenly back in play, as Democrats are pouring money into a race they fear is tightening.

Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC dedicated to electing Democrats to the Senate, is pouring $2 million into a last-minute ad campaign to boost former Sen. Russ Feingold in his bid to oust GOP incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, a spokesman for the group confirmed Friday.


The late investment is a bit of a surprise, considering Wisconsin — along with Illinois — had long been considered easy pickups for Senate Democrats. But recent public polls have indicated some tightening in the race, including a Marquette University poll from early October had Johnson down by just two points.

Democrats insist they’re not worried about the prospect of Feingold losing to Johnson and their internal figures still show the former Democratic senator prevailing on Nov. 8.

"Republican special interests are on track to spend more than $10 million attacking Russ Feingold because they want to keep Ron Johnson in the Senate to do their bidding at Wisconsin's expense,” Senate Majority PAC spokesman Shripal Shah said Friday. “Feingold remains positioned to win, but we aren't going to take any chances by letting these attacks remain unanswered."

Figures from just this month show how Democrats have been outspent on air, as Republicans flooded the television airwaves with anti-Feingold ads. According to one source tracking ad buys, the GOP has spent about $4.7 million on air in Wisconsin the first three weeks of October, compared to $2.9 million from Democratic groups.

The news was first reported by Roll Call. The $2 million ad campaign will begin Monday and is a statewide buy.

Republicans in Wisconsin have been itching to put their race back on the national radar for weeks, with the Johnson campaign regularly pushing out memos showing the race tightening and emphasizing that the incumbent Republican has closed the financial gap with Feingold, who is a prodigious fundraiser. The campaign's goal? Get the rest of the GOP to come help Johnson pull off an upset win against the heavily favored Feingold.

"Senator Feingold's Washington allies have finally admitted that Wisconsinites are getting ready to fire him one last time, and with this race tighter than ever he needs their help to save his political ambitions," a Johnson campaign spokesman said of the Senate Majority PAC buy.

The Club for Growth's campaign arm spent $700,000 last week and just raised enough money to plow $150,000 more into the race on digital, President David McIntosh said in an interview Friday afternoon.

"It’s still undecided for some of [the other groups] whether they’re going to come in," McIntosh said. “In Wisconsin the big money left and we’re trying to make a difference."

Meanwhile, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity is storming the state to knock on doors and work on stoking conservative turnout. Yet there’s been scant support from the two brawniest GOP groups in Washington.

“Many Beltway Republicans likely don't understand our strategy,” said a source in Wisconsin familiar with Johnson’s campaign strategy. “We knew the time to hit hard and actually move numbers was September — it has worked, with every single poll tightening.”

Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), poured in $25 million into competitive races earlier this week — but has not spent a nickel in Wisconsin, as the national GOP focuses on states like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania where Republicans believe their candidates have a better shot. A spokesman said the group is watching the race closely.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee did a coordinated ad buy with Johnson but has not done any independent expenditures for Johnson. Republican officials in Washington said that Hillary Clinton has been leading Donald Trump by too much to make the race a top-tier concern with so many other battlegrounds to defend.

“How is he improving after the [Access Hollywood Trump] video? I just don’t believe that,” said one GOP tactician. “Trump’s down 10 … it doesn’t make sense.”

Yet Wisconsin Republicans say that the Senate GOP will be kicking itself for not doing more to support Johnson, particularly if Feingold wins in a squeaker. The airwaves in Wisconsin are not nearly as crowded as they are in other battlegrounds; outside groups in Pennsylvania have spent nearly 10 times the $12 million in outside money thus far spent in Wisconsin.

“Folks in Washington have thought this race was over for many months now and folks in Wisconsin knew that wasn’t the case and could tell that wasn’t the case,” said Mark Graul, a GOP strategist in Wisconsin who ran George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign in the state. “It doesn’t make sense, but give the Johnson camp credit despite that talk and about that analysis coming out of D.C.”

Michael Tyler, a spokesman for Feingold, said that the Democrat had tried to keep outside money out of the race from the beginning and expressed confidence that the GOP will fall short.

We're very confident that no amount of outside money from billionaires like Diane Hendricks and the Koch brothers who are propping up Sen. Johnson's campaign can compete with the 50,000 Wisconsinites who have contributed to Russ's campaign because they know he'll go to Washington to fix this broken system and fight for middle class and working families," Tyler said.

This is the second surprise move this week from the influential Democratic super PAC with close ties to outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Earlier, Senate Majority PAC announced that it would make a “seven-figure” transfer to a Florida super PAC backing Democratic Senate candidate Patrick Murphy — who had been effectively abandoned by Senate Majority PAC and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in his challenge against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

And Senate Majority PAC has significant resources to play with in the final days of the 2016 Senate campaign. The super PAC announced earlier this week that it had raised $19 million in the first 19 days of October — a pace that surpassed that of Priorities USA, the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC.