Aug 3, 2023

We are about to turn the corner when the outside spending will begin in earnest. Post Labor Day should see a significant acceleration in spending as we will be past the first GOP primary debate, the field may start to winnow, and it will be a sprint to Iowa.

Until then, IE spending is coasting along but not without some intriguing insights.

The numbers presented below are from July 1 to present

Top Lines:
$19,505,542.68 was spent on IE in total for July, a slight increase over June.

Win It Back Pac, was the big spender of the month. If you are unfamiliar with Win it Back Pac that's because it is a new IE group affiliated with Cub for Growth urging GOP primary voters in early states to move on from Donald Trump. They announced a $3.5m buy when the group was launched but also added $400,000 in field programs. Because they formed in July, they did not have to file a mid year report so we do not know much yet on who else is funding it our how big the effort will be. But as with most things with the Club, it wont be small.
$4,166,004.51 was spent by Win It Back PAC in July, all in opposition to former Pres. Trump.

TIM PAC (Sen. Tim Scott Aligned) - spent less than they did last month but still came in as the second big spender of the month.
$2,599,316.54 was spent supporting Sen. Scott

SOS America PAC (Mayor Suarez Aligned) - continues with some impressive spend but in surprising ways.
$2,537,910.62 was spent in total over the month but they are spending across all 50 states. For example, $172.73 was spent on text messaging in Wyoming.

It is hard to know exactly what the strategy is here but it is likely that the Super PAC is being used for conduit fundraising for the actual campaign committee in an attempt to make the first debate stage. One of the criteria for making the first debate is 40,000 unique donors, across at least 20 states with 200+ donors per state which could explain IE spending in all 50 states.

Best of America PAC is the next big spender of the month. This is another new pac aligned with the late entrant, ND Gov. Doug Burgum. They had a massive haul of $11M into the super pac in the first month of existence. WIld.
$2,131,150.00 was the total Best of America spend supporting Burgum in the first month.

Americans for Prosperity is making good on their promise to spend millions convince the primary electorate to vote someone other than trump.
$2,120,724.22 was spent all opposing Trump,

Never Back Down (DeSantis aligned) – went from the highest spender last month to sixth highest this month.
$1,278,575.90 was spent this month all supporting DeSantis.  As we have mentioned before, NBD has said they are going to spend $100M knocking doors in the primary and we will be watching to see if they do.  From their financial filing this month, they certainly have the ability to do that.

Committed to America (Pence Aligned)–
$1,010,681.38 was spent supporting Pence

Ready for Ron: The Super PAC that is supposedly supporting Ron DeSantis but is only spending against Biden that we have mentioned before as filing far more expenditures than they have money to spend has filed its mid-year report. Ready for Ron filed $3.3M in IEs in the first 6 months of the year but only reported $1.5M in IE on their midyear report, while only raising $670K.
$1,000,000 - Ready for Ron reported their first IE on behalf of Ron DeSantis on 7/1

Opportunity Matters Fund: Another Super PAC supporting Senator Tim Scott
$548,796.76 was spent supporting Sen. Scott.

Republican Accountability PAC, a general Democrat aligned pac spent
$686,024.58 opposing Donald Trump

Make America Great Again Inc (Trump Aligned) - which has in the past been consistently one of the biggest spenders of the month did not spend any money in July at all.

Tell It Like It Is PAC (Christie Aligned) -
$190,330.64 was spent supporting Christie

America Strong and Free PAC (Asa Hutchinson Aligned)
$234,217.34 was spent supporting Hutchinson

Stand For America Fund, Inc., the Nikki Haley aligned Super PAC has spent:
$227,500.00


That is most of the interesting spend for the month. As we have mentioned before, we expect spending to pick up significantly post Labor Day. We will see how spending holds up over August and if it picks up in September.

See yall next month.

Per usual, as a part of the updates, if you know of others who would like to receive these spending updates, they can now signup at www.getperspective.co/newsletter.

These numbers are being generated by the 527tracker, a data platform developed by Perspective Strategies that aggregates, analyzes, and alerts to all federal Super PAC spending in real time. If these types of numbers or analysis are important to you, or if you are on a campaign and need real-time spending alerts, go check out the dashboard.

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