This year’s primary elections are being inundated with money from a record number of groups exploiting a loophole in campaign finance law, allowing them to delay disclosing their donors until after the elections conclude.
According to an analysis by POLITICO using Federal Election Commission data, over $48 million has been spent on House and Senate primaries by super PACs that were not required to disclose their donors before the elections. This amount is more than twice the total spent at the same point in the 2024 cycle and ten times more than in 2018.
These groups are leveraging the campaign finance timeline. A super PAC established after the last pre-election FEC deadline can raise and spend unlimited funds in the critical final days of an election without disclosing its donors until later. While this strategy has been employed for years, its use has reached unprecedented levels in this year’s midterms.
Approximately 10% of the external spending in this year’s primaries has come from these opaque groups.
In certain instances, the spending by pop-up super PACs resembles one political party interfering in the primary of another to support a candidate perceived as more vulnerable in the general election. This has occurred in competitive races in Texas’ 35th District, Maine’s 2nd District, and more recently in New York’s 17th District. In other scenarios, groups have attempted to obscure their ties to contentious entities, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“It’s certainly a very strategic effort to avoid providing transparency for voters,” commented Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. “So even if they’re acting within the letter of the law, they are ultimately undermining in spirit. Because disclosure requirements exist so that voters — when they’re deciding who to cast their ballot for — have the information about who has spent money backing these candidates.”
The approach for secretive campaign spending is relatively simple. New groups form after an FEC deadline, spend millions supporting their chosen candidates, and engage voters in the final days of an election. By the time they must report their finances, weeks after the end of the month or quarter, the election they sought to influence is already concluded.
This tactic is more prevalent in primaries than in general elections, as outside groups must file pre-general reports in mid-October, leaving only a short window before the November election to launch and spend without revealing financial details.
Across the nation, efforts to conceal funding sources have occurred to both support and oppose candidates with diverse ideologies. More money has been directed toward Democratic primaries than Republican ones thus far.
Since early May, two super PACs suspected of Republican ties — Lead Left and Real Change — have spent $4.3 million in Democratic primaries across five competitive House districts to promote progressive candidates perceived as weaker in the general election. Neither group will disclose their donors until mid-July.
In Kentucky’s 4th District, where GOP Rep. Thomas Massie was seeking reelection following an endorsement from President Donald Trump for his challenger Ed Gallrein, a newly created super PAC spent $6.7 million attacking Gallrein. The PAC disbanded shortly after the primary, revealing that most of its funds came from a Texas-based firm. It is now facing an FEC complaint alleging a straw donor scheme.
In Illinois’ March primaries, three newly formed groups connected to AIPAC spent $16 million on House races. Although news reports linked AIPAC to these groups during the primaries, it was only after the elections that it became known United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s main super PAC, was the principal funder. This allowed AIPAC, which has become politically controversial in Democratic primaries, to influence elections without officially declaring its involvement while votes were being cast.
In the special primary election to replace the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) last year, a newly launched super PAC named Fight for Virginia’s Future supported Connolly’s former chief of staff, James Walkinshaw. After his victory, the group’s funding was revealed to have been transferred from Connolly’s campaign account.
Not all newly formed super PACs are inherently secretive. Some are transparent about their affiliations even if they delay reporting their donors to the FEC.
Super PACs can also obscure their funding sources by receiving transfers from 501(c)(4) nonprofits, which have fewer disclosure requirements.
As the use of pop-up super PACs has increased, it has also evolved in sophistication.
Previously, new super PACs that concealed their funding sources were sometimes linked to existing interests through the limited information they were required to provide when forming or spending money, such as vendors, addresses, and treasurer details. Now, many groups have found ways around this, using unknown treasurers or new vendors that also emerged around the same time as the PACs.
In a few Democratic primaries in competitive districts this year, pop-up super PACs linked to Republicans through PO boxes and website metadata have aired ads closely resembling the logos and official materials of Democratic campaigns.
Last month, the Republican-affiliated Lead Left PAC spent nearly $1 million supporting Democrat Maureen Galindo against Johnny Garcia in Texas’ 35th District. Galindo was widely criticized within her party for her comments about converting a local ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists.”
The spending on her behalf prompted the moderate Blue Dog PAC to launch a rescue effort for Garcia, investing over $1 million to support the former Bexar County sheriff’s deputy.
Neither Real Change nor Lead Left responded to inquiries sent to the emails listed on their FEC filings. Other groups, including Fight for Virginia’s Future, Kentucky 4th PAC, and UDP, also did not respond to requests for comment. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC associated with House GOP leadership speculated to be behind some pop-up PACs, did not reply to a request for comment.
Phil Gardner, a senior adviser to the Blue Dog PAC, noted that Lead Left’s ads were “literally trying to impersonate other campaigns.”
Garcia — who ultimately won his race by more than 20 points — remarked in an interview that news reports linking Lead Left to Republicans underscored the race’s significance to voters.
“It showed just how scared they were of our campaign, that they were willing to invest in a candidate that was clearly antisemitic that they knew they would defeat very easily in the general election,” Garcia said.
A similar pop-up PAC also invested heavily in support of progressive Matt Dunlap over state Sen. Joe Baldacci in Maine’s competitive 2nd District, which Trump won in 2024. The seat is open this cycle as Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) opted not to seek reelection.
Ian Russell, a national Democratic strategist working on Baldacci’s campaign, expressed concern that GOP-linked ads could mislead voters into thinking they were from Dunlap’s campaign.
“They’re literally running a positive ad for Matt Dunlap,” Russell said. “They’re using his campaign logo. They’re using B-roll off of his YouTube page.”
The outcome of that race remains undecided as it proceeds to a ranked-choice count this week.
In recent years, some Democratic and Republican lawmakers have advocated for stricter campaign finance laws, arguing for greater disclosure of funding sources. However, significant progress in campaign finance legislation has not been achieved.
Just last week, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) introduced legislation that would require super PACs to disclose every large donation received in the final 20 days of an election, aiming to make it more difficult for pop-up PACs to conceal their funding sources.
“All this dark spending money is just skyrocketing,” Crow said in an interview. “Super PACs, corporate donations, pop-up PACs. It’s out of control and it’s getting worse every cycle.”
