With 48 days left until the primary election, campaign activity is rapidly increasing — not just from the candidates' campaigns themselves, but also from outside groups spending money to influence various races.
Accordingly, now is a good time to take stock of which races are garnering the most financial attention.
All of these figures were taken from The Ballot Book's database, which updates each night with the most recent campaign finance figures, including independent expenditures. To see this data in more detail, you can visit https://theballotbook.com/elections/ and start a trial subscription to begin tracking this data.
In addition, subscribers receive a daily report in their email inbox detailing all of the campaign finance activity from the night before, including key highlights. You can view a sample of that report here.
Overall Spending
Already, a total of $27,649,312.21 has been spent in independent expenditures across all state races. The vast majority of that — over 85% — has unsurprisingly gone toward the governor's race, but other races are attracting spending as well, especially in certain legislative districts:
Governor's Race
So far in the governor's race, the most notable figure has been the spending in opposition to Tom Steyer. While $10 million is a significant amount, it's nowhere near the $100 million that Steyer has already spent on his own race. Nonetheless, it can be enough to dampen support, and there is likely more on the way based on various reports.
The funds spent on Swalwell are obviously a lost investment at this point, and the figure will ultimately prove to be immaterial in the race, but it's included here for the sake of comprehensiveness.
If you'd like to see more data on the governor's race, including the other IEs that have lined up behind candidates but not yet spent funds, click here.
Legislative Races
The highest-spending legislative race so far is Assembly District 67, where over $1 million has been spent in support of Mark Pulido. But the most notable story is in the 35th Assembly District, a safe Democratic seat that is the only legislative race with opposition spending this cycle. The Nurses and Educators for Healthy CA Communities, sponsored by SEIU California State Council, is spending in opposition to Andrae Gonzales, who otherwise has the second-most IE support of any legislative candidate.
Other Statewide Races
Finally, here's a look at the money flowing into the other statewide races, which is not a particularly high amount.
Most of the $10,000 expenditures are in support of Republican candidates, made by the Reform Local Government PAC as part of a voter guide slate mailer.
Conclusion
Despite being nearly two months out from election day, the campaign season is in full swing. The rate of spending will likely increase from here as the date that ballots are mailed approaches. To make sure you don't miss a single expenditure, consider starting a trial with The Ballot Book today!