Fundraising Shift: Senate Candidates Turn to National Donors

Senate races in Iowa, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas are increasingly driven by money from outside the state. Candidates in these four key contests spent more than $15 million on fundraising-related advertising during the 2025-26 cycle. An analysis of Google Ads shows that roughly three-quarters of that spending targeted national audiences rather than local voters.

The shift has altered campaign messaging. Candidates now separate their local ads from their national fundraising appeals. Michael Franz of the Wesleyan Media Project noted that local TV ads avoid party labels to appeal to swing voters. Digital ads aimed at out-of-state donors, however, lean heavily on partisan branding. Former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown urges supporters to turn his state blue, while Georgia Rep. Mike Collins asks for help turning his seat red.

Grassroots platforms ActBlue and WinRed have made it cheaper to solicit small donations from across the country. Zachary Albert, a politics professor at Brandeis University, explained that these tools lower transaction costs. He said that even a $5 or $10 contribution is worth soliciting because the cost of reaching donors has dropped significantly. This efficiency encourages candidates to chase national donors over local ones.

For some candidates, the dependency on outside cash is high. More than 80% of itemized individual contributions for Iowa Democratic nominee Josh Turek and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff came from out of state. Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, described this as a new era of campaigning. He stated that candidates must now appeal to two distinct groups: local voters and a national donor base.

Democrats built their fundraising infrastructure earlier than Republicans. ActBlue launched in 2004, while WinRed started in 2019. Hopkins attributed the trend to party platforms becoming more uniform and changes in campaign finance laws. He said political success now often relies on 'ATM districts' that generate large sums of money for one party or the other.

Regulating these funds remains difficult. Raymond La Raja, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, pointed to the Supreme Court's June ruling allowing coordinated campaign spending. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already spent three times more on ads than in the previous midterms. La Raja suggested using public funds to match local donations, a model used in New York City. Sarah Bryner of Public Agenda cited Alaska’s donor disclosure law as another tool to localize fundraising.

The Ossoff campaign stated it is powered by small-dollar donors and rejects corporate PACs. Other campaigns declined to comment. Bryner noted that high out-of-state fundraising does not guarantee victory. She pointed to candidates like Amy McGrath and Beto O'Rourke, who raised substantial outside funds but lost their races. She argued that donors outside the state cannot cast ballots for the candidate.