No surprise: another in an unbroken series of Advantage Republican weeks for Mayday PAC.
With just a hair over four weeks left until the Nov. 4th election, Mayday PAC once again this week spent like Scrooge McDuck - grudgingly prying open its coin purse for a mere $30,558 - further reinforcing the ever-growing impression that the anti-PAC PAC has no idea what to actually
do with the $8 million it has raised this year (aside from its one notable spending binge, Jim Rubens' [R; NH-Sen] landslide loss in the New Hampshire Republican primary).
This week's fistful of pennies all went in support of political newcomer Paul Clements' [D] campaign bid in Michigan's 6th congressional district. It was a puzzling development to say the least, given that Clements has not received Mayday's official endorsement (more on this below the fold). Meanwhile, Mayday's first-ever Democratic endorsee, Staci Appel [IA-03] still waits for Mayday to spend anything at all on her campaign.
From inception through Oct. 2nd, Mayday's independent ad spending now totals just $1.7 million (out of a total haul of $8 million in donations to date), divided as follows:
Pro-Republicans: $1,324,838
Pro-Democrats: $373,893
Advantage*: Republicans 56% (down from 59% last week)
*Advantage is calculated as (ER - ED) / ET where ER = expenditures favoring Republicans, ED = expenditures favoring Democrats, and ET = total expenditures.
This week's lucky five-figure winner, Paul Clements [D; MI-06] is a newcomer to street politics (he is a professor of political science at Western Michigan University). As of his campaign's most recent quarterly FEC filings, Clements' war chest held just $350,000, so significant Mayday spending on his race could potentially have some impact. Currently there is no publicized polling regarding Clements' name recognition and favorability.
The major puzzle here, regarding this week's spend on Clements, is the fact that Mayday's sister site, Reform.to (keeper of the list of candidates who have gone on record as supporting a campaign finance reform measure favored by Mayday) says of Clements (as this diary goes to press):
At worst, this is yet more painfully amateurish execution on Mayday's part, throwing money at a candidate while simultaneously claiming publicly that he is "not committed to reform" - talk about a discordant user experience. At best, it might seem to be an admission that changes are afoot at Mayday, such that future decisions on endorsements and spending might be a little more nuanced than was the early strategy that led to mistakes such as the PAC's support for Republicans Jim Rubens and Walter Jones.
Informed sources have suggested to me that there will be more to discuss on this and related topics sometime in the coming week. Stay tuned.