Florida’s Democratic Rep. Val Demings spent the most of losing candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, using some $68 million out of the $72 million raised during the cycle.
According to the political campaign funding tracking organization Open Secrets, the Congresswoman and former Orlando police chief went through $68,167,849, as of Oct. 19, to try and unseat GOP incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio in the closely watched election.
Rubio, who spent $42,666,657 of the $46,596,123 raised during the election cycle, beat Demings handily 57.7% to 41.3% in last week’s polling.
"In terms of thinking about spending versus your opponent, really all you need to do is just get into the same range, just get into the ballpark with them," Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political finance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Newsweek Monday. "Outspending your opponent by 5, 10, 15 percent — it really doesn't matter. If your opponent is spending $45 million and you spent $4 million that's going to be very different."
Demings’ loss places her at the top of the list for spending by a losing campaign in the election, but she would have been taken down if Democrats, including Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Arizona Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly, and Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock had lost their races, according to an Open Secrets report Nov. 9.
According to that report, Fetterman raised $56.7 million compared to his GOP opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz, who brought in $40.4 million including a $22.8 million loan he made to his campaign, the report said.
In Georgia, Warnock will head to a runoff election against GOP challenger Herschel Walker because neither candidate met the 50% election threshold to win the seat.
Warnock, who led fundraising this cycle of all the candidates, bringing in $98.7 million as of Oct. 19, spent about $88 million on the race, compared to Walker’s $37 million war chest, of which, about $32 million was spent on the race, according to the report.
In addition to the funds raised by the individual candidate campaigns, Open Secrets found that an additional $2.1 billion in “outside dollars” were pumped into the race for negative attacks.
The report said that some 69% of the money was used for attack ads this cycle, compared to just 23.6% negative ads coming from outside groups in the 2002 election cycle.
The percentage spent on negative advertising has remained almost constant since 2004, fluctuating between 67% to 69%, with the high of 72% in 2014, according to the report.