2006 House Race Expenditure Round-up, Part Three

(I accidently mis-filed this one. – promoted by James L.)

Today brings our next and final installment in our round-up of 2006 House race expenditures (see here, here, and here for the other entries). Sorry for the lag between entries–I had a busier week than I expected (to make up for it, today’s diary will feature glorious color).

Today, we’ll look at two areas: competitive open seats and the handful of races where Democratic incumbents were on the defensive.

As usual, the “Spent” column indicates candidate expenditures, and “Other IEs” includes all independent expenditures made by PACs who filed with the FEC, but not 527 activity. The column on the far right, labeled “MoV”, indicates the current members’ margin of victory. In most cases I used Secretary of State numbers, but in a few races I relied upon CNN. All numbers were subject to rounding.

First, the open seats:

One thing to note here is that when tallying IE expenditures, I did not include expenditures by PACs against candidates who did not make it through the primary (e.g. the money that the Club For Growth spent against Dean Heller and for Sharon Angle in the NV-02 GOP primary). It’s noteworthy to highlight that GOP-allied PACs were more likely to show up in these open seat races than they were in races where Republican incumbents were on the defensive, but Democratic allies still outspent them by a 5-3 ratio. Of these expenditures, the most heartwarming perhaps is the $3.4 million that the NRCC spent against Zack (“Lost In”) Space, only to see the former Dover Law Director clean up by a whopping 24 points. More curiously, though, was the decision by both committees to largely stay out of the ultra-competitive FL-13 race. I could understand the NRCC holding back, when their candidate had bottomless pockets, but I’m not sure what the DCCC’s strategy was here.

Finally, we have the shortlist of “competitive” Democratic races. A few of these were legitimately competitive, while some represent nothing more than wishful thinking from national Republicans earlier on in the election cycle. Do you remember how badly the NRCC and the White House wanted to spook John Spratt (SC-05) in 2005? With Spratt’s 14-point victory and Republicans retreating from the battlefield early, you have to wonder if anyone significant will have the fortitude to try again in 2008.