Last week, a tsunami of outside spending surged onto Bill Redpath’s ultra-longshot campaign for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat.
A single super PAC created in early October began spending $1.7 million in support of the little-known libertarian, who’s on the ballot alongside Republican incumbent Sen. Jon Husted and Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown.
In four days, the group spent more than 35 times more on Redpath than the candidate’s own campaign had spent on him for the entire campaign, according to Federal Election Commission data.
“Tired of professional swamp politicians wasting your tax dollars? Vote Redpath for U.S. Senate,” a booming voice says in a digital ad from the super PAC, called Buckeye Freedom PAC. “Both parties suck. Vote for the real conservative.”
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Despite this right-wing messaging, the super PAC had hired a vendor exclusively used at the federal level by other PACs boosting outsider candidates — one of which was funded by a liberal dark-money group.
“I agree that both parties suck,” Redpath told The Washington Sun, clarifying that he’s conservative on the economy but “generally not on social issues.” The super PAC, he surmised, is “trying to reach certain people to convince them that I am more aligned with their views; and in some cases, that’s going to be true.”
Redpath’s unexpected super PAC windfall is no anomaly.
In the past two weeks, a collection of super PACs have together spent more than $15 million boosting outsider congressional candidates with little chance of winning — but who could peel enough votes away from the Republican or Democratic candidate to sway the election, according to a Sun analysis.
Voters won’t learn who’s bankrolling many of the outside spending groups until after the election. That’s because the last financial disclosure reports due to the FEC before Election Day cover super PAC financials only up to Oct. 14, and some of these super PACs reported no income prior to that date.
However, The Sun determined — by analyzing their vendors, spending patterns and one-sided attacks on major-party candidates — that many of these super PACs supporting obscure, independent or minor-party candidates had strong ties to Republicans or Democrats.
Some of the relationships between the PACs and partisan organizations have been described in other media outlets.
Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, said so-called “pop-up” super PACs that materialize right before an election seem to be more common this cycle.
“It’s obviously something we’ve seen in prior elections, and it points to a very intentional and deliberate approach of denying voters transparency about the true source of the money that’s being spent to influence them,” Ghosh said.
Secret Money and Motivations
Pop-up super PACs spending big during the final days of the 2026 election aren’t always what they seem to be. Some appear to have taken extra steps to obscure their motivations and the moneyed forces behind them.
Buckeye Freedom PAC, for its part, paid $50,000 for text messages in support of Redpath.
To do so, it used a firm called Liberty Buying Partners LLC, whose internet presence was limited to a website without a phone number or email on its homepage. The company deleted its website altogether recently after The Sun requested comment.
One of Liberty Buying Partners’ other clients is a super PAC known as Right for Alaska, which had been supporting obscure conservative candidates despite being funded by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit that supports “progressive changemakers,” according to its website.
Right for Alaska terminated its operations in October. But at the same time, two new super PACs popped up in Alaska — and both also use Liberty Buying Partners and the same treasurer.
In Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, Alaska Values PAC is now asking voters to support Republican Gerald Heikes and ditch incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan in the race where 16 different candidates appear on the general election ballot.
Heikes decided to run for office after a meeting with a man whose name he could not remember, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Heikes recalled the man telling him that, while he and his associates could not directly donate to Heikes’ campaign, “we’ll make things happen for you,” the Times reported.
Heikes had previously said God called him to run for office.
Neither Buckeye Freedom nor Alaska Values have responded to The Sun’s questions on their intentions or why they chose to work with Liberty Buying Partners.
To Ghosh, this scenario shouldn’t be possible. He suggested that super PACs should be required by law to disclose their major donors on a rolling basis in the days leading up to Election Day, just as candidates’ own committees must.
The current system “leaves a solid two weeks of, essentially, free-for-all,” Ghosh said. “It’s really an indictment of Congress that even the most low-hanging fruit of campaign finance reform that would actually really improve transparency right around an election — even that they can’t do.”
Boosting Ooutsiders
In Nevada, Nevadans for Sensible Government has spent $6,000 so far on digital advertising supporting Lynn Chapman, a member of the Independent American Party, in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, where Republican David Flippo and Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson are vying for the historically Republican open seat.
Chapman’s platform is decidedly conservative. But Nevadans for Sensible Government has created its pro-Chapman ad through Pendulum Creative Group, a firm that advertises winning “campaigns for Democratic candidates and progressive organizations,” according to its website.
In Iowa, Our Heritage Matters PAC — established this month — has dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars boosting libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Laehn, according to FEC data.
Recent polls on the race have Laehn bringing in anywhere from 1% to 8% of the vote — sometimes larger than the pre-election polling margins separating Republican Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek.
It’s unclear who’s funding Our Heritage Matters PAC. But the Iowa GOP says it’s convinced Democrats are behind it — Democrats are “so desperate to win that they’re deploying dark-money groups to boost Libertarian candidates,” Jade Cichy, a spokesperson for the Iowa GOP, told The Sun in a statement.
“It’s a disgraceful, deliberate attempt to deceive Iowa voters and manipulate the outcome of these elections,” Cichy said. “Iowans deserve better, and this scheme needs to be called out.”
Our Heritage Matters PAC has also supported libertarian David Graham in Kansas’ U.S. Senate race.
Fellow pop-up super PAC StarkFreedom PAC has joined that effort, but it’s been uniquely transparent about its intentions. Aaron Day, who oversees StarkFreedom PAC, told Semafor this month that he wants to chip away at Republican margins.
Alex DeGrasse, an adviser to incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), told The Sun in a statement that “this is the oldest dark-money trick in [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer’s playbook.”
“The people behind this scheme aren’t even hiding it anymore,” DeGrasse said.
“It’s deliberate deception, paid for by people who will never reveal their names until after the votes are counted,” he added. “Kansans are smart. They know a vote for anyone but Roger Marshall is a vote for a Schumer majority.”
Concerns of Misrepresentation
Graham, the libertarian, told The Sun in an email that he had “no objection” to outside spending on his behalf, “provided that my views are not misrepresented.”
But PACs The Sun examined have sometimes twisted the beliefs of candidates they’re supporting.
Our Heritage Matters PAC sent mailers to South Carolina voters asking them to vote for libertarian Bill Reeside in the state’s 1st Congressional District. The mailer, a copy of which was shared with The Sun, calls Reeside an “America First Patriot” looking to “end temporary protected status [TPS] for illegal immigrants.”
Reeside told The Sun in a text message that ending temporary protected status is part of his plan, but that the mailer “doesn’t capture my entire plan for fixing our immigration system.”
Likely to the chagrin of MAGA Republicans, Reeside wants to replace temporary protected status and asylum “with unlimited, free work visas for low-skilled workers and high-skilled workers” as well as a “fair path to citizenship for the Dreamers,” according to his website.
Of the Our Heritage Matters advertisement, Reeside said: “I would rate it ‘accurate, but incomplete.’”
While the donations behind Our Heritage Matters are not yet public, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has nudged outside spending groups to emphasize outsider candidates’ conservative bona fides before Election Day, Axios reported.
They’ve done so through a technique known as “redboxing”: sharing talking points on pages of public websites, which does not constitute illegally coordinating with super PACs.
‘Spoiler’ Campaign?
Day, from StarkFreedom PAC, has a firsthand understanding of the strategy: He got almost 18,000 votes in New Hampshire’s 2016 U.S. Senate election, which Republican Kelly Ayotte lost by just over 1,000 votes.
He’s now running a spate of AI-generated ads across the country, looking to replicate that effort.
“You call it a spoiler campaign,” Day told Semafor. “I call it holding Republicans accountable.”
Independent candidate Jay Bowman calls himself “the other guy” in the competitive race to represent Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District.
Bowman supports campaign finance reforms such as ensuring “super PACs are transparent about their donors.”
This hasn’t stopped Our Heritage Matters PAC, which has spent over $130,000 on physical and digital advertising supporting Bowman’s run against Republican Ralph Alvarado and Democrat Zach Dembo.
“They’re sowing confusion and trying to take votes away from [the GOP candidate] by promoting an independent candidate, which is too bad,” Bowman said. “I’ve gotten several angry phone calls, texts … about what’s going on, why they’re receiving these.”
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