Campaign finance data through mid-April: Kerr and Jacobs on track to spend their way into a 4-way split vote in June

The 49th district saw a stunning level of campaign spending in the first few months of 2018 with Paul Kerr dropping over $1.1 million on himself while Sara Jacobs and a friendly PAC spent over $1 million to support her.

We now know where Paul Kerr's dramatic 7-point increase in the latest SurveyUSA poll came from: A spend of over $1.1 million in a single quarter. Almost as much was spent on Sara Jacobs if you include the Women Vote! PAC spend through mid-April, but she didn't see the same sort of gains in the poll as Kerr.

Kerr and Jacobs are dramatically outspending Mike Levin and Doug Applegate in a race to the bottom that puts the 49th district at risk. We have continuously pointed out the danger of four Democrats splitting the vote in June which could hand the district to the Republicans. Now we're seeing this play out as the wealthy challengers buy their way into meaningful poll numbers and set up the Democrats for a near-even split vote in June.

It's worth noting that Sara Jacobs still has over $1 million in cash on hand.

The full campaign finance data dump for 2018 YTD is in the table below:

Notes: The data in these tables came from the FEC quarterly candidate filings plus the FEC 24/48 hour reports from PACs. Much of the $566,458 in PAC spending for Sara Jacobs happened in early April. So, the data is basically candidate spend from January 1 to March 31 plus PAC spend through April 20.

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