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“Ending Spending Action Fund, the Super PAC funded entirely by Ricketts, has spent more than $1.3 million since 2010 influencing elections, all of it benefitting Republican candidates, according to federal election filings. Like a closer in baseball brought on in the ninth inning to seal a victory, the group’s moves have come just days before voters head to the polls, and only once has it failed to ensure victory.”
One Democratic victim was Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina, chairman of the House budget committee. “By Election Day,” Cline tells us, “Ricketts would dump $187,000 into the race—a game-changing sum in a rural district with no major television markets or newspapers. Spratt lost the race to Republican Mick Mulvaney by 10 points. ‘It was like a tidal wave,’ Spratt says. ‘Suddenly constituents were calling saying they were getting five pieces of mail a day towards the end, on all kinds of topics.’”
