Minnesota election spending hits $194M mark

Minnesota seems on pace to have its most expensive midterm election in state history, and that means just about everywhere you go, you're likely to see or hear a campaign commercial. Fox 9's Corin Hogger is doing the campaign spending math, and he joins us live from the state capitol tonight. Corin, the big spending has some obvious payoffs, but it can be confusing at times. Yeah, Randy and Kelsey, most of that money is going into races that are considered to be close, even you know localized races like for state senate offices here have candidates that are just flooding the zone with commercials especially on TV but as flooded as Minnesotans may feel our neighbors in Wisconsin and Iowa are even deeper underwater a midterm unlike any before it this is clearly the most expensive race Minnesota's ever had Ad Impact projects about 194 million dollars in Minnesota campaign spending this year. A competitive U.S. Senate seat is expected to be the most expensive race, with most of the money coming from outside sources, not the campaigns. So you're probably never far away from a Peggy Flanagan billboard or a Michelle Tafoya TV ad. But Minnesota's political spending pales in comparison to what's happening in Wisconsin and Iowa. A tight governor's race has helped badger spending up to projected 360 million dollars in Wisconsin and several closer than usual races in Iowa have Hawkeyes staring at 310 million dollars in campaign spending. Political analyst Blois Olson says voters struggle to sift through all of it. And so it's overwhelming. It's a flooding of the zone. And then there's the issue of trying to keep up fact checking or who's behind it. And that's just impossible this year. Minnesota's potentially record-breaking spending is unusually high in a close attorney general's race at more than five million dollars already. And state legislative races are getting more expensive, too, as the parties fight for majorities. In the Senate alone, a significant amount of Republican money is backing challengers to Grant Hochschild, Judy Seberger, Eric Putnam, and Rob Kupec. DFL money is targeting Julie Coleman, Jim Abler, Michael Kroon and Karin Housley. Olson says a lot of the money spent in the campaign's closing days will be geographically targeted to get out the vote. I think you have to look at the suburbs. That's where the mail is flowing, the TV ads are running, and then, you know, even today I heard podcast ads. And I have one more state comparison for you. This Senate race here in Minnesota, that one projected to be the most expensive in the state. That's at about $75 million by the end of the campaign. But in Texas, the U.S. Senate race, the two candidates there, they've already spent almost $550 million, and there's still a week to go. Live at the Capitol, Corin Hogger, Fox 9. Half a billion dollars. Let's think about those dollar figures right now. All right, Corin, boggles the mind a little bit. Thank you. Happening this evening, two Minnesota Democrats are holding a sold-out event in Minneapolis with a controversial Twitch streamer. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and State Representative Omar Fateh are holding an event with Hassan Piker. Piker has a large audience, some 11 million, but he is a polarizing figure, making comments considered by many to be anti-Semitic and anti-American. Many groups, including some Democrats, have criticized the event and Piker's appearance. However, he did get some support from former Governor Jesse Ventura, who went on Piker's live stream yesterday. There's the First Amendment. Yeah. Everyone has, and that's there. I'll repeat it again. Yeah. The First Amendment is to protect unpopular speech, because popular speech don't need to be protected. Tonight's event, which is being described as a, quote, series of curated conversations, was announced last week and sold out within minutes. And Election Day gets...