Lisa Desjardins:
This is important, because, as much as we're talking about billions, historic amounts of money for control of Congress, we're also seeing historic numbers for many of the races across the United States.
We have 46 state legislatures up on the ballot this year. And let's look at what we know about this. We are seeing record spending for control of those state legislatures by both parties across the country. And just secretary of state races alone — we know that's such an important race right now, as we talk about our democracy — those candidates have raised $50 million, which really is an unheard-of figure for that kind of what used to be seen as a government process office.
And just one example, the Arizona secretary of state race, in which we have unknown election denier on the Republican side running, that race alone right now is well over $10 million. And that could be even more.
I know it's millions, not billions. It's easy to lose track. But in secretary of state races, that's a massive amount of money. And what's happening here is, those election deniers, so-called election deniers on the ballot, when we talk to the Brennan Center for Justice, they say they're having an effect on just bringing in money for both sides.
Here's Dan Weiner from the Brennan center.
Daniel Weiner, Brennan Center for Justice: Those candidates raise a lot of money nationally, and, actually, so do their opponents, because of the sense that the stakes are incredibly high for democracy in those elections.
But I think that this is the wave of the future in some sense, that we're going to see a lot more money and a lot more corresponding ideology in elections that were previously considered somewhat sleepy.
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