Political Money Rankings of Kansas PACs, Jan. 2024
Newcomer "Middle of the Road PAC" tied for #1 on the list
The 2024 election cycle Political Action Committees page on the Governmental Ethics Commission website lists about 220 Kansas PACs.
All these PACs should have filed Receipts & Expenditure Reports with the Secretary of State last week.
On Saturday nearly 50 of the PACs had not filed reports before the deadline.
Thirteen PACs filed an “Affidavit of Exemption” since they did not raise or spend $500.
On Saturday 156 PACs had filed reports with details of raising $4.8 million, spending $2.2 million, with $6.8 million cash on hand.
PACs were separately ranked by amount raised, amount spent and cash on hand. A “Final Rank” was computed from the three separate financial indicators.
The top 25 PACs are shown in the table below. A complete list of PACs and their financial indicators can be downloaded in an Excel file below.
Newcomer “Middle of the Road PAC” tied with long-time Kansas Realtors PAC as the #1 PAC based on the three financial indicators.
Top 25 Kansas PACs (Jan 2024)
Totals for 156 PACs
Notes
Final Rank
The “Final Rank” is based on the ranking of the product of the individual rankings. The intent is to roughly weight the three components equally: money raised, money spent and cash on hand.
The #1 ranking was from this tie:
Kansas Realtors PAC, rank product 2 * 1 * 2 = 4
Middle of the Road PAC, rank product 1 * 4 * 1 = 4
Miscellaneous
Analysis is based on campaign finance reports on the Ethics Commission web site on Jan. 13, 2024.
Because of transfers between PACs, there can be double counting in the money raised and spent.
Not included are 49 PACs failing to file by the Jan. 10, 2024 deadline.
Not included is the “Kansans for Liberty PAC.” It’s unclear why that photocopy was totally illegible.
Not included is the “It’s Time to Fix Stupid” PAC that was administratively closed by the Ethics Commission.
Not included are PACs filing “Affidavits” that they raised or spent less than $500: Bank of Labor Committee for Good Government, Barton County Businesses for Growth, Fire PAC 2119, Johnson County Firefighters Local 1371 PAC, Kansans Advancing Women, Kansas Asian American Coalition, Kansas Club for Growth PAC, Kansas Democratic Party Disability Caucus, Kaw Valley Young Republicans, Keep Kansas Free, Save The Babies PAC, Western Equipment Dealers Association - KS PAC
Comparison to Past Election Cycles
Historically, but not in recent years, the Ethics Commission created PAC summaries, but sometimes their “Top 20” PAC lists were misleading.
For example, in 2006 the late Dr. George Tiller’s ProKanDo PAC raised more money and spent more money than all other PAC in Kansas, but was not listed in the top 20 in the Ethics Commission report for the year.
ProKanDo did give some money to candidates, but mostly acted on its own through mailings and other ads, which was not part of what was measured by the Ethics Commission reports.
Three indicators of a PAC’s strength are money raised, money spent, and month available to spend. Such summaries are generally not available, but I have created some in the past.
Presidential election years
The table above allows comparisons for January reports in presidential election years 2008, 2012 and 2024.
The nominal dollars raised by Kansas PACs are comparable between 2008 and 2024, but when considering $1 in 2008 was about $1.40 in 2024 (based on CPI ratio 302.9/215.3), the dollars raised are slightly lower this year.
The nominal dollars spent in 2008 were roughly the same as 2024, so that’s a bit of a decrease when inflation is considered.
But cash on hand is much larger in Jan. 2024 than 2008 or 2012 with or without considering inflation.
Gubernatorial year
Only partial data is available from the Oct. 2022 PAC filings. A staggering $12.7 million was spent by Kansas PACs in those filings, which dwarfs all Jan. PAC filings in presidential years.
Perhaps the comparison is not quite valid, but it’s curious that Oct. 2022 spending is roughly 5-times spending in the January reports.
But the huge spending by all PACs in the Oct. 2022 reports was dwarfed by the $17.5 million the Kansas Value Institute nonprofit claims to have spent in 2022 to re-elect Gov. Laura Kelly.
On Dec. 6, 2022 Evan Gates, KVI executive director, claimed at the Kansas Post-Election Conference at the Dole Institute of Politics that KVI spent around $17.5 million in 2022 election, which was more than the total of Kelly’s and Schmidt’s campaigns combined.
Will PAC and nonprofit spending be huge in 2026?
By the Numbers
Links in this Excel file take you directly to recently-filed Jan. 2024 PAC PDF reports, or to the PAC’s statements of organization. A statement of organization shows the address of a PAC and names of the chair and treasurer.
