When Do “Whale” Donors Keep Campaigns Afloat?
March 26, 2026 · 2:28 PM EDT
When Elon Musk dove in to support Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris’ campaign in January, he certainly made a splash: $10 million — made out to a pro-Morris super PAC — is more money than most first-time candidates have going for them.
The cash infusion could be enough to boost Morris into contention for the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell. But Morris, a Lexington businessman, wouldn’t be the first person to get excited about a “whale” donor only to discover the seaweed may be greener in another candidate’s lake.
Before Musk’s involvement, Morris trailed the field on two fronts. Early primary polls have found him behind both frontrunners — 6th District Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — by double digits.
And while Morris’ money from Musk will make this long-shot candidate the best financed in the field in terms of total dollars, money spent by a super PAC is typically less effective than money spent by a campaign itself — and Morris is still third in “hard dollar” fundraising.
According to FEC filings through December, Morris brought in less from itemized and unitemized contributions than either Barr or Cameron. This excludes self-funding, as Morris also put over $4 million toward his own campaign.
Musk isn’t the only source of outside money in the race — and Morris isn’t the only recipient. So far, Keep America Great PAC has spent $4.8 million supporting Barr and opposing Morris, while the Club for Growth has spent $4.5 million against Barr. Morris has also seen approximately $4 million from Fight for Kentucky beyond Musk’s expenditure. But outside groups pay more for television ads because stations do not have to offer them the required, lower candidate rate, so the money doesn’t go as far.
Anemic individual contributions are a symptom of Morris’ core challenge: making his case against two proven contenders. According to Inside Elections Vote Above Replacement, Barr finished 9 points ahead of the Republican Baseline in his two most recent races. Cameron earned a 1.1 VAR in 2019 but underperformed by over 10 points in 2023 against the uniquely dominant Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.
Ten million bucks can help buy name recognition. And in 2024, when Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing Trump and other Republicans, the party won. But based on recent history, these splashy, eight-figure expenditures don’t always make the biggest waves in congressional races, especially by primary day.
Successful Cash Splash
The most optimistic case study for Morris might be the current vice president — who was himself once the beneficiary of a fundraising whale.
In the 2022 Ohio GOP Senate primary, JD Vance triumphed as a political newcomer over a pair of current and former elected officials. His fortunes were lifted by $15 million in outside support from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.
Thiel’s massive outlays to the pro-Vance Protect Ohio Values PAC, on top of Vance’s other fundraising channels, helped the candidate outraise state Sen. Matt Dolan. Dolan poured $10 million of his own money into the race, including an $8 million injection six months before the primary.
When votes were tallied, Dolan basically tied for second with former state Treasurer Josh Mandel. Mandel was the only candidate on the podium who didn’t self-fund: even Vance donated $700,000 of his own money to the campaign, mostly near the end.
Mandel did, however, have a healthy intake of contributions from other people. While self-contributed dollars follow the same spending rules as typical donations, the distinction matters. Hard-dollar donors are a plausible proxy for organic or grassroots support, given that Mandel — the top fundraiser in this category — finished 6,600 votes ahead of Dolan despite being down $8.5 million overall.
The victorious Vance also received a hearty share of donations. (An April endorsement from his future running mate, Donald Trump, was no doubt a draw.) Crucially, this allowed Vance’s campaign to diversify its financial support, meaning he did not depend solely on Thiel’s money.
Thiel's bankrolling in 2022 wasn't limited to Ohio. He also spent big in the Arizona GOP Senate primary, backing his protégé Blake Masters. Both races had similar dynamics: Masters ran against Jim Lamon, a business executive with seemingly endless self-funding capacity; and state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who was well-positioned in hard dollars but outgunned overall.
Even with Thiel's outside millions, Masters couldn't match Lamon in total supportive spending, but as the best-funded candidate in hard dollars, he still clinched the Republican nomination. (Masters would go on to lose the general election to Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly — a reminder that whale money may carry more weight in primaries, where the electorate is smaller and often narrower.)
Variety of financial support is a key difference between Morris and the future veep.
At this point in 2022, the Ohio GOP primary was still heating up, and Team Vance’s finances were more modest than they would be by the end. His effort’s outside support in February was primarily riding Thiel’s early waves of cashflow, before a deluge of millions more in the final few weeks.
Prior to the Musk expenditure, most of Morris’ money came from himself. Of the approximately $6 million in hard money behind his campaign at the end of December, nearly three quarters was self-contributed.
With this context, the combination of Morris’ self-funding and outside money is staggering. After accounting for the $10 million from Musk, Morris is set to benefit from nearly as much money as Vance’s total at the end of the GOP primary, with 100 days still left to go in Kentucky.
Spouting Off Too Much
Cash distribution is still the biggest red flag for Morris. His overall situation more closely resembles that of another — far less successful — whale attractor.
In 2022, researcher Carrick Flynn sought the Democratic nomination for Oregon's 6th Congressional District. Flynn benefitted from more than $10 million from a super PAC affiliated with the now-disgraced crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
It was the most outside spending by any single group in House primary history. But despite the high-rolling effort, Flynn finished in a distant second place.
The winner of the 2022 Democratic primary in Oregon’s 6th District — now-Rep. Andrea Salinas — was backed by less money in a more balanced arrangement.
Like Vance and Mandel in Ohio, a vital share of Salinas’ support was in the form of money she raised from others, with an influx of outside spending (including over $1 million in the final few weeks from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC). This meant around two-thirds of her total support in the primary came from independent expenditures.
The difference is that Salinas won despite finishing far behind Flynn in the cash dash, whereas Vance only narrowly outran Dolan in funds by the end.
One reason: Flynn’s boatload of bankroll from Bankman-Fried probably saw diminishing returns. Ten million dollars was a lot to burn in a congressional primary during a midterm year, when just 71,000 votes were cast.
The risk of oversaturation is smaller in statewide races. For example, Thiel’s $15 million toward Vance could have been spent in any of the 12 media markets covering Ohio. Likewise, Kentucky contains 10 media markets. Oregon’s 6th District is served by just one.
Bankman-Fried waded into a handful of other primaries in 2022, but these excursions were considerably less expensive.
His super PAC, Protect Our Future, contributed between $1 million and $2 million to five other Democratic House primary candidates in safe districts that cycle — and four of them won, eventually heading to Congress. But in each of those races, Bankman-Fried’s money was one piece of a larger financial picture: alongside Protect Our Future's investment, every candidate received at least a million dollars in outside support from a separate source. The one SBF-backed candidate who lost a primary, Adam Hollier in Michigan's 13th District, was undone by opponent Shri Thanedar's gargantuan self-funding, which carried Thanedar to a plurality win with just 27 percent in a fractured field.
The lesson: Bankman-Fried's money worked best when it amplified candidates who already had diverse financial support. Flynn was the exception because Protect Our Future's spending wasn't a supplement, it was the whole whale.
Win or lose, disproportionate billionaire expenditures will place Morris alongside Flynn in the history books. Without Musk, the self-funding Kentucky businessman might have had a trajectory closer to the third-place candidate in the Oregon Democratic primary: virtually all $2.7 million in support of Cody Reynolds’ campaign came from his own wallet.
To the pro-Morris’ effort’s credit, their finances are slightly more diverse than that. Conservative mega-donors Jeff Yass and Richard Uihlein have each spent more than $1 million on pro-Morris ads through various super PACs.
As of late March, outside money accounted for around 60 percent of all pro-Morris financial support. Ninety-one percent of the pro-Flynn final funds, for comparison, came from independent expenditures.
The Bottom Line
Whale donations can only take a candidate so far, and it remains a sign of health for a campaign to have multiple different sources of funding and support.
The difference between Vance in Ohio and Flynn in Oregon was composition, not amount. Vance's financial support included a meaningful base of organic contributions, whereas Flynn was almost entirely backed by Bankman-Fried. Even the crypto mogul's other investments that cycle pointed the same way: the most successful primary candidates drew in additional sources of support. Indeed, Salinas — like Vance — was boosted by outside money, while also raking in “typical” contributions.
For Morris in Kentucky, the takeaway is mixed.
He now has an extra $10 million behind his campaign. But splashy outside spending does not relieve a drought of direct contributions, and self-funding isn’t always a direct alternative.
By contrast, the two frontrunners in the GOP primary, Barr and Cameron, have neither contributed their own money nor seen skyscraper-sized outside spending on their behalf.
So far, the strategy is paying off better for the congressman. At the end of 2025, Barr had raised nearly four times as much from donors as Cameron had, with Morris right on the former state attorney general’s tail.
Polls fielded after Musk’s announcement continue to find Morris stuck in bronze medal position.
In early February, Morris’ campaign released a survey showing the candidate within striking distance of second place, just 3 points behind Barr and double digits behind Cameron. But the next few days brought two polls from independent sources: Emerson College saw Morris seven points behind second place, while Quantus Insights had him short by 10. A March poll from a pro-Barr super PAC had a similar result: Cameron and Barr hovering around 30 percent, Morris behind with just 13 percent.
One barrier has been name recognition. According to Morris’ poll, 26 percent of Kentucky GOP voters had never heard of him — way down from 49 percent five months earlier — and an additional 27 percent had heard of Morris without holding an opinion. In that span, his net favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) improved from -3 to +11.
The primary is on May 19, meaning Morris still has nearly two months to raise and spend — though so do Barr and Cameron. Trump’s endorsement would boost any of the three candidates, and the dark horse Morris styles himself as an America First outsider.
All told, if Musk’s bet on Morris does flop, the world’s wealthiest man would at least prove his spot in the ignominious pod of washed campaign whales.
In 2025, Musk funneled nearly $20 million toward conservative Brad Schimel as he lost a Wisconsin state Supreme Court election by 10 points. And in 2022, hedge fund manager Ken Griffin spent $50 million backing Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin in his bid for the GOP nomination for governor in Illinois — an investment good for 15 percent, or a distant tie for second.
Sometimes whales make waves. Other times they’re just a drop in the bucket.