Thread by @lizburgh

AOC Deep Dive part 2

All Members of Congress & congressional candidates file campaign finances w/the FEC. It's publicly available here: fec.gov/data/committee…

AOC's 2020 campaign finances were BONKERS for many reasons.

Now let me tell you about them in excruciating detail 🤓

AOC was the 2020 Dem incumbent in NY-14, which is HEAVILY Democratic. D+29.

She didn't face any real threat to her re-election.

Primaries:
✅ AOC:74%
❌ Caruso-Cabrera: 18%

General:
✅ AOC 68.7%
❌ Cummings 30.5%

This was the 2ND MOST EXPENSIVE House race. I'll get to that.

Here is an overview of AOC's re-election campaign-

There's still a month left to report, but according to her campaign's FEC filings through October 14, 2020:

Contributions (money in):
👉💲$17,778,071💲👈

Expenditures (money out):
👉💲$14,082,509💲👈

You might be thinking "is that a lot of money for one of these races?"

GOOD! 🥳 You're thinking critically & asking the right questions!

Without anything to compare it to, it doesn't tell us much.

We'll look at other 2020 race, but first let's compare it to her 2018 campaign.

AOC launched her 2018 campaign for NY-15 on 5/7/17 from Knoxville, TN.

Knoxville was the Justice Dem office.

She amended it a week later. Was it a mistake like Ilhan listing her accountant as the candidate?

She brags about winning in NY-15 & accuses Crowley of doing the same.

2018 Contributions: $2,147,866
2018 Expenditures: $1,782,301

Spending:
Mostly payroll, FB, Consulting, Kat Brezler, Justice Dems(she's on their board)

Donations:
🔸Only $41k (4.1%) were from NY-14
🔸Only $316k even came from NY state
🔸62% were unitemized (donor unknown to us)

For comparison, in the NY-14 2018 race:

🚨Joe Crowley, the incumbent AOC beat and constantly accused of raising too much money, raised $21M...

...over the course of his 21 year career.

He actually raised $3.2M in 2018 (vs. AOC's $2.1M)

Ok, so now we know:
🔹 In 2018, NY-14 raised ~$5M

(here's where I finally get back to 2020!)
🔹 In 2020, NY-14 raised ~$33M

Here are the winners of the

🏆Top 5 MOST EXPENSIVE 2020 House Races🏆

1) Steve Scalise
2) AOC 👈🥈
3) Devin Nunes
4) Nancy Pelosi
5) Kevin McCarthy
S

You might think AOC would have fewer unitemized donations this time, bigger donations?

No 78% of her 2020 donations were unitemized!

AOC was #1 out of ALL 2020 candidates & Bernie was #2 but their #'s are almost identical.

They're #1 & #2 for fewest named donors. TRANSPARENCY!

2020 spending by AOC's neighboring districts

NY-11 : $11,500,000 (Rose)
NY-12 : $3,000,000 (Maloney)
NY-13 : $900,000 (Espaillat)

NY-15 : $3,500,000 (Torres)
NY-16 : $6,000,000 (Bowman)
NY-17 : $3,000,000 (Jones)

(Ballpark $, hard to find exact totals)

opensecrets.org/elections-over…

Let's look at the geography of her donations:

🏆Top 5 Reps w/Most OUT OF STATE Donors (avg is 34.5%)🏆

1) Scalise 95%
2) Jordan 87%
3) AOC 84%🥉
4) McCarthy 76%
5) Stefanik 75%
(Nice company she's got there)

⚠️And 👉 <1%👈 of AOC & Cummings are from NY-14. The average is 26%⚠️

Ok, so AOC somehow spent $14M as an incumbent in a deep blue district. What did she spend it on?

🔸FACEBOOK ADS🔸

$4.8M (before 10/14) on FB ads. Nationwide FB ads!

She spent >$100k on FB ads in *9* different states:
WA
OR
CA
TX
FL
IL
PA
MA

facebook.com/ads/library/?a…

That's a weird set of states to focus on as a representative for Queens/Bronx.

Some weeks she bought more in CA than NY.

⚠️She bought more FB ads than any other House Candidate.

She was the 🛑11th🛑 highest buyer of FB ads out of ALL (House+Senate+Prez) Candidates & ALL PACs

She bought google ads too.

You can view her $497,000 of Google Ads here:

transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/…

It's difficult to see all this on the FEC website.

If you look at her top recipients, it looks very different. Like she only spent $330k on Facebook ads

That's bc she paid via Brex Credit card.

Here's my long thread about her BREX credit card usage.

https://twitter.com/lizburgh/status/1282012040207491073?s=19

So what was all this for? She at least gained voters right?

Wrong. She lost votes.

And gained the largest Republican voter turnout (30.5%) in NY-14 history.

# of votes for AOC:
2018: 110,318
2020: 105,455 (-4863)

% of vote for AOC:
2018: 78.2%
2020: 68.7% (-9.5%)

Part 3 will cover everything else basically! Sketchy claims in her background, attacks on Democrats, her relationship w/JusticeDems.

I wanted to start with data/docs/#'s that were filed BY AOC herself.
These things aren't my opinions, they were reported by AOC under federal law.

House Results from the Associated Press:

"District 14 - 100% reporting".

No change from the numbers I stated in this thread.