WASHINGTON — Politically blue Massachusetts may have had some competitive primaries this year, but the top recipient of political donations from the state wasn’t local. They weren’t even from New England.
Over the course of the midterm cycle, Democratic Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff was the top individual beneficiary of political donors who reported Massachusetts addresses, one of many swing state candidates who benefited from millions of dollars donors in the state sent outside the Commonwealth.
Donors gave more than $22 million to Senate candidates around the country over the past two years, with candidates in Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas, and Alaska all receiving more than $1 million each from the state, according to a Globe analysis of federal campaign finance data. Those numbers only included donations directly to campaigns or their associated victory funds, with millions more flowing to party committees and independent PACs.
The deluge of support was as much a reflection of the solid Democratic lean of the state as it was the fundraising prowess of battleground candidates amid increasing costs of elections. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico raised more than $130 million, with $64 million of that raised in the last three months, breaking records. Ossoff raised over $33 million in the last three months of the election, also pulling in more than $130 million over the cycle.
Nonpartisan OpenSecrets estimated that nearly $12 billion was spent in total on the 2026 midterms, another record.
Though Ossoff drew the top spot out of Senate candidates in money from Massachusetts-based supporters, he just edged out Salem Representative Seth Moulton’s $2.66 million raised from residents for his unsuccessful challenge to incumbent Senator Ed Markey. Markey was fifth on the list, pulling in $1.75 million.
Rounding out the top five were Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, who received $2.2 million from the state’s donors, and North Carolina Democrat Roy Cooper, who got $1.9 million.
The Democrat in nearest competitive election, New Hampshire Representative Chris Pappas, received $1.4 million.
The first Republican to make the list was Maine Senator Susan Collins, the 10th highest recipient from Massachusetts donors. She received more than $590,000 from the state. With a tumultuous Democratic side of the ticket in Maine, voters gave nearly $1.5 million combined to the candidates running to defeat her.
Massachusetts donors also gave to House races, including to local campaigns and funds run by House Democratic leaders to back battleground candidates. Democrat Dan Koh raised more than $2.2 million from individual Massachusetts donors for his bid to replace Moulton, and Newton Representative Jake Auchincloss raised more than $1 million despite not facing a competitive race.
House candidates across the country, from New Hampshire to Iowa to California, each picked up hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state, again largely favoring Democrats.
Tuesday’s results perhaps a vindication of those donations. Democrats significantly outperformed expectations, flipping more than 40 House seats and seven Senate seats, with those numbers poised to grow as Democrats lead some still-uncalled races. But it wasn’t just at the federal level, Democrats flipped at least five governorships and several state Legislatures, a level of nationwide power the party hasn’t enjoyed since Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008.
The enthusiasm for the national battlefield was palpable in Massachusetts all year, even when some wished local races would take more attention.
In the closing days of the Moulton-Markey primary, Jenny Dworkin, a 56-year-old Moulton supporter from Cambridge, lamented to the Globe that she couldn’t get her fellow Democrats to see Moulton as the agent of generational change the party needed.
“I’m surprised other people aren’t paying attention,” she told a Globe reporter in August. “My neighbors are sending money to Texas.”
Sam Brodey and Daigo Fujiwara-Smith of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Tal Kopan can be reached at tal.kopan@globe.com. Follow her @talkopan.
