With the midterm election inside two weeks, the gun-control side is burying the gun-rights side in ad money. The engine driving it is a familiar name: billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
A $22 Million Check
Everytown for Gun Safety — already the biggest gun-policy spender this cycle — announced Wednesday a new $3 million digital push targeting governor’s races in battleground states, run in partnership with the Democratic Governors Association.
The timing isn’t a coincidence. Everytown’s Super PAC filed its October FEC report this week, and it discloses a newly listed $22 million donation from Bloomberg, who founded Everytown and remains its single largest funder. The donation puts 2026 on track to be the strongest midterm fundraising cycle Everytown’s political arm has ever posted.
“Every gun safety bill must reach a governor’s desk,” Everytown president John Feinblatt said in the group’s statement, “and this November voters in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin can elect governors who will sign life-saving gun safety bills into law.”
Where the Money Goes
The $3 million gubernatorial push stacks on top of a $9 million commitment Everytown has made to statehouse races in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, plus a $10 million slate of congressional ads.
Of the full $22 million, FEC filings as of Tuesday account for only about $4.1 million — all of it on congressional spending so far. The biggest single buy, $944,131.80, is backing Christina Hines in Michigan’s 10th District against Republican nominee Michael Bouchard for the open seat John James vacated to run for governor. Roughly $450,000 each went to Democratic challengers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Iowa, and Arizona.
Giffords PAC started pushing ads earlier in the cycle. Of its own $10 million pledge, FEC documents show roughly $7.1 million already reported. Hines is apparently the gun-control industry’s single favorite candidate this cycle — both groups have each put close to $1 million behind her.
The NRA’s Thin Response
On the gun-rights side, FEC records show the NRA has laid out $495,380 on a single ad promoting Texas AG Ken Paxton’s Senate bid against James Talarico. The organization promised a “multi-million-dollar investment” earlier this cycle, but as of Tuesday that one ad buy is the only independent expenditure the NRA has reported to the FEC.
We walked through the structural reasons for the asymmetry earlier this month — the NRA’s post-NY-civil-action reorganization has left the political arm running on a smaller operating base, and NSSF and NAGR aren’t built to run the kind of broadcast IE campaigns Everytown and Giffords are now funding. The result is an air war that is almost entirely one-sided for the two weeks between now and November 4.
Big money doesn’t guarantee outcomes — Bloomberg has lit nine-figure totals on fire in off-year races before and watched them deliver less than the receipts suggested. But the Bloomberg checkbook is why the gun-rights side has a messaging problem heading into the home stretch, and why the air war looks the way it does. The checkbook is open, the ad calendar is full, and the response from the gun-rights side so far is a single buy against James Talarico.
