# Lower Costs Now 11.6M Iowa and Kansas Senate IE October 2026 On **25 October 2026**, nine days before the election, **[[Lower Costs Now]]** (FEC committee **C00961276**) disclosed **$11,637,221.03** of independent expenditures in a single Form 24 notice — file **2041829**, an original (`F24N`) received at **19:09:33**. It is **the only notice filed anywhere in the country that day reaching $10 million**, and it is **48.01%** of the **$24,236,255.93** that all 81 Form 24 notices of 25 October carried between them. The next-largest notice of the day was **$3,278,069.15**. One committee, on one filing, spent more than three and a half times what the second-largest spender did. ## Terms | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Spender | **LOWER COSTS NOW**, FEC committee **C00961276** | | Document | file **2041829**, form **F24N** (original), received **2026-10-25T19:09:33** | | Schedule E lines | **12** live, **0** memo-coded | | Candidates | **9**, in **5** states (IA, KS, MI, OH, TX) | | Chamber | **Senate only** — all 12 lines | | Support | **$11,011,504.33** across 7 lines — **94.62%** | | Oppose | **$625,716.70** across 5 lines — 5.38% | | Expenditure date | **2026-10-24** on all 12 lines | | Election code | `G2026` | **Derived total: $11,011,504.33 + $625,716.70 = $11,637,221.03.** Arithmetic checked against the filed document. No two rows on this notice are identical, so none of the money is a repeated line. ## Every line on the notice | State / office | Direction | Candidate | Payee | Amount | |---|---|---|---|---| | Iowa Senate | **support** | [[Josh Turek]] | **Waterfront Strategies** | **$8,475,444.00** | | Kansas Senate | **support** | [[Adam Hamilton]] | **Waterfront Strategies** | **$2,463,533.30** | | Kansas Senate | oppose | [[Roger Marshall]] | Waterfront Strategies | $566,399.70 | | Kansas Senate | support | [[Adam Hamilton]] | SKDKnickerbocker | $55,000.00 | | Kansas Senate | oppose | [[Roger Marshall]] | Waterfront Strategies | $27,317.00 | | Texas Senate | oppose | [[Ken Paxton]] | Echo Networks LLC | $16,000.00 | | Texas Senate | support | [[James Talarico]] | Echo Networks LLC | $9,000.00 | | Ohio Senate | oppose | [[Jon Husted]] | Echo Networks LLC | $8,000.00 | | Michigan Senate | oppose | [[Mike Rogers]] | Echo Networks LLC | $8,000.00 | | Iowa Senate | support | [[Josh Turek]] | MVAR Media LLC | $5,527.03 | | Ohio Senate | support | [[Sherrod Brown]] | Echo Networks LLC | $2,000.00 | | Michigan Senate | support | [[Abdul El-Sayed]] | Echo Networks LLC | $1,000.00 | **Two races carry 99.62% of it.** Iowa takes **$8,480,971.03** and Kansas **$3,112,250.00**. The remaining **$44,000.00** is spread across four candidates in Texas, Ohio and Michigan in amounts between $1,000 and $16,000 — small enough that they read as a reporting obligation rather than a programme. ## One firm placed 99.1% of it | Payee | Amount | Share | |---|---|---| | **Waterfront Strategies** | **$11,532,694.00** | **99.10%** | | SKDKnickerbocker | $55,000.00 | 0.47% | | Echo Networks LLC | $44,000.00 | 0.38% | | MVAR Media LLC | $5,527.03 | 0.05% | **Waterfront Strategies is the same firm this committee used on both of its earlier notices** — the $1,126,344.00 Iowa buy on file 2020164 and the $4,255,867.00 Kansas buy on file 2041422. Three filings, three weeks, one buyer. Single-vendor notices have been the norm rather than the exception in the closing fortnight of this cycle, and the practical consequence is the same each time: the money is placed by a media-buying firm rather than paid to a broadcaster, so it does not appear in the ad-tracking data most outside-spending coverage is built on. ## Iowa, suddenly, at scale This committee's first appearance was in **Iowa**, with **$1,126,344.00** behind [[Josh Turek]] on 12 October. It then spent nine days and **$4,255,867.00** in Kansas. This notice puts **$8,480,971.03** back into Iowa — **7.5 times its first Iowa buy** — and makes Iowa the **largest race in the country by disclosed outside money on 25 October**: | Race | Outside money, 25 October | Committees | |---|---|---| | **Iowa Senate** | **$8,675,071.39** | 6 | | **Kansas Senate** | **$6,926,515.76** | 9 | | Nebraska Senate | $1,959,620.90 | — | | South Carolina Senate | $976,007.76 | — | **Two Senate races took 66.2% of all original Form 24 money filed nationally that day.** On the Iowa side, this one committee is **97.8%** of the total. ## Kansas is now a nine-committee race, and this is the second day it has led the map Kansas took **$6,926,515.76** from **nine committees** on 25 October, one day after ten committees put $8.3 million into it. This notice is **44.9%** of the Kansas day. The rest, as filed: | Committee | Kansas, 25 October | File | |---|---|---| | **Lower Costs Now** | **$3,112,250.00** | 2041829 | | Plains PAC | $1,593,350.00 | 2041722 | | Choose Freedom PAC | $1,304,214.60 | 2041628 | | [[Senate Leadership Fund]] (SLF PAC) | $720,007.13 | 2041745 | | Great Opportunity PAC, Inc. | $76,834.99 | 2041572 | | [[WinSenate]] | $70,683.43 | 2041887 | | [[Our Heritage Matters]] | $39,005.61 | 2041906 | | [[United Futures PAC]] | $9,270.00 | 2041719 | | D.R.I.V.E. (Teamsters) | $900.00 | 2041837 | Full day-by-day record at [[Kansas Senate Outside Money 2026]]. ## What is still not known about the spender - **Its donors.** Its three traced notices carry **$1,126,344.00** (file 2020164), **$4,544,271.73** (file 2041422) and **$11,637,221.03** (file 2041829) — **at least $17,307,836.76 of disclosed spending, and no disclosed receipts at all.** Its funding is not on the federal record, and the periodic report that would show it is not due until after the votes are counted. - **Its address of record is shared with two other federal committees.** [[United Futures PAC]] (C00960385) and [[New Path PAC]] (C00963470) both file from **PO Box 15845, Washington DC 20003**, and both have spent in Kansas. What a shared mailbox does and does not establish is set out at [[PO Box 15845 DC Three Committee Cluster October 2026]]. - **Its committee type.** This site does not infer a committee type from a registration document or from a committee's name, because the registration form's committee-type field has repeatedly disagreed with the FEC's own classification. ## Why it matters - **A committee with no disclosed donors was the largest single political spender in the United States on this day.** Not the largest super PAC, not the largest in its race — the largest filing of any kind, by a factor of three and a half. - **94.62% of it is positive.** Most closing-week independent expenditure in this cycle has been negative; this notice is the reverse, and the money behind [[Josh Turek]] alone is 72.8% of it. - **The reallocation is the story.** A committee that had spent nine days in Kansas moved three quarters of its largest filing into Iowa overnight. A super PAC that can move eight figures between states in one day is a different object from a committee organised around a single race. - **One firm, three filings.** 99.1% of this notice went to one media buyer, and all three of this committee's notices have gone to the same one. ## Verification Every figure here traces to file **2041829** at `docquery.fec.gov/dcdev/posted/2041829.fec`, read as a raw filed document rather than through an index. The notice is an **original** (`F24N`, no amendment indicator) and carries **no memo-coded rows**, so no figure on it restates money itemised elsewhere in the same document. Receipt date 2026-10-25 was **closed** when it was read — the last document of that day was received at 23:49:18 — so these are settled figures for the day rather than a partial read. The running aggregate column on these rows is recorded as what the document says and is **not** a race or committee total. No secondary press source for this notice existed at the time of writing. ## Related - [[Lower Costs Now]] · [[United Futures PAC]] · [[New Path PAC]] · [[Waterfront Strategies]] - [[PO Box 15845 DC Three Committee Cluster October 2026]] · [[Kansas Senate Outside Money 2026]] - [[IA-Sen-2026]] · [[KS-Sen-2026]] · [[Josh Turek]] · [[Adam Hamilton]] · [[Roger Marshall]] - [[Independent Expenditure]] · [[Super PACs]] · [[Dark Money]]