Rick Scott personally gave $64 million to a Senate race he almost didn't win

It took $82 million for Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to just barely unseat incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in 2018's midterm elections.

But most of those millions didn't come from eager donors. They came from Scott's own pockets, Federal Election Commission filings released Thursday show.

Scott gave $63.5 million of his own money to his 2018 Senate run, FEC filings reveal. Donors racked up less than a third of that, donating $18 million total. Political Action Committees gave a little less than $2 million to Scott as well. That meant Scott had $82.5 million at his disposal, but still found it necessary to baselessly claim voter fraud had tainted the race before he eked out a win weeks after voters went to the polls.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On the other side of the aisle, FEC filings show Nelson didn't spend any of his own money, and raised about $23 million from individual donors as of Oct. 17. He lost by 10,000 votes, or .2 percent of the vote, after a recount, per The New York Times.

For context, Rep. Beto O'Rourke's (D-Texas) run for Senate broke records when it raised $70 million from individual donors as of Oct. 17, CNN's David Wright points out. The final fundraising totals for O'Rourke's and Nelson's losing campaigns aren't public yet.