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.

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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.