Fundraising for elections has been steadily increasing, reaching unprecedented levels in 2020. This year, the numbers are skyrocketing in a previously low-stakes arena: elections for secretary of state.
According to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, false claims about the 2020 presidential election are driving the exponential rise, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him.
The report focuses primarily on six battleground states with secretary of state races this year: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin, although it also covers a handful of additional states where the candidates include election deniers. The vast increase in funding has been directed to both election deniers and their opponents.
The Brennan Center identified 12 election-denying candidates, and 10 others who have taken a stance against such claims, running for statewide office across the six battleground states. Funding for these races now exceeds $16 million — more than double the amount raised at a similar point in the 2018 elections.
Of this amount, about $7.3 million has gone to election denial candidates, while $8.1 million has been raised by their opponents, many of whom are incumbents. Still, incumbency does not fully explain the difference as the six election denial opponents who are not incumbents have collectively raised $4 million.
Additionally, the report shows that election denialism is a primary driver in the fundraising for these contests. Fifteen candidates in these states who have not taken an outright stance on the 2020 election have together raised only $900,000.
The largest jump in funding was found in Nevada, where the $2.6 million raised in the secretary of state race is more than five times the amount raised in the previous few cycles. Democratic nominee Cisco Aguilar will face Republican Jim Marchant, who claims Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election, in November.
In Colorado, Republican candidate Tina Peters lost the primary for secretary of state. “We didn’t lose, we just found evidence of more fraud,” she said, “they’re cheating and we’ll prove it once again.”
Meanwhile, funding for secretary of state candidates in Wisconsin usually does not begin in earnest until closer to the November election. However, the $218,000 that has been raised so far, mostly by state Rep. Amy Loudenbeck (R), is almost 12 times the amount raised by June 30 in 2018. Loudenbeck won the GOP nomination over Jay Schroeder, who has openly claimed that the 2020 election was rigged. (Currently, the secretary of state does not oversee elections in Wisconsin, although Republicans want to pull authority away from the state’s bipartisan elections commission.)
Some of this increase can be attributed to out-of-state fundraising, which has increased dramatically. In Arizona, where total funding for secretary of state races has increased by 50 percent, out-of-state funding has increased by nearly 400 percent.
Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, ran an ad claiming credit for the Trump-requested Cyber Ninja audit of the Arizona 2020 election. He also said in June, “Ain’t gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy. I’m going to demand a 100 percent hand count if there’s the slightest hint that there’s an impropriety.”
The report also spotlights the specific donors who have supported election denial candidates across the country, though much of the money remains anonymous due to an exception in the campaign finance laws that allow for “ dark money. ”
One acknowledged donor is former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. He has spent millions on “election integrity” efforts such as the Cyber Ninja audit. He was also at a 2020 meeting in the Oval Office during which participants discussed the possibility of the military seizing voting machines. The committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2001, insurrection has been looking into that meeting.
Michael Rydin, a Texas construction software company CEO, and packing supplies magnate Richard Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, were also named in the report as major donors to election-denying candidates and organizations. All four donors never before donated to secretary of state races.
Also contributing to election denial candidates are Trump-affiliated political action committees. These include his own Save America PAC, which has donated to such candidates in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and the Make America Great Again super PAC. State-level political action committees, such as several in Georgia that boosted the Senate campaign of David Perdue, are also major fundraisers.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.