Outside Groups Have Aimed $1.8 Million at Victoria Spartz. She Just Loaned Her Campaign $450,000.

Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., in her official portrait for the 117th Congress. Photo by the House Creative Committee, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Her campaign says Victoria Spartz is "proud to be a thorn in the side" of liberal insiders. This fall the thorn is paying for part of its own defense.

The Republican congresswoman from Indiana's 5th District loaned her campaign $450,000, according to her October quarterly report to the Federal Election Commission, which IndyStar first reported Thursday. The same round of filings shows her Democratic challenger, state Sen. J.D. Ford, out-raising her from donors and political committees by better than two to one over the summer quarter: $667,369.72 for "Neighbors to Elect JD Ford" against $291,436.31 for "Victoria Spartz for Congress," WTHR reported Friday.

The Spartz camp doesn't pretend the loan is routine. Spokesman Dan Hazelwood told WTHR the congresswoman "needed to fight back against a San Francisco billionaire who is spending $2 million to defeat her because she refuses to be a rubber stamp for corrupt corporations that want tax breaks for themselves and their data centers."

It is not the first time she has bankrolled herself. Earlier in the cycle the campaign paid back $525,000 in loans Spartz had made to it, FEC records show. With the new loan counted, her campaign had about $854,000 in the bank on Sept. 30, according to a PaidForPolitics tally of FEC data.

Follow the outside money

Through Oct. 15, outside groups had reported $1,896,889 in independent spending in the 5th District race, nearly all of it in the general election and aimed at Spartz, according to the PaidForPolitics count. Three groups account for the anti-Spartz money:

• Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC, a clean-energy super PAC: about $1.3 million against her so far.

• Commonsense Hoosiers PAC, a super PAC: about $415,000 in TV, digital and mail against her.

• Hoosier State Values PAC, a hybrid PAC: about $168,000, mostly against Spartz, with roughly $29,000 in mail promoting Ford.

  
  

Those reports show who spent the money, not necessarily who gave it. For the biggest player, the giver is no secret. Crypto billionaire Chris Larsen supplied $6 million of the roughly $7 million Invest in Tomorrow had raised through Aug. 31, WIRED reported, citing FEC records, and the group is run by a team of New York City political operatives. It has pledged $15 million to defeat seven Republicans nationwide, Spartz among them.

Its chairman, Tom Matzzie, was blunt about the motive in a news release about the group's targets: "[N]o matter how safe you think your seat is, if you politicize our industry we will come for you and we will win," IndyStar reported when the $2 million Spartz campaign launched Oct. 6. The three incumbents on its list all voted last year to end Biden-era renewable energy tax credits, Canary Media noted.

A solar PAC that isn't talking about solar

Here is the part 5th District voters may not hear on TV. The group says it is punishing Spartz over energy, yet its ads skip energy entirely, Canary Media reported. One spot, "Receipts," hits her votes against extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies and for the Medicaid changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, claiming "Insurance and pharma PACs sent Victoria Spartz over $185,000." IndyStar pointed out that she voted with most of her party on both. Only two Republicans opposed the OBBBA, and 17 voted to extend the subsidies.

The other, "Corruption," attacks her over millions of dollars in stock trades, the same charge Ford's campaign has pressed for weeks. Spartz has said the trades were her husband's and that she has never "personally owned − much less traded − any individual stocks," according to IndyStar. Ford's campaign calls that explanation "an insult to voters." On the outside-money side, that he-said, she-said fight is being paid for largely by a donor who lives nowhere near Hamilton or Madison County.

How worried should Republicans be?

On paper, this is still a Republican seat. Spartz won her last race by 18 points, WTHR noted, and the Cook Political Report only moved the district from "Solid" to "Likely Republican" this month, citing private polling and what its analysts called "base problems back home." Her May primary was a warning sign of its own: Scott King took 40% of the vote without raising enough money to file an FEC report.

The statewide mood hasn't helped. A Free Press Indiana poll of 839 likely voters, taken Oct. 8-11, found 45% would back a generic Democrat for Congress and 44% a generic Republican, with independents leaning Democratic nearly two to one. Government corruption topped voters' list of concerns at 24%, ahead of inflation and the cost of living at 20%. That ranking explains why both candidates keep using the word.

"When the money starts flowing somewhere, you don't have to ask them what they're seeing in their internal polls. You can tell," political scientist Aaron Dusso told WTHR. Asked for a prediction, he said he'd "chicken out and go with the status quo" while calling the race a toss-up.

The Spartz campaign insists "our polling shows Spartz winning." After the Cook downgrade, though, it conceded the "race cannot be taken for granted" in "an R+8 district becoming more purple." The district covers Delaware, Grant, Hamilton, Howard, Madison and Tipton counties, and Election Day is Nov. 3.

A $450,000 loan from a candidate whose campaign already paid her back $525,000 this cycle is its own kind of internal poll. So is a West Coast billionaire deciding a central Indiana House seat is worth seven figures. Hoosiers can judge both.

Written by Hoosiers for Hoosiers.