Democratic donors step up efforts on Senate, Clinton bids
Yet few of the GOP's biggest donors have put major money into Trump efforts, a striking change from four years ago when Mitt Romney had more million-dollar donors on his side than did President Barack Obama.
The presidential candidates and many outside groups detailed their July fundraising and spending to the Federal Election Commission on Saturday.
Super political action committees face no restrictions on how much money they can take from individual, corporate and union donors.
Liberals have decried these groups as bad for democracy — yet they've leaned on them to help win races, saying they don't want to disarm against Republicans.
In July alone, New York hedge fund billionaire George Soros gave $1.5 million to Planned Parenthood's super PAC and $35,000 to Priorities USA, both working to elect Clinton, as well as $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC.
Soros's latest contributions bring his 2015-2016 super PAC total to more than $14 million — a fivefold increase from his super PAC investments during the previous presidential election.
On the Republican side, the Freedom Partners Action Fund is typically among the biggest groups spending in Senate races.
Freedom Partners is one of many political and policy groups steered by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who are uncomfortable with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and have decided to concentrate on down-ballot races.
The contributions of those two men accounted for about 80 percent of the super PAC's July fundraising — a sign that the numerous GOP donors on the sidelines in the presidential campaign aren't all moving their money down ballot, as some had predicted.
A pro-Trump group called Great America PAC landed its biggest contribution yet in July, $100,000 from billionaire Charles Johnson, a backer of vanquished GOP Trump opponent Jeb Bush and owner of the San Francisco Giants.
Not only is he a super PAC donor, but he also funds Breitbart News, whose leader Stephen Bannon became the campaign's chief executive officer this week, and Cambridge Analytica, a data company now doing business with the campaign.