Trump steps up campaign spending in final stretch

Donald Trump finally ramped up his campaign spending in September after more than a year of living largely off social media and cable TV. 

The GOP presidential nominee raised $54.7 million and spent more than $70 million through the month of September — a vast increase on any previous month. He began October with $34.8 million in the bank.

{mosads}Trump crushed his previous best fundraising month, which was $41.8 million raised and $29.9 million spent in August.

Much of Trump’s September spending went to television advertising. That’s a big change for a social media-obsessed candidate who hasn’t believed until recently that he even needed to buy TV ads. 

Trump’s campaign also gave a sizable sum to a data firm owned by Trump’s most influential donors: New York hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah.

Trump is still running a much leaner staff than Clinton, with fewer than 200 people on his payroll compared to more than 750 on hers as of last month. 

Through his extraordinary primary campaign, Trump avoided spending money on paid advertising, believing his charisma, cable news dominance and near total name recognition would allow him to win without spending close to what a normal candidate would.

The September fundraising report reveals that Trump has recently come up against the limits of that free media strategy. 

Having the airwaves virtually to themselves, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the well-funded super PAC Priorities USA have been hammering Trump’s character and temperament in one brutal ad after another in more than half a dozen battleground states.

Of the $70 million Trump’s campaign spent over September, more than $20 million went to placed media, mostly TV, and about the same went to digital advertising and online consulting. 

Trump’s campaign also paid $5 million to the Mercers’ data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. The firm, which does psychographic profiles of the electorate, was used by the Ted Cruz campaign during the Republican primaries. In both situations, the Mercers wired millions of dollars to super PACs initially supporting Cruz; when Cruz quit the race, they became full-throated Trump backers. 

Since the Mercers joined his fold, Trump has not only hired their data firm, he’s also installed at the highest level of his campaign three people close to the Mercers: His campaign CEO, former Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon; his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway; and David Bossie as deputy campaign manager. 

In September, Trump’s campaign spent $1.7 million on polling. That’s another huge departure from the early stages of Trump’s campaign, when he proudly relied on public polling, which he talked of frequently in rallies and on Twitter.

Trump also paid out the last of the severance package owed to former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who signed on as a CNN commentator after Trump replaced him several months ago. Lewandowski has faced conflict of interest questions for the payments but has insisted they are for severance and that he’s doing no work whatsoever for Trump. He received $100,000 from the Trump campaign in September.

Trump is still spending significant amounts at Trump-owned companies and facilities. 

In September he spent $760,000 on his private airline, Tag Air, and about $230,000 at other Trump properties. That included more than $180,000 for campaign HQ office space at Trump Tower, Manhattan, and tens of thousands in expenses at Trump International hotels in Chicago and Las Vegas and at Trump restaurants and his golf club in Charlotte, N.C. 

The GOP nominee contributed a further $2 million of his own money in September, bringing his total personal campaign donations to just over $56 million. He’s still well-shy of the $100 million he said he’d put into his campaign by Election Day.