COLORADO, USA — The political action committee affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer financed the $4 million ad campaign designed to boost state Rep. Ron Hanks in last month's Republican primary for Colorado's U.S. Senate seat, campaign finance records filed late Wednesday show.
Hanks lost the primary by about 9 percentage points to first-time candidate Joe O'Dea, the wealthy owner of a Denver-based construction company, who faces U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in November.
RELATED: O'Dea wins GOP primary for US Senate
Democratic Colorado, the entity formed in early June that flooded Colorado's airwaves with TV ads calling Hanks "too conservative" for the state, revealed in a Federal Election Commission report that Senate Majority PAC, its sole donor, contributed $4,073,074 in 10 transactions in June. The new committee dissolved after returning the roughly $3,000 left in its account to Senate Majority PAC, known as SMP, on July 1, three days after the Colorado primary.
Even though primary voters didn't nominate Hanks, a candidate perceived as a substantially weaker Bennet opponent, the president of SMP declared that its spending had been a success.
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