Julie Bykowicz for AP:
Recent polls show Trump well ahead of home-state senator Marco Rubio in Florida, one of five states holding presidential primaries on Tuesday. Indeed, the group spending the most to take out Trump in Florida is Rubio’s super PAC, Conservative Solutions.
Across the country, Rubio has benefited from $64 million in spending by Conservative Solutions and a companion nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors. He’s won just three of 27 primary contests.
Rubio’s failure to launch follows that of fellow Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Perry, who also couldn’t leverage millions of dollars in super PAC help. Carly Fiorina ran her entire presidential bid on the back of a $12 million super PAC, but she, too, sputtered out.
Such efforts account for the bulk of the nearly $300 million in outside spending that the AP tallied by reviewing Federal Election Commission reports and ad buys tracked by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.
That’s with almost eight months to go. In the entire 2008 election, outside groups spent less than $40 million on federal politics.