A surprise Democratic donor has emerged as a financier of a late effort to help the party deliver upsets in four red-state Senate seats.
Steve Pajcic, a lawyer and philanthropist in Florida, and his children are spending at least $7 million for a blitz of ads in Florida, Kansas, Mississippi and South Carolina, a quartet of Senate seats in traditionally Republican territory. Mr. Pajcic, a co-founder of the personal-injury law firm Pajcic & Pajcic, is behind a new group called New Deal for All that was formed in the beginning of October and started to air ads Tuesday in Kansas and South Carolina.
The group will soon expand to Florida, where it plans to spend most of its money, and Mississippi. The injection of even a modest amount of cash shows the optimism among Democrats about winning Senate seats that were thought beyond their reach as recently as last year.
“Democrats have been way too timid and modest in their expectations in the past,” Mr. Pajcic, 80, told The New York Times. “There’s a real chance for something big happening with this election, and I’m kind of old. So why not see if you can if there’s anything you can do to help?”
Mr. Pajcic has never donated at this scale before. He contributed $147,000 to a Democratic Senate super PAC in 2024, but he said he did not want to simply hand over $7 million — the most he has ever donated, he said — to outside groups.
“If I’m going to put this much into it, I want to make sure it’s effective and doing what I want it to do,” he said.
He said that he named his super PAC New Deal for All because he wanted to see Democrats win as many as 56 Senate seats and usher in a historic movement “comparable to the changes we had with the New Deal.”
National Democrats in recent weeks have begun shifting more of their resources to these red states, particularly Kansas. But they are still spending relatively little in Florida — one of the country’s most expensive states to campaign in — as well as South Carolina and Mississippi.
“We were looking for places where we might make a difference with a little bit of money with some creative and informative ads,” Mr. Pajcic said.
One new spot in South Carolina targets the Republican candidate, Senator Darline Graham, who was appointed to the seat after her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, died this summer. The ad labels her as “Data Center Darline” and features a quote from her primary runoff debate in which she declared, “I’m not that informed on national security.”
Mr. Pajcic has been involved in politics for decades. He served in the Florida Legislature in the 1970s and ’80s and was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1986. He lost to the Republican, Bob Martinez.
His political connections extend to former President Barack Obama. He raised money for Mr. Obama’s campaigns, and Mr. Obama — while president — even served as a groomsman in his daughter’s wedding in 2017 to one of Mr. Obama’s closest friends, Marvin Nicholson.
“He was very unassuming at the wedding,” Mr. Pajcic said.
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