Politics

Ager has 5X more cash, although Balkcom gains from Trump’s MAGA

By Bill Moss, Published: October 22, 2026

Democrat Jamie Ager holds a substantial lead over Republican nominee Jennifer Capps Balkcom in cash on hand as the closely watched 11th Congressional District campaign entered the stretch drive to Election Day, Federal Election Commission reports showed.

Third-quarter reports showed that Ager had received $5,401,765, spent $3,760,602 and ended the quarter with $1,641,163 cash on hand, five times more than Balkcom.

Balkcom, the second-term state House District 117 incumbent who got a battlefield promotion as the congressional nominee after incumbent Chuck Edwards dropped his re-election bid, raised $355,134, spent $60,049 and maintained $295,085 in cash. Balkcom’s campaign receipts included a transfer of $42,190 from an authorized committee not yet identified in FEC records. Although Balkcom’s state House campaign had roughly $68,000 cash on hand when she was nominated for Congress, federal law prohibits transfers of campaign money from state to federal races.

But as the Asheville Watchdog pointed out last week, fundraising totals reported to the FEC don't tell the full story of campaign finance in practice.

Just days after Balkcom was appointed as the GOP’s nominee in the 11th Congressional District, “money from the No Going Back fund poured into WLOS’s ad logbook,” the Watchdog’s Tom Fiedler reported. “Between Sept. 10 and Election Day, Nov. 3, the PAC will spend $2,263,300 on WLOS ads attacking Ager. It effectively gifted her 796 television ‘spots’ she otherwise couldn’t get.”

The No Going Back Super PAC is a branch of MAGA Inc., Trump’s midterm-election fund. The Trump spigot helped Balkcom close the funding gap with Ager, who has had strong fundraising for more than a year.

Since Balkcom entered the campaign, Fiedler reports, Ager has spent $1,505,540 for ads on WLOS to fully fund the closing stretch, booking 998 spots through Election Day.

Ager, too, benefits from outside money, receiving cash from such liberal-leaning PACs as the Save Democracy Fund, The Bench and the House Majority PAC.

Recent reports have shown that both MAGA Inc. and Elon Musk have committed hundreds of millions to boost Republican candidates in toss-up races for the House and Senate. Musk’s America PAC committed $276 million to the cause, including $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund.

While Ager’s FEC report showed 7,624 donations, Balkcom’s filing contained no details on donations or expenditures as of Friday, the day after the Oct. 15 deadline for campaign finance report filing. That could be because numbers had not yet been processed by FEC and reported by the federal agency and watchdogs such as opensecrets.org.