About $8 million has been spent on the 13th Congressional District race, according to recent Federal Election Commission reports, making it one of the most highly funded House races.

As of the most recent Federal Election Commission report released Oct. 17, Republican Rodney Davis received more than $1 million and spending more than $840,000. Democratic candidate David Gill also received more than $1 million and spent more than $930,000, while independent candidate John Hartman spent about $8,000 after receiving just about $8,000. Gill had about $118,000 in available funds, Davis had about $272,000 in available funds and Hartman was about $870 in debt.

Aside from the funds candidates collected and spent, independent entities also promoted candidates with their own finances. About $7 million was spent independently in this race.  

Super PACs are one of the outside groups that account for much of the spending on campaign ads. Super PACs are expenditure-only committees that promote candidates independently. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has given $2.76 million for advertisements opposing Davis. The American Action Network Inc. has spent about $1.48 million on advertisements opposing Gill.

Independent spending greatly increased during the month of October. As of Thursday, $5.1 million had been spent independently on this race as compared to $1.8 million spent prior to Oct. 1.

At a debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters on Thursday, the candidates expressed their disapproval of the amount of money spent during the campaign, especially on negative and slanderous advertisements created by outside groups.

“I’ve been lied about,” Gill said. “Negative (or) positive is one thing, (but) false (or) true is another.”

Such lies, Gill said, claimed that he is against Medicare when he said he is not and that he will raise taxes while in reality he said he does not plan to do so.

Davis said he was also affected by the advertisements that ran throughout the campaign.

“The first ad that was done in this race was a web ad that was completely negative done by Mr. Gill against me,” Davis said. “This started a path, unfortunately, of us having to respond to those accusations, and you’ve seen the outside money come in from both sides to where sometimes we feel like pawns on the chessboard of the Washington Democrats and Republicans.”

While Davis said these ads run by third party sources have caused him to spend more to fight false accusations, he also said spending money on advertising does not have to be negative.

“We began running an ad showing me coaching my JFL (Junior Football League) football team talking about our national debt of $16 trillion,” he said. “It’s running again right now because it’s such an important issue.”

Corrie Proksa, president of the League of Women Voters of Champaign County, said even when money is spent on positive advertising, it should not be necessary.

“You see so many advertisements that at one point it starts to sink in even if you’re trying to block it out,” Proska said.

Chrissy can be reached at [email protected].