The people acting like you can't buy elections in this thread are being very disingenuous. There's tons of examples on the Republican side, but just to deflect the inevitable "partisan hack blah blah" response, I'll give another example. Just look at Tom Wolf, who went from a nobody polling at 1% to completely demolishing a field of Democrats in the primary then unseating the incumbent governor. This wouldn't have been possible without his ability to self fund.
While money helped him in the primary, it didn't matter in the general. John Edwards would have defeated Corbett.
