Brown was targeted with a multi-million-dollar onslaught of ads sponsored by outside groups, many linked to Republicans and business interests such as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads. They said Brown’s positions were too liberal and hurt Ohio, while Brown countered that he stood up for the middle class and against oil companies and Wall Street.

“I think without a doubt we were” the biggest in terms of money spent against a Senate candidate, said Barasky, who now works for the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. If it could all be tracked and its value assessed, Barasky said late last week, the money spent by outside groups against Brown would add up to around $40 million, not $24 million.

Barasky could be right. The problem is that no one knows, because some of the expenditures cannot be tracked or counted, especially by people not plugged in day by day during the campaign. The Center for Responsive Politics and another respected watchdog that tries to follow the money, the Sunlight Foundation, acknowledge this. Sunlight has a lower figure for the outside spending, too.