Charlotte Observer totals the numbers and speculates that —at over $100 million — the Kay Hagan -Thom Tillis Senate campaign will be the most expensive in history.

But Carolina Journal takes a different approach:

While a Charlotte Observer analysis shows that total spending in the race, including that from independent groups, is expected to top out at around $103 million, that’s actually less in inflation-adjusted expenditures per registered voter than has been spent in the two most expensive U.S. Senate races in North Carolina.

At $103 million in candidate plus independent spending, the 2014 contest comes in at $15.56 per registered voter in inflation-adjusted dollars — or third place overall.

The top spending U.S. Senate race in North Carolina was in 1984, when incumbent GOP Sen. Jesse Helms defeated then Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt. That year, the two spent $20.14 per registered voter in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The next two highest per-voter spending races also had Helms’ name on the ballot. In 1990, Helms and Democrat Harvey Gantt spent $16.11 per registered voter in 2014 dollars. In 1978, Helms and Democrat John Ingram spent $14.69 per registered voter in 2014 dollars.

As for the morality of spending such money on campaigns to become one of the most 100 powerful people in country —if not the world — we have two different views there, too. As you can probably imagine, the N&R’s doug Clark says spending $100 million on a Senate campaign is —gasp —-obscene:

The amount of money spent is appalling. The wealthy individuals and special-interest groups that are bankrolling it — many of them not publicly disclosed — must have a very perverse value system. I can think of better things to do with disposable income in a state where one person in five lives in poverty. When charities need funds to provide food, clothing, medicine, housing, transportation and other basics for the poor; when deserving students can’t afford college tuition; when the sick go without health care, it’s grossly disturbing to literally watch $100 million spent on a political campaign.

As you can probably also imagine, JLF president John Hood has a different view:

It’s not fashionable to say this, but advertising makes truly competitive politics possible. Challengers, in particular, would have a hard time overcoming the inherent advantages of incumbency — such as frequent media coverage, name recognition, and the use of governmental resources for what amounts to campaigning — if they and their allies were unable to raise and spend money freely to communicate with voters.

Clark’s solution for a better world would be “each candidate would choose a number of charities and ask his or her supporters to give their money to them,” and then “voters could let the amount of good done by each campaign guide their selection.”

Guess Clark doesn’t see that such a system would be putting “good” up for sale, never mind the fact that the definition of “good” has been so skewed in this country for so long, not to mention the definition of freedom, which in my mind means that it’s your money and you spend it as you see fit.