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      The biggest losers in the US midterm elections? Republican mega-donors

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      The biggest losers in the US midterm elections? Republican mega-donorsDonors like Peter Thiel poured millions into candidates that no amount of money could sell to voters while Mehmet Oz self-funded a failed run With the power balance in Congress at stake in this year’s midterm elections, the GOP money machine kicked into high gear. Spending on advertisements and drumming up votes was fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars from the party’s mega-donors and Super Pacs. Many donors’ spending figures marked new records.Their return on investment, however, is probably not what they had hoped: some donors who spent eight figures notched zero wins in the Senate, while others spent far more money on losing candidates than winners. In the midterms, some of the biggest losers were Republican donors.‘Hatred has a great grip on the heart’: election denialism lives on in US battlegroundRead moreAmong the clearest of those losers is Mehmet Oz, who self-funded much of his own failed run for office – loaning his Pennsylvania US Senate campaign about $22m, or about 55% of the roughly $40m he raised.Meanwhile, candidates backed by Peter Thiel, the rightwing tech investor hyped pre-election as a new GOP “kingmaker”, lost in Arizona and Washington, calling into question his judgment and contributions’ value.Other mega-donors and Pacs came out behind despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars collectively on multiple candidates who lost, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog, and federal campaign records. Among those is Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund Super Pac, which spent $239m; the billionaire financier Jeff Yass, who spent $47m; the hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who spent $67m; the packaging giants Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein, who spent $77m; and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who spent $34m.By contrast, Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races generally had a larger share of small donations. GOP mega-donor and Super Pac money couldn’t overcome weak candidates that many swing voters viewed as extreme.The results highlight that “candidate strength matters”, said Gunner Ramer, political director at Longwell Associates, a conservative communication firm. “Voters have real concerns over crime, inflation, gas prices and the economy … but all these really poor candidates – these crazy, extreme Republicans – got beat up hard.”In Pennsylvania, Oz’s self-funding functioned as a double-edged sword that benefited him in the primaries and made him attractive to GOP base voters “who still think that you can buy a race”, said Sam Chen, a political strategist in Allentown. But once in the general election, Chen said, it meant that Oz received relatively few small donors in part because he was viewed as a self-funder.Still, he wasn’t alone: McConnell’s Pac put up $47m. That combined with Oz’s personal spending accounted for nearly half of the stunning $140m Oz forces spent in the campaign. Two largely billionaire-funded single-candidate Pacs also went all in on Oz: Honor Pennsylvania spent about $15m, and its largest donor was Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, who gave it at least $8.8m; and American Leadership Action Pac, funded by Wall Street tycoons or mega-donors like Susquehanna International Group CEO Jeff Yass, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Actua CEO Walter Buckley, dropped another $15m.Though the outside spending in Pennsylvania set a new record, Oz was a “uniquely weak candidate”, Chen noted, and his failure highlights how wealth and Super PAC money “is not the end all be all”.“Small dollar donations, the grandma who writes you a $5 check, they are locked in and voting for you … and they are probably the type of person who tells their neighborhood, their soccer mom group, their bible study that they gave you contributions,” Chen said. “Those contributions mean a lot more.”In Arizona, Thiel spent at least $17.5m backing Blake Masters’ failed US Senate bid, while Thiel’s Pac, Saving Arizona, which received significant funding from mega-donor Richard Uihlein, spent at least $21.5m.Thiel’s potential to become a powerbroker was the subject of intense media attention in part because he funded a breed of rightwing populist GOP candidate that broke with the party establishment. Voters, however, were “completely repelled” by Masters, Ramer said, and though Thiel had success in primary races across the country, his money couldn’t overcome swing voter skepticism in the Arizona general election.McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund ended with a mixed record, but spent far more on losing races. Data released just ahead of the election by a marketing industry analyst found McConnell had shelled out $178m for advertising in five states – New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Ohio.Campaign finance records show the Senate Leadership Fund spent nearly $140m in four of those five states in which GOP candidates did not win, though Georgia is yet to be decided.The Club For Growth Super Pac, one of the nation’s most prolific outside spenders, also fared poorly. Its primary funders were Uihlein and Yass, who put at least $46m into the Pac. It backed Masters with over $7m and spent $15m in Nevada attempting to unseat Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto. It also spent $12m total on winning campaigns in Ohio and North Carolina.Meanwhile, the Sentinel Action Fund spent over $10m in Nevada and New Hampshire, and didn’t put any money in winning Senate races. Its primary funder is Tim Mellon, grandson of banking tycoon Andrew Mellon, who spent about $40m during the election cycle.Focus groups run by Longwell Associates found Pacs’ ads were probably ineffective because voters didn’t like the Trump-backed, extreme GOP candidates that the Pacs supported – such as Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Don Buldoc in New Hampshire or Masters.“You can hit Catherine Cortez Masto on gas prices and tie it to Joe Biden, but at least a meaningful slice of voters just were not buying it,” Ramer said. “At the end of the day, if they don’t like the Republican candidate, and it becomes a lesser-of-two-evils thing, then it may not move the votes the way that Club for Growth was hoping, and that is a reflection on Adam Laxalt.”Many of the mega-donors’ spending totals come with a caveat. They may not include all the donors’ contributions, and Pac records may omit spending by some individuals altogether. Pacs are required by law to disclose their donors, but more are shielding their contributors’ identities by exploiting a loophole that allows donors to give to a Pac’s affiliated dark money nonprofit, which does not have to disclose its donors. The nonprofit then gives those donations to the Pac, circumventing disclosure laws.Pacs only “have the facade of being transparent”, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of Open Secrets, adding that the loophole adds another layer of uncertainty to the nation’s already murky campaign finance disclosure laws.Regardless, the money means little to the GOP if the party continues nominating extremist and Trump-backed candidates in swing states, Ramer said. “The gap between what it takes to win in a Republican primary and what it takes to win in November is continuing to grow, and that is a difficulty the party will be dealing with in future elections.”Whether the funders will have a change of heart is another matter. Republican mega-donors “clearly have money to burn and they may lose, and they may be dissatisfied with their return on investment, but they are also clearly risk takers – and it’s a low risk to them because of how much money they have”, said Krumholz. “It shows the limits of their money.”TopicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US political financingUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US corporations gave more than $8m to election deniers’ midterm campaigns

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      US corporations gave more than $8m to election deniers’ midterm campaignsBrands such as the Home Depot and Boeing donated to candidates who falsely claimed that Trump won presidency in 2020 Some of the best-known corporations in the US, including AT&T, Boeing, Delta Air Lines and the Home Depot, collectively poured more than $8m into supporting election deniers running for US House and Senate seats in this month’s midterm elections.‘Extremists didn’t make it’: why Republicans flopped in once-red ArizonaRead moreA study by the non-partisan government watchdog organization Accountable.US, based on the latest filings to the Federal Election Commission, reveals the extent to which big corporations were prepared to back Republican nominees despite their open peddling of false claims undermining confidence in democracy. Though many were ultimately unsuccessful in their election bids, the candidates included several prominent advocates of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him.At the top of the list of 20 corporations backing election deniers through their political action committees (Pacs) is a familiar name in the world of rightwing agitating – Koch Industries. According to the Accountable.US review, the Koch energy conglomerate spent $771,000 through its Pac on Republican candidates with a track record of casting doubt on elections.Koch Industries is the second-largest privately owned company in the US. It is notorious for using its largely oil-related profits to push conservative politics in an anti-government, anti-regulatory direction under its owner brothers, Charles Koch and David Koch, the latter of whom died in 2019.Close behind Koch is the American Crystal Sugar Company Pac, which spent $630,000 supporting election deniers running for federal office; the AT&T Inc Employee Federal Pac, which contributed $579,000; and the Home Depot Inc Pac, which gave $578,000. Lower down on the list comes the media giant Comcast Corporation & NBC Universal Pac, which contributed $365,000; and the Delta Air Lines Pac, which gave $278,000.The $8m contributed by the top 20 corporations was just a slice of overall corporate giving to election deniers in the 2022 cycle. An earlier analysis by Accountable.US found that, in total, election deniers benefited to the tune of $65m from corporate interests.The new study suggests that top corporations that chose to use their financial muscle to enhance the chances of election deniers waged a non-too-successful gamble. The Washington Post has chronicled how 244 Republican election deniers ran for congressional seats in the midterms, and, of those, at least 81 were defeated.Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said that the fact that election deniers at both the federal and the state level struggled at the polls should make corporations reconsider their strategies. Backing candidates who advanced conspiracy theories harmful to democracy could damage their public reputations.“Voters’ rejection of numerous election objectors at the polls should send a clear message to corporations that prioritizing political influence over a healthy democracy could threaten their own bottom line,” Herrig said.The Guardian reached out to several of the top 20 corporate donors for their response. The Home Depot said that its associate-funded Pac supports candidates “on both sides of the aisle who champion pro-business, pro-retail positions that create jobs and economic growth”.AT&T and Delta did not immediately reply. The decision to support election-denier candidates stands in contrast with the strong public stance initially taken by several of the corporations in the wake of the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. Boeing released a statement days after the insurrection in which it said it “strongly condemns the violence, lawlessness and destruction that took place in the US Capitol”. In the 2022 cycle the Boeing Company Pac contributed $418,000 to support Republican candidates who had been vocal in forwarding lies questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election.Boeing declined to comment.Among the individual candidates whose bid for federal office was supported by top corporations was Derrick Van Orden, who won a close race to represent a swing district in Wisconsin with backing from Koch Industries. Van Orden, a former Navy Seal, was inside the Capitol grounds on January 6.Scott Perry received support from the Kochs, AT&T, Boeing and other corporations in his successful campaign to hold onto his House seat in Pennsylvania. Perry was deeply involved in attempts to block Biden’s victory in 2020, and in the weeks after January 6 sought a presidential pardon from Trump.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The fight for democracyUS political financingDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsKoch brothersAT&TnewsReuse this content More

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      The Envoy review: Gordon Sondland’s Trump tale fails to strike many sparks

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      The Envoy review: Gordon Sondland’s Trump tale fails to strike many sparks The ex-ambassador was caught up in the first impeachment, over approaches to Ukraine. He offers scattershot justificationGordon Sondland arrived late to Donald Trump’s party but still snagged an ambassador’s post.Maggie Haberman on Trump: ‘He’s become a Charles Foster Kane character’Read moreAccording to the Federal Elections Commission, Sondland, an Oregon hotelier, never donated to Trump’s candidacy. Rather, in 2015 he gave $25,000 to a political action committee aligned with Jeb Bush and $2,500 directly the former Florida governor’s campaign. After Bush dropped out of the Republican primary, Sondland cut checks to a host of candidates but stopped short of Trump.A spokesperson decried Trump’s beliefs and values but eventually ambition got the better of Sondland. With the 2016 election done, Sondland ponied up $1m to Trump’s inaugural committee via four limited-liability companies. Opacity mattered. Trump posted Sondland to Brussels, as US ambassador to the European Union.Fame found Sondland there – with a vengeance. He emerged as a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment, enmeshed with Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden in investigations of approaches to Ukraine for political dirt. After Trump’s Senate acquittal, the president and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, cut Sondland loose.Now comes Sondland’s attempt at image restoration. In his memoir, he criticises Trump and his family but tries to stay close to the fold. With the exception of Steve Bannon, no one has managed that. Then again, Bannon has continuously demonstrated his value to Trump.Sondland brands Trump as a “dick” and a narcissist and lashes into his psyche, calling him “a man with a fragile ego who wants more than anything to feed that ego the way an addict would feed a habit”.In the next breath, however, Sondland contends that Trump was “essentially right about many things, including how out of whack our relationship with Europe has become”.On matters diplomatic, Sondland also skips consideration of Trump’s abiding admiration for Vladimir Putin. Last February, the former president lavished praise on his Russian idol and derided Nato as “not so smart”. In September, Trump went full Tucker Carlson. At a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he contrasted Putin and Xi Jinping of China with Joe Biden, the man who kicked Trump out of the White House.“I’ve got to know a lot of the foreign leaders, and let me tell you, unlike our leader, they’re at the top of their game,” Trump said.Authoritarianism makes him swoon. Xi “rules with an iron fist, 1.5 billion people, yeah I’d say he’s smart”. From Sondland? Crickets, except to say that while in office, Trump “hated” Ukraine but hoped he would like Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Sondland tries to lay part of the blame for the war in Ukraine on Biden. No doubt, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was ugly. But Sondland expresses his belief that “the practical, no-nonsense approach pursued by Trump, which I also pursued while ambassador in Europe, could have kept Putin in check”.Jared Kushner also receives ambivalent treatment. Early on, Sondland heaps praise: “Jared is very smart, highly effective, and highly criticized because of envy.” He “quietly but effectively used his leverage in the family across the interagency writ large.” Few would dispute Kushner’s clout in the Trump White House.Later, though, Sondland says his relationship with Kushner “cooled” over impeachment. He points fingers: “In retrospect, Kushner likely knew that Pompeo was going to can me … maybe Kushner was the one to tell the president to get rid of me.”Sondland dumps on the libs, trashes the “deep state” and sings the praises of Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary. Hardcore Trumpers despise Mnuchin, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker they deride as a “globalist”. Just ask Bannon or Peter Navarro. Then again, Bannon has been sentenced for contempt of Congress and is under indictment for fraud and Navarro goes to trial in weeks. Like Bannon, he defied the 6 January committee.Sondland lauds the Abraham Accords; calls David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, a “stud”; but stays mum over Charlottesville and Trump’s compliments for neo-Nazis. White supremacists and Kanye West have a home in the Republican party. The party of Lincoln is no more.At times, Sondland’s praise is unalloyed. He voices his respect and admiration for Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted US ambassador to Ukraine; William Taylor, her deputy; and Kurt Volker, the former ambassador to Nato who became Trump’s troubleshooter on Ukraine and Crimea.There is also unstinting criticism of Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene.“They’re sycophants who built careers on dissembling and playing roles that aren’t authentic,” Sondland opines. Unmentioned is that those four reflect the Republican base and its anger far better than Sondland.He also has jabs for the Ukraine whistleblower, Alexander Vindman, and two former Trump advisers, Fiona Hill and John Bolton. In her impeachment testimony, Hill said Bolton, then national security adviser, described Sondland helping to “cook up” a “drug deal” on Ukraine. Sondland’s disdain is understandable.Pompeo also earns rebuke. According to Sondland, the secretary of state reneged on a promise to reimburse him for impeachment legal fees. In May 2021, Sondland commenced a lawsuit in US district court, seeking to recover $1.8m from Pompeo and the government. Pompeo was dropped as a defendant on jurisdictional grounds, the case transferred. Discovery will run into May next year, Pompeo a possible witness.In the here and now, Sondland could have used a sharper proofreader. He writes that Mitt Romney lost the 2011 presidential election and that Trump assumed office in January 2016. The dates are 2012 and 2017, respectively.The book concludes with this admission: “I’m a touch arrogant, a bit showy, and yes, I like attention.”
      The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World is published in the US by Post Hill Press
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump impeachment (2019)US politicsUS foreign policyTrump administrationUkrainereviewsReuse this content More

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      Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy

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      AnalysisPeter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracyAndrew Gumbel in Los AngelesRe-energized this election cycle, the tech entrepreneur joins other mega-donors apparently out to undercut the political system Peter Thiel is far from the first billionaire who has wielded his fortune to try to influence the course of American politics. But in an election year when democracy itself is said to be on the ballot, he stands out for assailing a longstanding governing system that he has described as “deranged” and in urgent need of “course correction”.The German-born investor and tech entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley “disrupter” who helped found PayPal alongside Elon Musk and made his fortune as one of the earliest investors in Facebook, has catapulted himself into the top ranks of the mega-donor class by pouring close to $30m into this year’s midterm elections.Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every levelRead moreHe’s not merely favoring one party over another, but is supporting candidates who deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president and have, in their different ways, called for the pillars of the American establishment to be toppled entirely.Thiel’s priorities this midterm cycle have partly aligned with those of Donald Trump, with whom he has had an on-again, off-again relationship since writing him a $1.25m check during the 2016 presidential campaign.Thiel, like Trump, has made it his business to end the careers of what he calls “the traitorous 10”, Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Four of these members opted not to run for re-election at all, and four more, including Liz Cheney, the vice-chair of the House committee investigating January 6, went down in the primaries.But there are also signs that Thiel is thinking around and beyond the former president. The lion’s share of his largesse – $28m and counting – has been directed towards two business proteges who, with his help, have established themselves as gadfly rightwing darlings: JD Vance, the best-selling author of the blue-collar memoir Hillbilly Elegy, who is running for Senate in Ohio, and Blake Masters, a self-styled “anti-progressive” and anti-globalist who is running for Senate in Arizona.Over the past decade, ever since the supreme court dramatically loosened the rules of political campaign giving in its Citizens United decision, Thiel has placed sizable bets on candidates who are not only conservative but have sought to challenge longstanding institutional traditions and break the Republican party’s own norms: Senator Ted Cruz in Texas and Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri as well as Trump himself.Masters, who has campaigned on the notion that “psychopaths are running the country right now” and spoken approvingly of the anti-establishment philosophy of the 1990s Unabomber, and Vance, a frequent speaker on the university circuit during his book tour days who now says “universities are the enemy”, fit the same mould. They and Thiel all have ties to a branch of the New Right known as NatCon, whose adherents believe, broadly, that the establishment needs to be torn down, much as Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley disrupters believed two decades ago that the future lay in destroying longstanding business models and practices.Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed “little hope that voting will make things better”. While a member of Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016, he flashed his institution-busting instincts by proposing that a leading climate change skeptic, William Happer, be appointed as White House science adviser. He also pushed for a libertarian bitcoin entrepreneur who did not believe in drug trials to head up the Food and Drug Administration.Conservatives could soon be swiping right on Peter Thiel-backed dating appRead moreSuch proposals were too much even by Trump’s iconoclastic standards. Steve Bannon, Trump’s ultra-right campaign manager and political strategist, told a Thiel biographer: “Peter’s idea of disrupting government is out there.”Thiel did not respond to a request for an interview, and his representatives did not respond to multiple invitations to comment.Masters and Vance also did not respond to inquiries.Democracy under attack: the mega-donorsThiel sat out the 2020 election but appears to have been re-energized by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump’s claims of a stolen presidential election and the January 6 insurrection. Addressing a NatCon convention this time last year, he denounced the “incredible derangement of various forms of thought, political life, scientific life and the sense-making machinery generally in this country”.Liberal democracy, in his view, had turned the United States government into a dissent-squashing Ministry of Truth working toward a “homogenizing, brain-dead, one-world state” – a problem to which only rightwing nationalism could provide an “all-important corrective”.“We’re close to a Toto moment, a little dog pulling aside the curtain on the holy of holies only to find there’s nobody there,” he told the crowd. “We always think of democracy as a good thing. But … where do you shift from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds? When does it become a mob, a racket, a totalitarian lie?”Such views might be easy to write off as the eccentricities of a wealthy man but for the money that Thiel has spent buying influence and supporting like-minded candidates – thanks in large part to a campaign financing system that, while still capping contributions to individual campaigns, allows unlimited funding of nominally outside groups and political action committees.Campaign finance experts see Thiel as a symptom of a much broader problem: a political environment in which a small group of mega-donors are growing ever bolder in the size of the checks they write and the erosion of any nominal firewall between the war chests run by candidates and the funds controlled by outside groups dedicated to their success.America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forces | Robert ReichRead more“It does seem to be getting worse,” said Chisun Lee, an expert on campaign finance who directs the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government program at New York University. “Outside spending in this federal midterm cycle is more than double the last midterm cycle. Since Citizens United, just 12 mega-donors, eight of them billionaires, have paid one dollar out of every 13 spent in federal elections. And now we’re seeing a troubling new trend … that some mega-donors are sponsoring campaigns that attack the fundamentals of democracy itself.”Thiel’s spending has been dwarfed this year by at least three other mega-donors – Soros ($128m to the Democrats), shipping products tycoon Richard Uihlein ($53m to Republicans) and hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin ($50m to Republicans). And Thiel has some way to go to match the consistent giving, cycle after cycle, of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate.Many experts also believe the attack on democracy began long before it became as explicit as Thiel has made it, because the whole point of funneling large amounts of money into the political system is to sway policy away from the will of the majority to the narrow interests of the donors and their friends.This ability to control the policy agenda drives spending even more than the desire to see specific candidates win, says the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, whose 2011 book Republic, Lost offers an enduringly devastating analysis of the relationship between money and political influence. And the spending is likely only to increase.“You’re going to see much, much bigger individual contributions and an acceleration of contributions to Super Pacs [like the ones established to support Vance and Masters],” Lessig said. “The candidates and the Super Pacs can’t coordinate on spending, but that doesn’t mean they can’t coordinate on the fundraising. Since the Super Pacs are outspending candidates by orders of magnitude, it’s all a dance to flush money into Super Pacs … They basically call the shots, and politicians can’t get anything through that they oppose.”Less than a month from election day, both Vance and Masters are trailing their Democratic opponents in the polls (Vance by less than Masters). But, Lessig says, it would be wrong to conclude Thiel – or any of the other mega-donors – are wasting their money.“If you’re a candidate and you know $10m is going to come in against you on a particular issue,” he said, “you are going to bend to avoid the effect of that money, whether or not it’s going to decide the race … If you’re someone who would otherwise be a strong climate activist, but you know that if you mention a carbon tax, a million dollars will drop from some anti-carbon tax Super Pac, you won’t talk about it.”Thiel’s bid to overthrow the system, in other words, goes well beyond his ability to determine which party controls the Senate next year. The money will solidify the notion that the country is being run by psychopaths, at least among a hard core of Republican voters, analysts warn, and will further harden the ideological battle lines that have split the country in two and made common ground ever harder to find. It also brings the extreme opinions of NatCon further into the mainstream, making it easier for radical Republican candidates to run and win in future races, they say.“We are at a crisis point here, not so much because the ideas are hard to defeat but we don’t have a context in which to defeat them,” Lessig said. “The fact that the same number of people believe the election was stolen as believed it on 6 January is a profound indictment of the information ecology in America.”The Brennan Center believes there are ways of improving the system, at least at the state and local level, and points to efforts in both red and blue states to close certain loopholes and introduce public financing models to rein in the influence of the mega-donors. Lee said she would also like to see federal legislation to build a meaningful firewall between campaign funds and Super Pacs.“The legislation exists,” she said, “and it would be a constitutional improvement even under [the] Citizens United [ruling]. All we need is the political will to act.”TopicsPeter ThielUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS political financinganalysisReuse this content More

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      ‘We’re positively BEGGING you’: how Republicans and Democrats demand money differently

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      ‘We’re positively BEGGING you’: how Republicans and Democrats demand money differently Meticulously crafted campaign emails and text messages, with a heavy dose of guilt-tripping, reveal their parties’ worldviews“Is your phone off, Patriot?”“Are you still a Republican?”“This is getting SAD!”“HOW MANY TIMES ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO ASK?”The midterm elections are approaching, and political messaging teams are hard at work overwhelming inboxes across America. And while Republicans and Democrats rely heavily on guilt trips to squeeze money out of voters, the language they employ is markedly different – and says a lot about what’s wrong with each of them.Princeton researchers reviewing more than 100,000 campaign emails from December 2019 to June 2020 found they rose from a peak of about 600 a day in December to twice that in June – and that didn’t include text messages.But, despite the annoying nature of the communications, they seem to work, perhaps because they are so meticulously crafted. Toby Fallsgraff, email director for the Obama 2012 campaign, explained to NPR how the campaign would test up to 18 versions of a message on certain subscribers before sending it out widely. Emails brought in roughly $500m for the campaign. A few years later, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign asked for money 50 different ways in one month.So what does all this linguistic fiddling say about the parties behind it? With just a few weeks before voting begins, the Guardian sorted through some of the most memorable messages of the 2022 campaign to shed light on the question.RepublicansFor the GOP, it’s all about unswerving loyalty to the party – and to the great overlord, the chosen one, he who alone can fix it. He is not running for office this year, but his party seems unaware.Text messages from the Republican National Committee dangle a wide range of perks: donate and you can be a part of the Trump Gold Club, the Trump Advisory Board (he undoubtedly takes direct calls from members), the Trump Free Speech Committee (I was flattered to receive an “EXECUTIVE INVITE” to this one), the 1 Million Trump Social Club, or the America First 100 Club. Failing that, you can become a Trump Social Media Founding Supporter or get on the Trump Life Membership List (the messages do not specify what it would mean to be a lifetime member of Trump). Gifs of the ex-president often adorn the bottom of emails.And if none of these clubs are for you, beware the RNC’s wrath. “Don’t you care?” asked a message on 30 June. “Our records show your Trump Advisory Board membership status is STILL PENDING ACTIVATION!”This was just one of many similar messages that arrived after a failure to donate. In February, I was threatened with “possible suspension” – from what, I’m not sure – if I didn’t provide my “$45 payment”. Then in April: “Patriot! YOU NEVER ANSWERED!” (Capitals theirs.)Later, things got passive-aggressive. “Do we need to talk, friend?” the party wondered. A few weeks after that, in May: “We’re not mad, we’re just asking. Why haven’t you pledged to follow Pres. Trump on Truth Social [his social media platform]?”All of these, it should be noted, were positively gentle compared with an apparently genuine message that made the rounds on Twitter and in the media a year ago, in line with New York Times reporting in April 2021 describing a “defector” list supposedly maintained by the GOP:These NRCC fundraising texts are getting intense pic.twitter.com/2Smm3NXCYy— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) October 14, 2021
      But it’s not all accusatory – the party employs flattery as well. In June, I learned that I was the party’s “BEST PATRIOT”, despite the delinquent behavior that had so recently forced it to reprimand me. The party’s forgiving nature was on display again in August, when my “strong support” – I had never once donated – “earned … a spot on the 2022 Republican Advisory Board”.Clearly, the party’s marketing team believes donors are motivated by accusations of insufficient loyalty. In a March email describing the invasion of Ukraine, the party said a poll had found most Democrats would flee the country if the US found itself in a similar position. “So we must ask: Would you fight for your country if it was under attack? Researchers need your response by midnight tonight. If you do not respond in time, we will assume you side with the Democrats who wouldn’t fight for America.”Those Democrats, of course, are framed as not just opponents but enemies of the people, as in this February message, when Ketanji Brown Jackson made her way to the supreme court:“HELP US! Biden’s Radical Supreme Court pick wants to TOTALLY TRAMPLE your right to:-1st Amnd-2nd Amnd-RIGHT TO LIFE.”I’ll admit, this text did leave me a little concerned about my right to 1st Amnd and wondering what, exactly, the “right to RIGHT TO LIFE” was – was Jackson planning to legalize homicide? Another message was similarly poetic, simply stating:“T Y R A N TB I D E N”Demands for loyalty might seem to contradict the Republicans’ supposed mantra of liberty above all, but George Lakoff, distinguished professor emeritus in cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, says it fits with the way he describes the conservative worldview.We operate according to the idea that the nation is a family, and on the right, that family is driven by a “strict father” who “knows right from wrong. What he says should be is always correct, and you should do what he says,” Lakoff says in a phone interview. “The Republican party is an authority-based system. It says, ‘This is how things should be and let’s make them that way.’”As for the clash between an authoritarian viewpoint and the party’s professed love of freedom, Lakoff says it’s simple: “There are two different views of freedom,” and on the right, freedom “means you are free to use whatever authority you have”.So perhaps it’s no surprise that so many Republican fundraising messages, short on nuance and written in simple language, sound like a parent chastising a wayward child, while others warn of encroaching enemies. The subtext: donate now – or you’re in deep trouble with Dad.DemocratsThe opposing party is equally inclined to hyperbole, though it often takes a very different tone – one of vulnerability and occasional self-flagellation. “We’re downright BEGGING you,” wailed the subject line from a late-September Democratic email. “Election day is 64 days away and we’re getting nervous,” warned a text early last month.It’s really upsetting to have to send multiple texts and emails every day: “This isn’t easy for me,” wrote Joe Biden in April. A few months later: “I hate to ask.” (If Republicans’ word choice was occasionally odd, Democrats made mistakes of their own – this particular message suggested I “take a moment to read this email, and then chip in $0 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee”, which I did.)Republicans’ emails weren’t entirely free from vulnerability in messages such as, “If we fall even a dollar short, we will lose the House to Pelosi FOREVER,” which would be pretty remarkable even for Pelosi, a known mortal. But such warnings were still underscored by a sense of menace, while Democrats seem content to appear pitiful: “we’re PLEADING”, “we might miss our goal”, “throwing in the towel”.When they’re not PLEADING, Democrats, in classic Democratic fashion, struggle to get their message out. While Republicans spit out brief, simple messages, Democrats offer subject lines like this from April: “I hope you’ll read this long email about how the DNC is bringing advanced data infrastructure to thousands of midterm campaigns this year, and then consider chipping in to support that work.” What red-blooded American could resist?Perhaps working more in the Democrats’ favor, the messages contain a sense of warmth: instead of “Patriot”, the recipient is “Friend”. The word “please” is abundant. And there’s a sense of community: “This is the time to fight for our country with everything we have”, “thinking of this team,” “You power the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”And in another feature that’s typical of the party more broadly, the Democrats have no trouble hauling out celebrities from Barbra Streisand to John Legend (all of whom seem to have a remarkably similar writing style). “Matthew, I’m sure that you weren’t expecting to hear from me today,” Martin Sheen texted me, accurately, a few days ago, along with a lovely picture of his own face.If Republican messaging aligns with Lakoff’s “strict father” worldview, Democrats’ touchy-feely messaging fits his description of the progressive mindset, which he calls “nurturant parent”. That’s the empathetic figure who “isn’t imposing on the child but rather wants to find out what you need”, Lakoff says. “For the Democratic party, democracy is based on empathy. Why would you have a democracy, you know? In order to help other people, to make sure everybody gets treated equally, that everybody gets what they need from the government.”The “begging” and “pleading”, then, seem to be based on the assumption recipients wish to do good; describing nervousness and sinking hearts appeals to empathy. And Barbra, John and Martin are all just part of the family.And what would a nurturing family be without guilt trips? Of course, Democratic guilting is more “have you forgotten the parents who worked so hard to raise you” than the Republicans’ “if you don’t cough up now, you’re dead to me”:Did I…date Nancy Pelosi and completely forget about it? pic.twitter.com/UVDSr7tCMq— Megan Collins (@ImMeganCollins) October 1, 2022
      As for the more complex language involved in Democratic messages, Lakoff says, “Democrats tend to assume what I call Cartesian rationality: that is that you should be able to reason things out. And they give you reasons for things and then it takes some reasoning to get there. The Republicans tend to just say, ‘This is how it is.’”Across the divideThough each party’s tone is very different, there’s plenty that looks just about the same – well beyond the red, white and blue formatting of each email.Along with weaponizing guilt, both parties make use of what might be described as trickery. The 2020 Princeton study found manipulative tactics in emails were widespread – including “devious” techniques such as formatting emails so they look like they’re part of actual conversations between you and a campaign. Many of the emails I received, seemingly from Democrats in particular, had subject lines that contained “re:”, even though I’d never written to them.Even more deceptively, I received Republican emails with subject lines such as “Your flight is CANCELED”, with no indication that they were political emails until you opened them – the sender was labeled as “urgent notice”. (In this case, it turned out the email was warning me that I was about to lose access to a proffered dinner with Donald Trump.)And while definitions of left and right can fluctuate, says Justin Gross, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, there’s one thing that clearly unites each party: “a distaste for what the other side is doing”. As the pollster and political strategist John Zogby put it in an email: “They both need to hear from me because the sky is falling.”That fear, Gross says, is “enormously motivating”. “When we feel that anxiety that’s kind of accumulated from a bunch of sources” – the rolling ball of political worries that seems to get bigger every day – “we feel like we don’t know what to do about it”, Gross says. When parties ask for donations, “it’s kind of a channeling of: well, at least you can do this.”TopicsUS politicsUS political financingDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      TikTok tightens policies around political issues in run-up to US midterms

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      TikTok tightens policies around political issues in run-up to US midtermsPoliticians will be banned from using social media platform for campaign fundraising Politicians on TikTok will no longer be able to use the app tipping tools, nor access advertising features on the social network, as the company tightens its policies around political issues in the run-up to the US midterm elections in six weeks’ time.Political advertising is already banned on the platform, alongside “harmful misinformation”, but as TikTok has grown over the past two years, new features such as gifting, tipping and ecommerce have been embraced by some politicians on the site.Now, new rules will again limit political players’ ability to use the app for anything other than organic activity, to “help ensure TikTok remains a fun, positive and joyful experience”, the company said.“TikTok has long prohibited political advertising, including both paid ads on the platform and creators being paid directly to make branded content,” it added. “We currently do that by prohibiting political content in an ad, and we’re also now applying restrictions at an account level. “This means accounts belonging to politicians and political parties will automatically have their access to advertising features turned off, which will help us more consistently enforce our existing policy.”Political accounts will be blocked from other monetisation features, and will also be removed from eligibility for the company’s “creator fund”, which distributes cash to some of the most successful video producers on the site. They will also be banned from using the platform for campaign fundraising, “such as a video from a politician asking for donations, or a political party directing people to a donation page on their website,” the service has said.“TikTok is first and foremost an entertainment platform, and we’re proud to be a place that brings people together over creative and entertaining content. By prohibiting campaign fundraising and limiting access to our monetisation features, we’re aiming to strike a balance between enabling people to discuss the issues that are relevant to their lives while also protecting the creative, entertaining platform that our community wants.”The rules are in contrast to those of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, both of which have long allowed political advertising and encouraged politicians to use their services for campaigning purposes. In August, Meta announced its own set of policy updates for the US midterm elections, and promised to devote “hundreds of people across more than 40 teams” to ensuring the safety and security of the elections.Meta will ban all new political, electoral and social issue adverts on both its platforms for the final weeks of the campaign, its head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said, and will remove adverts that encourage people not to vote, or call into question the legitimacy of the election. But the company won’t remove “organic” content that does the same.After years of being effectively unregulated, more and more countries are bringing online political advertising under the aegis of electoral authorities. On Monday, Google said it would begin a program that ensured that political emails never get sent to spam folders, after Republican congressional leaders accused it of partisan censorship and introduced legislation to try to ban the practice. “We expect to begin the pilot with a small number of campaigns from both parties and will test whether these changes improve the user experience, and provide more certainty for senders during this election period,” the company said in a statement.TopicsTikTokUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS political financingnewsReuse this content More

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      Billions in ‘dark money’ is influencing US politics. We need disclosure laws | David Sirota and Joel Warner

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      Billions in ‘dark money’ is influencing US politics. We need disclosure lawsDavid Sirota and Joel WarnerA donor secretly transferred $1.6bn to a Republican political group. Because of America’s lax laws, the donation was never disclosed in any public record or database This week, the Lever, ProPublica and the New York Times discovered the largest known political advocacy donation in American history. We exposed a reclusive billionaire’s secret transfer of $1.6bn to a political group controlled by the Republican operative Leonard Leo, who spearheaded the construction of a conservative supreme court supermajority to end abortion, block government regulations, stymie the fight against climate change and limit voting rights.This anonymous donation – which flowed to a tax-exempt trust that was never disclosed in any public record or database – was probably completely legal.Whether you support or abhor Leo’s crusade, we should be able to agree on one larger non-partisan principle: such enormous sums of money should not be able to influence elections, lawmakers, judicial nominations and public policy in secret. And we should not have to rely on a rare leak to learn basic campaign finance facts that should be freely available to anyone.Unfortunately, thanks to our outdated laws, those facts are now hidden behind anonymity, shell companies and shadowy political groups. America is long overdue for an overhaul of its political disclosure laws – and news organizations in particular should be leading the charge for reform.In the early 1970s, leaks and shoe-leather reporting by news organizations uncovered the Watergate scandal – the modern era’s foundational dark money exposé. That debacle birthed the original federal disclosure laws and a golden age of journalism. For a time, the new statutes allowed campaign finance reporting to become systematic, methodical and based on required disclosures, rather than sporadic, random and reliant on the goodwill of courageous whistleblowers.A half-century later, however, the dark money practices of 50 years ago have again become normalized. In 2020 alone, more than $1bn worth of dark money flooded around weak disclosure rules and into America’s elections, financing Super Pacs, ad blitzes, mailers and door-knocking campaigns. As millions of votes were swayed, reporters and the public had no knowledge of the money sources, or what policies they were buying.Heading into the 2022 election, the situation is getting worse. The two parties’ major Senate and House Super Pacs are all being funded by anonymous dark money groups that are not required to disclose their donors.These problems aren’t unique to the campaign arena. Front groups are also shaping public policy, leaving reporters unable to tell voters who exactly is funding what. In the last few years, an anonymously funded group used post-election ads to successfully pressure lawmakers to water down landmark healthcare legislation designed to eliminate so-called “surprise” medical bills.Similarly, Leo’s anonymously funded network spent tens of millions to boost the nomination campaigns of three conservative supreme court justices, after leading a campaign supporting Republicans’ refusal to hold a vote on Barack Obama’s 2016 high court nominee, Merrick Garland.To be sure, news outlets can still cover the shrinking portion of the political finance system that still discloses some money flows to politicians, lobbyists and advocacy groups. And thankfully, there are occasionally disclosures like the Leo leak, which provide a fleeting glimpse into the real forces influencing sweeping policy decisions.But for every sporadic leak, there are scores of secret donors systematically funneling ever more dark money into elections and legislative campaigns without ever being exposed – and they are reaping the rewards of corrupted public policy.That’s the bad news. The good news is there is already a legislative blueprint for reform.The Disclose Act, sponsored by the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse, would force dark money groups to disclose any of their donors who give more than $10,000, require shell companies spending money on elections to disclose their owners, and mandate that election ads list their sponsors’ major contributors. These requirements would extend not only to election-related activity, but also to campaigns to influence governmental decisions – including judicial nominations.A separate Whitehouse bill would additionally require donor disclosure from shadowy groups lobbying the supreme court through amicus briefs designed to tilt judicial rulings without letting the public know which billionaire or CEO’s thumb is on the scale. And other pending legislation would finally allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to require major corporations to more fully disclose their political spending.Journalists should proudly advocate for laws like these, which allow us to tell the public what its government is doing. Our industry has done that before in defending open records laws, and we must do it now in advocating for new campaign finance disclosure rules.In practice, that means reporters elevating the transparency issue and demanding answers from politicians about where they stand on disclosure laws – rather than ignoring or downplaying the rising tide of dark money now shaping every public policy in America.It means newspaper editorial boards advocating for campaign finance reform.It means media organizations lobbying for stronger disclosure laws at the federal, state and local levels.It means the journalism industry participating in – and at times leading – this fight, rather than using objectivity as a cop-out.This battle to update campaign finance disclosure laws and bring sunlight to the darkest of dark money already faces powerful opponents. In recent years, the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries – which represent some of America’s biggest dark money spenders – have been lobbying against the Disclose Act, preventing it from advancing for more than a decade.The Koch network recently convinced the supreme court’s conservative bloc to strike down a California law requiring non-profit dark money groups to at least disclose their major donors to state tax regulators, after spending to back some of those justices’ confirmations to the court.Most recently, conservative groups and Republican state attorneys general have been trying to block a proposal to force companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions by arguing that it is unlawful “compelled speech” – a preview of the argument they might use against new campaign finance transparency legislation.Just as alarming, segments of the journalism industry itself have opposed transparency efforts. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) — which represents the major media outlets making huge profits off of dark money ads — tried to block a rule at the Federal Election Commission a decade ago to require TV and radio stations to disclose ad buys from political groups, arguing it would cost them advertising revenue. The NAB has recently successfully opposed the Federal Communications Commission’s requirements that broadcasters disclose when foreign governments sponsor material. NAB is right now lobbying on the Disclose Act.But this week’s revelations about history’s largest dark-money donation should be an alarm telling us that the status quo must change – and indeed it can change, even within the confines of the supreme court’s own precedents.In the landmark Citizens United ruling that unleashed the modern era of big money politics, the majority noted that while it was unwilling to permit political spending restrictions, it still held that “government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements”.Those requirements are so desperately needed now – for the free press to play its vital role, and for voters to make informed decisions when they go to the polls.But the only chance it will happen is if news outlets and reporters get off the sidelines and enter the battle to secure what they need to do their jobs – and what we all need to preserve our democracy.
      David Sirota is an award-winning journalist who founded the investigative news outlet the Lever
      Joel Warner is the Lever’s managing editor
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      Pro-Israel groups denounced after pouring funds into primary race

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      Pro-Israel groups denounced after pouring funds into primary raceGroups accused of using Republican mega-donors to hijack Democratic primaries following the defeat of Jewish congressman Hawkish pro-Israel lobby groups have been accused of using Republican mega-donors to hijack Democratic primaries following the “alarming” defeat of a prominent Jewish congressman because he criticised Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) spent more than $4m to defeat Andy Levin in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for a congressional seat in north-western Detroit.Levin, who comes from a distinguished political dynasty including his father and an uncle who served long stints as Democrats in Congress, said he had been “the target of a largely Republican-funded campaign” because he dissented from Aipac’s support for hardline Israeli policies.Aipac poured funds into supporting Levin’s opponent, Haley Stevens, who won with about 60% of the vote. The lobby group heralded her victory as evidence that “being pro-Israel is both good policy and good politics”. But critics noted that much of Aipac’s spending was on negative campaigning against Levin that did not mention Israel.Levin was backed by the more liberal pro-Israel group, J Street. It contrasted Aipac’s endorsement of more than 100 Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential election victory with the “onslaught of rightwing outside spending and baseless smears” to defeat a progressive candidate with a history of supporting unions and civil rights.Aipac, through its political action committee, the United Democracy Project, has raised millions of dollars from Republican billionaires such as the Trump campaign funders Paul Singer and Bernie Marcus to defeat candidates not considered pro-Israel enough.Other pro-Israel groups, such as the Democratic Majority for Israel and Pro-Israel America, have also spent heavily to oppose candidates regarded as anti-Israel in Democratic primaries from Texas to Ohio and California.“This aggressive intervention in Democratic primaries – by a group funded in part by Republican mega-donors – to promote an unpopular agenda is harmful to American foreign policy, to the Democratic party and ultimately to the State of Israel,” said J Street, which is more critical of Israeli policies that perpetuate domination of the Palestinians.In an interview with the Guardian during the campaign, Levin warned that Aipac’s involvement raised the specter of the entire primary process being hijacked by well-funded lobbies such as big oil and the gun industry.“I don’t think the Democratic party can really stand for it and maintain the integrity of our own elections,” he said.Following his defeat, Levin said he “will continue to speak out against the corrosive influence of dark money on our democracy”.J Street has called on Democratic candidates to decline Aipac’s support, saying that it is intended to warn politicians against criticism of Israel’s actions or risk a well-funded campaign against them.“With their overwhelming spending, Aipac hopes to send an intimidating message to others: cross our red lines, and you could be next. While political space for open and healthy debate over US foreign policy has opened up considerably in recent years, they appear determined to close it down,” it said.Aipac has poured more than $24m in to defeating Democratic primary candidates critical of Israel. Last month it celebrated defeating former congresswoman Donna Edwards who was favorite to win a Maryland seat until the UDP spent $7m to unleash an advertising blitz against her.But Aipac suffered an unusual setback on Tuesday in another Detroit seat where it spent heavily to defeat a member of the Michigan state legislature, Shri Thanedar, who has strongly criticised the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.Thanedar, an Indian immigrant and wealthy entrepreneur, beat state senator Adam Hollier, who is Black and strongly pro-Israel, in a field fractured between several candidates in the majority African American district.Some of Aipac’s supporters have suggested that the focus on Aipac’s funding of campaigns against candidates critical of Israeli government policies is antisemitic because the group is doing no more than other lobby organisations.In response, Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, tweeted: “So AIPAC can do it… & AIPAC can brag about doing it… But talking about what AIPAC did (at least in a critical way) is antisemitic. See how that works?TopicsUS political financingUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More