A few days ago, the NY Times published an essay by Andrew Sorkin, A Company Backs a Cause. It Funds a Politician Who Doesn’t. What Gives? He wrote that "At a time when Corporate America is speaking up on some of the most important issues of our time, there is a contradiction between companies’ words today and the role they played in helping create the moment we find ourselves in. An examination of political spending over the past decade shows how those companies-- and dozens of other Fortune 500 corporations-- quietly funded political efforts that are antithetical to their public stances. They financed state attorneys general seeking to undo the Affordable Care Act, which has provided health insurance for millions of Americans during the pandemic; they provided funds that backed local legislators who tried to roll back L.G.B.T.Q. rights; and they gave money that supported candidates challenging federal climate change initiatives."
Uniquely, public companies are the biggest benefactors of key political committees supporting the campaigns, donating more than individuals or other groups....Walmart is among the companies that donated money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which supported a group of state attorneys general including Ken Paxton of Texas, who was narrowly re-elected in 2018 and is now leading a group of Republican-run states in a Supreme Court case that seeks to overturn key aspects of the Affordable Care Act.AT&T, which says its policies prohibiting discrimination against employees based on sexual orientation date back to the 1970s, provided funds to the same group, which helped elect Pat McCrory in North Carolina in 2012. Mr. McCrory, the former governor, signed the “bathroom bill,” which required transgender people to use public bathrooms corresponding to the gender listed on their birth certificates (and was later overturned).Microsoft, which says it supports sustainability, provided money to the Republican Governors Association, which funneled money to help elect Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania in 2010, who reduced emissions standards for the oil and gas industry.These corporate donations to state-level political groups go to associations known as “527s,” named after a section of the tax code. The 527 designation allows companies to channel money to candidates without giving to specific individuals. The donations, which come from corporate treasury departments-- not via company political action committees-- can be tracked by following the money paid to a 527 and examining how it is distributed.The numbers tell the story: Of the $1.3 billion raised over the past decade by the Democratic and Republican governors associations, state legislative campaign committees and attorneys general associations, 46 percent-- or nearly $600 million-- came from public companies and their trade associations, far more than the 22 percent share from individuals and 16 percent from private companies, according to the Center for Political Accountability. Two-thirds of the corporate and trade association money, around $390 million, went to Republican-affiliated groups....[C]ompanies are motivated to make such political donations because it potentially buys them access-- and they hope, favor-- with politicians who can directly affect their businesses. They may want to bend a politician’s ear on a tax treatment, government contract or regulatory action. During the pandemic, having a direct line to the governor’s office has been critical in how some businesses have sought to influence reopening plans.
Yesterday, Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria, writing for Popular Info shined a light in the direction of Minnesota neo-fascist Congressman Jim Hagedorn and the companies that bankroll his racism-- while claiming to support Black Lives Matter. Hagedorn, an extreme right freshman who represents a district just about an hour south of where a police officer murdered George Floyd, wrote that the Black Lives Matter movement is "at war with our country, our beliefs and western culture." He's campaigning for reelection on a Trumpist platform and insists that Americans must oppose the Black Lives Matter movement to defend the nation’s "Judeo-Christian values" and "way of life."Last cycle Hagedorn barely defeated-- 146,200 (50.2%) to 144,885 (49.8%)-- conservative Democrat Dan Feehan for the open seat in southern Minnesota. Feehan spent $4,117,708 to Hagedorn's $1,584,057. (Right wing outside groups, like corporately funded America First Action and the Congressional Leadership Fund, threw $6,911,780 in independent expenditures into smearing Feehan.) So far this cycle, Feehan, who wants a rematch, has raised $2,102,934 and Hagedorn has raised $1,579,022. In 2016 Trump had won MN-01 with 53.3% against Hillary's 38.4%. In 2018, Amy Klobuchar's reelection campaign won the district without breaking a sweat and, though with a smaller margin, so did Tim Walz, the former congressman from the district who was seeking the governor's job (which he won). It's likely that in November Feehan will oust Hagedorn and his ugly racist, Trumpist, homophobic politics. Legum and Zekeria wrote that "major corporations that publicly champion racial justice, equality, and inclusion-- including UnitedHealth Group, U.S. Bank, Intel, and Best Buy-- have donated thousands of dollars to Hagedorn's reelection campaign." Other corporations funding Hagedorn's politics of hatred and support for fascism include General Mills, Boston Scientific, Bayer, and Bank of New York.Up the road apiece is MN-05-- Minneapolis. It's a deep blue district that Trump lost with just 18.5% in 2016. Two year later, state Rep. Ilhan Omar won the open congressional seat by a landslide against Republican vanity candidate Jennifer Zielinski, 267,703 (78.0%) to 74,440 (21.7%). This cycle Ilhan faces a crowded primary field in less than a month, on August 11. There are 5 Democrats challenging her, but AIPAC has rallied its forces around one mystery meat candidate, Antone Melton-Meaux, who has "raised" $3,690,827 out of the blue and now has more cash on hand than Ilhan-- $2,016,669 to $1,111,861. Andrew Perez, reporting for Too Much Information, wrote that Melton-Meaux "has paid nearly $1.2 million-- 65 percent of his overall spending-- to three anonymous companies, a move that circumvents traditional campaign finance disclosure standards." One, WCPA (or perhaps WPCA) is a company on paper only that started just over a month ago, seemingly to help Melton-Meaux-- who funneled $1.3 million of his contributions into the firm-- defeat Ilhan. Since the the DCCC "has threatened to punish vendors who work for candidates who run primary challenges to Democratic incumbents, Melton-Meaux’s financial maneuver keeps hidden the vendors who are working for his campaign against Omar, a first-term Democratic incumbent." Two other brand new companies-- North Superior Consulting LLC and Lake Point Consulting-- seem to be playing the same role, one for communications and one for polling and strategic consulting.
“The law requires campaigns to report their spending so that the public can know how political campaign money is being spent,” said Brendan Fischer, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. “When 65 percent of a campaign's spending is flowing through anonymous Delaware LLCs, the public is kept in the dark. Schemes like this hide which individuals or companies are working for the campaign, the nature of the work, and how much they are being paid.”While Omar’s polling shows she’s popular in her district, Melton-Meaux raised $3.2 million between April and June and has been blanketing the airwaves with ads. Omar brought in less than $500,000 in the same time. The first Somali refugee elected to Congress, Omar has been a frequent target of Israel supporters for her criticisms of the country’s influence over U.S. policy. Pro-Israel political action committees have raised more than $400,000 for Melton-Meaux’s campaign.A super PAC funded by frequent GOP donors last week disclosed spending $228,000 on mailers opposing Omar. The group-- which is called Americans for Tomorrow’s Future-- recently bankrolled a Democratic pro-Israel super PAC that has been weighing in on Democratic primary races.“There are people who are invested in keeping that status quo, people who don’t want these structural changes to take place, and those are really the people who have the resources to oust someone like me,” Omar said on Sunday.Melton-Meaux’s TV ad buys have been placed by Canal Partners Media, according to filings with the Federal Communications Commission. Canal Partners Media isn’t listed in Melton-Meaux’s latest FEC report, suggesting that some of the WCPA spending has been subcontracted. Canal Partners Media has reportedly placed ad buys for the Biden campaign under the name “Media Buying & Analytics.”Canal Partners Media didn’t respond to a request for comment. “The FEC has generally said that if a campaign hires, for example, a consulting firm to produce its ads, and the consulting firm subcontracts with a videographer to film the ads, the campaign need only report the payments to the consulting firm, and not separately itemize the payments to the videographer,” Fischer said. “But if a vendor is just acting as a conduit to hide the ultimate recipients of the campaign's spending, then the campaign is violating the law.”
Which corporations are funding these quasi-criminal manuevers to defeat Ilhan Omar? It's going to take months-- long after the election results are in-- to unravel all the opaque reporting and figure out which corporations and which billionaires are putting the big bucks behind AIPAC's effort to end Ilhan's career. If you'd like to help thwart that effort, please contribute to Ilhan Omar's reelection campaign by clicking on the 2020 Blue America Worthy Incumbents thermometer on the right. There aren't enough members with her spirit and courageousness; let's not let a flood of Dark Money remove her from a Congress that desperately needs more women like her, not fewer.