It was only a matter of time before some leftist group tried to pull this one. There is nothing wrong with political operatives and so-called dark money groups bankrolling ads, conducting opposition research, and being overly partisan. We have similar outfits on our side that do the same thing. I respect left-leaning groups and publications more if they are overt about their bias; the UK’s Guardian newspaper is a prime example. Yet, as the Daily Caller News Foundation discovered, it’s an entirely different matter when an activist group masquerades as a newspaper. In Wisconsin, a PAC linked to Democrats has done just that in what appears to be an attempt to influence the upcoming state Supreme Court race (via DCNF):
A Democrat-linked dark money group is pretending to be a local newspaperhttps://t.co/WORYlTxjUv
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 3, 2023
A Democrat-linked dark money group has used a website resembling a Wisconsin news outlet to attack the conservative candidate in the state’s current high-stakes Supreme Court election.
American Independent Media (AIM), a Washington, D.C.-registered 501(c)(4) nonprofit with ties to Democratic political operative David Brock, bought at least $90,000 in Facebook advertisements this month promoting two articles critical of former State Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly on The Wisconsin Independent, a media website labelled as an AIM “project.” Early voting is already underway in Kelly’s officially non-partisan April 4 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election contest against liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz, which will determine whether Democrats take majority control of the court for the first time in 15 years, according to NBC News.
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AIM, which does not seem to have its own website, has run “project” sites much like The Wisconsin Independent focused on news coverage in several other states. In 2022, the organization paid more than $300,000 combined for ads promoting The Arizona Independent and The Georgia Independent content across Facebook and Instagram, while paying tens of thousands more to advertise articles published on The Pennsylvania Independent.
[…]
The AIM trademark is owned by the Brock-founded company True Blue Media, which publishes the “progressive news” website The American Independent. In April 2022, AIM was registered at the same Washington, D.C. address listed in a 2020 court filing for the Brock-chaired Media Matters for America, his American Bridge 21st Century PAC and the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation he founded.
Not exactly shocked that David Brock is behind this, but it highlights the hypocritical aspects of the ‘dark money’ issue. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is one of the most insufferable characters in this debate, whining about the recent ads that arose during Trump’s Supreme Court nominations. According to him, these groups threaten democracy, though his side has plenty of like-minded operations. It’s the two separate rules discussion, which you already knew about. Then again, you could argue that Democrats already had such operations for decades, with outlets like The New York Times and The Nation.
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