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ECU MOTHERSHIP ON TEXT MSG SKIM SCAM

https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation

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The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine

How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

Adam Bonica

Aug 03, 2025

The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It's a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss.

The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it's a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises.

We all have that one obscure skill we’ve inadvertently maxed out. Mine happens to be navigating the labyrinth of campaign finance data. So, after documenting the spam tactics in a previous article, I told myself I’d just take a quick look to see who was behind them and where the money was going.

That "quick look" immediately pulled me in. The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.

*(A repo with all the code needed to replicate this analysis is available for download here. A data visualization of the findings is at the bottom of this post.)

From Party Insiders to Extraction Engineers

To understand Mothership's central role, one must understand its origins. The firm was founded in 2014 by senior alumni of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC): its former digital director, Greg Berlin, and deputy digital director, Charles Starnes. During their tenure at the DCCC, they helped pioneer the fundraising model that now dominates Democratic inboxes—a high-volume strategy that relies on emotionally charged, often hyperbolic appeals to compel immediate donations. This model, sometimes called "churn and burn," prioritizes short-term revenue over long-term donor relationships.

After leaving the DCCC, Berlin and Starnes effectively privatized this playbook, building a business around the party's most aggressive tactics and turning an internal strategy into a fundraising powerhouse for the Democratic Party—or so it might seem on the surface.

They became the operational heart of a sprawling nexus of interconnected political action committees, many of which they helped create and which now serve as their primary clients. These are not a diverse collection of grassroots groups; they are a tightly integrated network that functions primarily to funnel funds to Mothership. Their names are likely familiar from the very texts and emails that flood inboxes: Progressive Turnout Project, Stop Republicans, and End Citizens United to name a few.

The relationship between the firm and this network is cemented by blatant self-dealing. The most glaring example is End Citizens United. In 2015, just one year after founding their consulting firm, Mothership principals Greg Berlin and Charles Starnes also co-founded this PAC. It quickly became one of their largest and most reliable clients, a perfect circle of revenue generation that blurs the line between vendor and client.

Follow the Money

The core defense of these aggressive fundraising tactics rests on a single claim: they are brutally effective. The FEC data proves this is a fallacy. An examination of the money flowing through the Mothership network reveals a system designed not for political impact, but for enriching the consultants who operate it.

To understand the scale of this operation, consider the total amount raised. Since 2018, this core network of Mothership-linked PACs has raised approximately $678 million from individual donors. (This number excludes money raised by the firm's other clients, like candidate campaigns, focusing specifically on the interconnected PACs at the heart of this system.) Of that total fundraising haul, $159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees, accounting for the majority of the $282 million Mothership has been paid by all its clients combined.

But the firm's direct cut is only part of the story. The "churn and burn" fundraising model is immensely expensive to operate. Sending millions of texts and emails requires massive spending on digital infrastructure. For instance, FEC filings show this network paid $22.5 million to a single vendor, Message Digital LLC, a firm that specializes in text message delivery.

The remaining hundreds of millions disappeared into a maze of self-reported categories: $150 million to consulting/fundraising, $70 million to salaries and payroll. There are some disbursements to what seem to be legitimate advocacy and organizing–for instance Progressive Turnout Project reports paying Shawmut Services $19 millionfor canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.

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Christian Nationalist Floyd Brown Is Kari Lake’s Campaign Chairman

Kyle Mantyla | January 24, 2024

During Tuesday night’s “FlashPoint” broadcast, religious-right activist Floyd Brown revealed that he is serving as campaign chairman for Kari Lake’s campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Lake is a far-right MAGA cultist and stolen-election conspiracy theorist who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Arizona in 2022, though she steadfastly refuses to accept her defeat. She is now running to be the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in the 2024 election and she has reportedly tapped Brown to lead her campaign.

Brown was a guest on last night’s “FlashPoint” program, prompting host Gene Bailey to disclose Brown’s connection to the Lake campaign, which Brown confirmed.

“My title is Campaign Chairman and I’m very active in the campaign,” Brown revealed on “FlashPoint.” “I really felt lead of the Holy Spirit to be involved in her campaign as part of my worship in 2024.”

IFrame Content

Brown is a full-blow Christian nationalist who has advocated for Christians to gain control over America by taking over local governments, declaring that “every church should run their town.” [twts] vid

Floyd Brown, founder of The Western Journal, declares that right-wing Christians must "take back America" by having their church literally take over their town: "Every church should run their town."

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Fox’s anti-“critical race theory” parents are also GOP activists

One “everyday American” “parent” is a GOP consultant who worked for the RNC in 2020

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM TYLER MONROE

PUBLISHED 06/17/21 9:07 AM EDT

UPDATED 06/17/21 2:10 PM EDT

Nearly a dozen of the Fox News guests the network has presented as concerned parents or educators who oppose the teaching of so-called “critical race theory” in schools also have day jobs as Republican strategists, conservative think-tankers, or right-wing media personalities, according to a Media Matters review.

Critical race theory is an academic legal framework which examines the systemic impact of racism in the United States. But “critical race theory,” like “cancel culture” and “political correctness” before it, also functions as an umbrella term the right-wing movement uses to turn its mostly white adherents’ racial anxiety into political energy.

In this case, a sophisticated, nationwide network of conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, media outlets, and GOP officials have seized on the term and, in the words of Christopher Rufo -- a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a key player in the effort -- sought to render it “toxic” and apply to it “the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” Republicans have proposed or passed a slew of legislation restricting “critical race theory” and hope to use it as a core part of their political strategy in upcoming local, state, and federal elections.

Fox, the leading propaganda outlet for the GOP, plays a key role in this strategy. The network has mentioned “critical race theory” nearly 1,300 times over the past three and a half months. The purportedly sinister spread of “critical race theory” provides a perfect framework for Fox’s technique of highlighting local concerns to fuel the culture war. The network supercharges the individual, at times dubious, stories that filter up with the help of nationally backed local activists, other right-wing outlets, and social media. Fox has targeted the purported influence of “critical race theory” in corporate America, the military, and particularly schools, hosting parents, teachers, and other educators to talk about how they don’t want it taught in their communities.

In several of those cases, the locals Fox has highlighted are also Republican strategists, conservative think-tankers, or right-wing media figures -- ties the network has downplayed or ignored altogether. This trend is particularly notable when Fox covers “critical race theory” controversies in Northern Virginia, a bedroom community for Washington, D.C., in a state where GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin has sought to make his opposition a central issue in the fall.

“The first test will be here in Virginia,” Fox chief Washington correspondent Mike Emanuel reported last month. “If this issue works in the governor's race in November, it will likely be part of the GOP campaign playbook in the midterm elections next year.”

Republican strategists have every right to advocate for their children and their communities, if not to manipulate nationwide education priorities. But since Fox has identified opposition to “critical race theory” as central to the party’s political strategy, the network has a responsibility to inform its viewers about exactly who it’s talking to.

Ian Prior

Fox has hosted Ian Prior at least 15 times to discuss various “critical race theory” stories, according to Media Matters’ database of weekday cable news guests. Fox hosts and anchors have given him various introductions including “Loudoun County parent”; a “father” who “has gone from concerned parent, like many of you, to legal activist”; and “a Loudoun County, Virginia, parent and founder of FightForSchools.com.”

Fight for Schools, which Prior leads, is a political action committee launched this year to support “common sense candidates” who oppose “critical race theory” in schools.

What Fox personalities tend not to mention is Prior’s long career as a Republican political operative. He worked in top communications roles during the 2016 election cycle for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Karl Rove-fronted super PAC American Crossroads, and the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that works to elect Republican senators which was founded by allies of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He then spent a year and a half as a top public affairs aide to Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Prior currently runs his own political communications consulting firm, is co-founder of a political newsletter, and is a senior counsel and spokesperson for Unsilenced Majority, “a grassroots conservative advocacy organization opposed to cancel culture in all forms”helmed by other Republican and right-wing media figures.

Prior had made dozens of appearances on Fox to discuss a range of issues before becoming a regular anti-critical race theory guest on the network earlier this year.

Quisha King

Fox host Tammy Bruce identified Quisha King as an “everyday American,” “a Florida mom who took a bold stance against critical race theory” and as “that hero, the Northeast Florida co-chair of Moms for Liberty” during a June 11 appearance on Fox News Primetime; on-screen text also stressed her role as a “mom” and “parent.” Anchor John Roberts likewise described King as “one mom” who is “going viral” for criticizing “critical race theory” and noted her Moms for Liberty affiliation during a June 14 segment on the “straight news” program America Reports; on-screen text during the segment also described her as a “mom of two daughters.”

But King is also a Republican strategist. She was regional engagement coordinator for the Republican National Committee in 2020 according to her LinkedIn page, which states that she now runs her own political media consulting firm. On Twitter, she calls herself a “@gop 2021 Rising Star.”

On Fox, King said teachers unions “want to remake America” and are “trying to raise up a generation that believes everything that they're pushing; they're trying to raise little woke Marxists” through “critical race theory,” which she later added is actually “aligned with the KKK and true white supremacy.”

Patti Hidalgo Menders

On June 4, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt described Menders and two other guests who oppose the supposed teaching of “critical race theory” in their schools as “three parents from Loudoun County, Virginia,” and mentioned that she is “president of the Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club.”

Menders is also a Republican strategist. She is “Virginia State Strategist” for Majority Strategies, a GOP media consulting firm, according to her bio at the firm, which also calls her “the creator of the Loudoun Conservatives Care, a state PAC that fundraises for Republican candidates by organizing large scale events.” Majority Strategies bills itself as “the only firm to work with every official GOP presidential nominee since 2000” and counts Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and two past Speakers of the House among its current or former clients.

Lilet Vanetsyan

Fox anchor Dana Perino described Lilit Vanetsyan as “one of the teachers who was at that school board meeting” in Loudoun County, Virginia, and suggested she was part of a “grassroots movement” during a June 9 interview on America’s Newsroom. Bruce similarly identified Vanetsyan as a “Fairfax County teacher” when she was on the June 10 edition of Fox News Primetime.

Vanetsyan is also a right-wing media personality. She is affiliated with the Trumpist youth organization Turning Point USA and runs a “Teachers for Trump” Instagram account (which now largely posts about “critical race theory”). Vanetsyan was a reporter for the pro-Trump Right Side Broadcasting Network, according to a since-deleted bio on its website that calls her “a passionate educator who never hesitates to expose the public education system, the teacher unions, and the corrupt curriculum our children are spoon-fed.” That bio also says Vanetsyan’s goal is to open the “The Donald J. Trump School of Excellence” and quotes her saying, “If we want to change the world, we must start with the youth.”

On Fox, Vanetsyan described “critical race theory” as an attempt to “indoctrinate our children.”

Barry Bennett

On May 18, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade described Barry Bennett as an “Alexandra Little League parent and an informal adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign,” and on-screen text throughout the segment identified him as a “Virginia Little League Parent.”

Bennett, elsewhere described as a “senior adviser” to Trump’s 2016 campaign, is also “one of the most prominent lobbyists of the Trump era,” according to Politico. He co-founded Avenue Strategies with Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager, after Trump’s victory, billing the firm as “your sherpa through turbulent times” (Lewandowski left in 2017). After Trump’s 2020 defeat, Bennett shuttered the company, which had been “loaded with lobbyists who had ties to Trump and the Republican Party,” and founded Bennett Strategies, a government relations and political consulting firm.

Nicole Neily

Fox host Laura Ingraham introduced Nicole Neily as one of “two parents fighting against CRT in their schools” (Prior was Ingraham’s other guest) and as “president and founder” of the organization Parents Defending Education during the May 26 edition of her prime-time show.

Neily has spent her entire career working in and for libertarian and conservative political advocacy organizations and think tanks, including stints at FreedomWorks, the Cato Institute, the Independent Women’s Forum, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Policy, and Speech First, before launching Parents Defending Education in January.

Elizabeth Schultz

Fox “news side” anchor Dana Perino introduced Elizabeth Schultz for a May 20 America’s Newsroom interview by calling her a “former Fairfax County [Virginia] school board member.” On-screen text echoed that description and also noted her affiliation with the group Parents Defending Education.

Schultz is also a former Trump administration official. She became locally notorious during her tenure on the Fairfax County School Board for voting against “expanding the school system’s sex-education curriculum to include lessons on gender identity and transgender issues” and supporting armed teachers in classrooms. After losing a reelection bid in 2019, she became deputy director of the Office of Educational Technology at the Department of Education, according to her LinkedIn profile. In March, she joined Neily’s Parents Defending Education group as a senior fellow.

On Fox, Schultz alleged that “our education system is being weaponized by school boards” that are “using taxpayer money to embed things like critical race theory.” She plugged Parents Defending Education and its website and urged parents to “take back your schools.”

Carrie Lukas

Fox anchor Martha MacCallum introduced Carrie Lukas as a “a Virginia mom of five” on the April 27 edition of The Story. For much of the segment, on-screen text highlighted that she is a “VA mother,” “parent,” and a “Virginia mother of five,” though the chyron briefly acknowledged toward the end of the segment that she is also “Independent Women’s Forum President.” She was interviewed alongside her daughter, an eighth-grader.

Lukas has worked at the Independent Women’s Forum,a conservative think tank that says it works to “reduce government red tape and return resources and control to people,” since 2003, according to her LinkedIn profile. She is also a contributor to National Review and the author of Checking Progressive Privilege, a book arguing that conservatives are “marginalized and stereotyped” in U.S. culture. She previously worked as a policy analyst for congressional Republicans and at the libertarian Cato Institute.

On Fox, Lukas said that instead of trying to “improve equity,” Virginia should provide vouchers so that parents could use public funds to enroll their children in private schools.

Bridget Ziegler

Roberts introduced Bridget Ziegler as “the mother of three girls and a Sarasota County [Florida] school board member” on the June 10 edition of America Reports; on-screen text also described her as a “FL Mom” and a “Mother of 3 Girls.”

Ziegler is also a Republican activist. She is a precinct committeewoman for the Republican Party of Sarasota County and a member of seven different local GOP organizations, according to her school board candidate bio.

On Fox, Ziegler said she is “so appreciative” of Florida’s “great governor” Ron DeSantis for opposing the teaching of “critical race theory” in the state’s schools. That “is why we call it ‘Freedom Florida’ here,” she added, “because he’s working and fighting for families to make sure that our children are going to be great, successful people and not be felt guilty by the content of their skin, or felt that they can’t success because of the color of their skin, and that is exactly what this particular critical race theory or the anti-American issues that they are pumping into schoolhouses across America and in Florida [do].”

Deborah Flora

America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer introduced Deborah Flora on June 3 as a Colorado “mother of two” who is also “president and founder of Parents United America.” On-screen text also identified her as a “Douglas County School District mom.” Flora later described Parents United America as “not political; it’s nonpartisan. This isn’t left or right; it’s right and wrong.”

Flora is also a right-wing media personality and activist. She hosts The Deborah Flora Show, a right-wing radio program airing on Denver’s KNUS that brings on a variety of state and local Republican politicians and conservative activists. The station is owned by Salem Media Group, the right-wing radio giant that features hosts like Hugh Hewitt and Sebastian Gorka and reportedly pressured hosts to be more pro-Trump; former KNUS host Craig Silverman claimed in 2018 that his mic had been cut and he had been fired in the middle of his show for criticizing Trump (the station denied it). Flora is also “the Director of Public Policy for Salem Radio Denver.” She became a right-wing celebrity in 2006 when she produced and starred in the anti-abortion film A Distant Thunder and later reportedly hosted “the first Beverly Hills ‘Tea Party’ rally” with the actor Pat Boone.

On Fox, Flora said that “equity policy is the same as critical race theory” and that it “divides … innocent children into oppressors and oppressed” which “damages both.”

Joe Mobley

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy introduced Joe Mobley on June 14 as a “father of three and U.S. Army vet” who had “rallied for education, not indoctrination” over the weekend in Loudoun County.

Mobley also hosts The Joe Mobley Show, a political self-help podcast that purports to teach conservative listeners how to respond to criticisms from liberals who engage in “massive misinformation campaigns” about them.

On Fox, Mobley agreed that “critical race theory” is racist, adding that its “singular purpose” is “to divide.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/facebook-pro-trump-groups/

salon no twt

Reporting on Friday revealed that Facebook knowingly allowed a digital marketing firm tied to a pro-Trump group to release a series of ads purporting to be from a fake left-wing organization ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, while election officials failed to investigate the group at the time.

As The Guardian reported, a right-wing marketing firm called Rally Forge ran a $5,000 ad campaign beginning just days before the2018 election, showing ads promoting Green Party candidates in an effort to split the Democratic vote and help Republicans in several close races. The ads were purported to be placed by a group called America Progress Now and expressed support for democratic socialism.

Facebook launched an investigation into the ads just after the election and quickly determined that America Progress Now's official page on the platform was run by the same three men—Jake Hoffman, Connor Clegg, and Colton Duncan—who were administrators for Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump college organization.

To the alarm of a number of Facebook employees, The Guardian reported, the company did not find Rally Forge or Turning Point USA to be in violation of any of its policies.

One product manager at the time said a case could be made for Rally Forge and Turning Point USA having engaged in voter suppression through the ads, and asked, "Can we strengthen our ads transparency policies so that political ads are indeed transparent to the user?"

After the election, Facebook deactivated several other right-wing accounts run by the administrators, but the move did not stop Rally Forge from establishing a "troll farm" out of Phoenix, Arizona in 2020. Working for Turning Point Action, a group linked to Turning Point USA, the firm hired teenagers to post pro-Trump messages on social media, some of which cast doubt on the integrity of the election system.

Sophie Zhang, aformer Facebook employee who participated in the investigation of the fake Green Party ads, wrote on Twitter Friday, "One wonders if [Rally Forge] would have escalated to troll farms, had FB deterred them in 2018." twt]

"This is egregious," tweeted the women's rights group UltraViolet on Friday.

Beyond Facebook's decision to allow the firm to remain on Facebook after determining the ads were fraudulent, the ads "appeared to violate federal laws that require independent expenditures to be filed with the [Federal Election Commission] and include proper disclosures on advertisements," The Guardian reported.

"This is an example of why disclosure is so important in elections: swing state voters who saw 'America Progress Now' ads promoting Green party candidates would've had no idea that they were the handiwork of Republican political operatives," Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at CLC, told The Guardian.

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the FEC in 2019 over America Progress Now and the administrators' failure to disclose the true source of the Facebook ads, only to have the case dismissed before the FEC could conduct an investigation.

The election commissioners declined to look further into the complaint after a man named Evan Muhlstein contacted them to take full responsibility to the ads, claiming he alone had failed to file the ad expenditures with the FEC and saying his "inexperience" was to blame.

"The FEC's job is to enforce the transparency laws and protect voters' right to know who is trying to influence them, but the agency here failed to conduct even a minimal investigation," Fischer said.

According to former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel, who served on the commission from 2013 to 2017, Muhlstein's admission to the FEC appeared to amount to "clear fraud," as he never disclosed to the officials that the ads had been the work of Rally Forge.

At the time, though, Muhlstein's claim was enough to convince at least one FEC commissioner, James "Trey" Trainor, that the CLC had engaged in "wild speculation" by filing a complaint.

"This case wasn't about a 'fake political group … exploit[ing] Facebook rules … and hid[ing] spending from the FEC,'" Trainor wrote. "In fact, APN was established by an unsophisticated individual trying to show his support for several third-party candidates, but he got tripped by the myriad regulations governing online political speech."

Zhang denounced the FEC for failing to contact Facebook regarding Muhlstein's claim to verify that he'd administered the America Progress Now page—a cursory investigation which would have immediately revealed the true owners of the page.

"It's quite possible that FB would have blown the FEC off," Zhang said. "But many employees were upset over this case, and may have come forward if asked. I would likely have if I'd known."

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/11/facebook-ads-turning-point-usa-rally-forge

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Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats

FEC investigation failed to uncover link to Rally Forge, a firm with close ties to Turning Point USA

Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco

@juliacarriew

Fri 11 Jun 2021 06.00 EDT

A digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal.

In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.

Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.

Rally Forge would go on to set up a pro-Trump domestic “troll farm” for Turning Point Action, a “sister” organization of Turning Point USA, in 2020,earning a permanent ban from Facebook.

“There were no policies at Facebook against pretending to be a group that did not exist, an abuse vector that has also been used by the governments of Honduras and Azerbaijan,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee and whistleblower who played a small role in the investigation of the Green party ads.

She added: “The fact that Rally Forge later went on to conduct coordinated inauthentic behavior with troll farms reminiscent of Russia should be taken as an indication that Facebook’s leniency led to more risk-taking behavior.”

ads show AOC and Drake meme pix]

Some of the Facebook ads from America Progress Now. Composite: Facebook]

Devon Kearns, a spokesperson for Facebook, said: “We removed Rally Forge from our platforms for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. Since the 2018 midterms, we have strengthened our policies related to election interference and political ad transparency. We continue working to make political advertising more transparent on our platform and we welcome updated regulations and help from policymakers as we evolve our policies in this space.”

The revelation that the ads were linked to a rightwing organization raises questions about the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement of campaign finance laws.APN and its ads appeared to violate federal laws that require independent expenditures to be filed with the FEC and include proper disclosures on advertisements, as ProPublica and Vice News first reported in 2018.

The non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint against APN and subsequently sued the agency in an attempt to force it to investigate the group. But in July 2020, the FEC voted to dismiss allegations that America Progress Now had violated federal law, after an individual, Evan Muhlstein, took responsibility for the ads and attributed the lack of proper disclosures and filings to his “inexperience”.

It is illegal to knowingly make false or fraudulent statements to federal agencies, and the FEC appears to have taken Muhlstein at his word that the ads were a sincere but novice attempt to support Green party candidates.

The former FEC commissioner Ann Ravel, who reviewed the case at the request of the Guardian, said that were she still on the FEC, she would now refer this “stunning” case to the justice department for investigation.

“It seems as if it’s a clear fraud,” Ravel said, noting that the FEC general counsel’s office appeared to have been “misled” by Muhlstein. “The requirement for the justice department to take on an electoral matter is that it be serious and willful, and clearly in this case it was willful, in my opinion.”

Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at CLC, said: “This is an example of why disclosure is so important in elections: swing state voters who saw ‘America Progress Now’ ads promoting Green party candidates would’ve had no idea that they were the handiwork of Republican political operatives. The FEC’s job is to enforce the transparency laws and protect voters’ right to know who is trying to influence them, but the agency here failed to conduct even a minimal investigation.”

‘A crystal clear example of astroturfing’

On 27 October 2018 – just days before the 6 November election – America Progress Now began running a series of ads that used leftist motifs, such as the red rose emoji and images of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to rail against the “corporate, two-party oligarchy” and the “corporate, capitalist wage system”. Some of the ads urged voters to choose a third party, but others endorsed Green party candidates by name – triggering FEC rules for independent expenditures.

Following the 5 November publication of a ProPublica/Vice News report on the “mysterious” group behind the ads, Facebook launched a “hi-pri[ority]” escalation to investigate whether they constituted“coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB) – the name Facebook gives to the kind of deceptive tactics that a Russian influence operation used during the 2016 election.

The investigation was straightforward since Facebook has access to information that regular users do not: the names of the people who control Facebook Pages. Investigators quickly realized that America Progress Now was administered by three individuals – Jake Hoffman, Connor Clegg and Colton Duncan – who also served as Facebook Page administrators for Turning Point USA, the rightwing college group founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012. Hoffman and Clegg were also administrators for Kirk’s Facebook Page.

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, left, with Donald Trump Jr and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at a summit in 2019.]

“These admins are connected to Turning Point USA,” one staffer from the civic integrity team said, according to internal task management documents seen by the Guardian. “This is very inauthentic. I don’t know what the policy here is but this seems very sketchy.”Another staffer named Rally Forge as being responsible for the ads. APN had spent nearly $5,000 to have the ads shown to users nearly 300,000 times, a third staffer noted.

A rightwing political marketing firm that ran a $350,000 pro-Trump Super Pac in the 2016 election, Rally Forge was founded and run by Hoffman, an Arizona Republican who was at the time a member of the town council in Queen Creek, Arizona. In November 2020 Hoffman was elected to serve in the Arizona state legislature.

Clegg and Duncan were alumni of Texas State University, where they had been elected student body president and vice-president respectively in 2017. Clegg was impeached and removed from office shortly before his term would have ended in 2018. Duncan resigned from his post in 2017; he appears to have been hired directly by Turning Point USA in 2019.

Since 2017, Rally Forge has been Turning Point USA’s highest-compensated independent contractor, paid more than $1.1m over two years, according to the non-profit’s public filings. Turning Point Action, an affiliated organization also founded by Kirk, paid Rally Forge $700,000 for work supporting Trump and opposing Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign, and an additional $400,000 for work on the US Senate runoff races in Georgia.

Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, said that neither Turning Point USA nor Turning Point Action had “any involvement” with America Progress Now or its Facebook ads.

In addition to America Progress Now and Turning Point USA, Hoffman, Clegg and Duncan all also served as administrators for a number of other rightwing Facebook Pages. The trio each maintained two accounts to administer their Facebook Pages, one using their full names and one using their first and middle initials – a violation of the company’s policy that each user can only have one Facebook account. One of each of the three men’s accounts had been authorized by Facebook to run political ads, a process that required submitting a government ID to Facebook for verification.

One of Hoffman’s accounts had spent approximately $650,000 to run Facebook ads on behalf of 40 Pages, including the official Page of Donald Trump Jr.

The intention here is clearly to mislead users

Facebook civic integrity staffer]

Hoffman declined to answer detailed questions from the Guardian, including about the nature of Rally Forge’s relationship with Muhlstein. “The premise of your questions is either ill-informed or intentionally misleading,” he said in a statement. “Rally Forge is a marketing agency, not a compliance company. Furthermore, it is my understanding that the small handful of ads, totaling less than 2,500 dollars, which qualified as independent expenditures, have been fully disclosed by the responsible organization in coordination with the FEC.”

Duncan said that he had never heard of America Progress Now before the Guardian’s inquiries and had “zero knowledge or insight into the group”. When asked about the CG Duncan account, which had passed Facebook’s verification process and was an administrator of the APN page, he responded: “I urge you to reach out to JM [Hoffman]. Let me know what you find out, I’m as curious as you are.”

Clegg did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him.

Despite possessing clear evidence of inauthenticity, Facebook staffers determined the Green party ads did not violate existing company policies related to political ads or CIB. They decided to deactivate the three men’s extra accounts, but after the election and only after providing them with advance notice.

The episode inspired some disquiet among Facebook staff.

“What I find very problematic is that the intention here is clearly to mislead users,” said the civic integrity staffer. “The users in question clearly created a new FB page to hide their identity, which would be grounds for removal on most surfaces,” she added, referring to Facebook’s rules requiring people to use their real names on their accounts.

One product manager produced an internal postmortem of the incident in which she described it as “a crystal clear example of astroturfing” – deceptive campaign tactics designed to appear as grassroots actions – “… as well as playing both sides … and political ad opacity, since users cannot see who they are. Furthermore, I could see making a case for voter suppression.”

‘The users in question clearly created a new FB page to hide their identity,’ said a Facebook civic integrity staffer. Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

“Unfortunately, it turned out there was nothing we could do against these ads,” she added. “We ended up only aiming to remove a few [duplicate] accounts under the fake account policy, but only after proper notice – and I believe we have not removed them yet.”

“Can we strengthen our ads transparency policies so that political ads are indeed transparent to the user?” she asked.

A Facebook spokesperson said that the company had indeed removed the duplicate accounts following the midterms, and that Rally Forge’s network of Pages and accounts had gone dormant after November 2018. The company made a number of updates to its policies on political ads before the 2020 elections, including requiring advertisers to provide more information about their organizations before being authorized to run ads. It also introduced a new policy to encourage more transparency regarding who runs networks of Facebook Pages.

Rally Forge reactivated its network of Pages and accounts in June 2020, according to Facebook. It established a domestic “troll farm” in Phoenix, Arizona, that employed teenagers to churn out pro-Trump social media posts, some of which cast doubt on the integrity of the US election system or falsely charged Democrats with attempting to steal the election, the Washington Post revealed.

Facebook said that its automated systems had detected and deleted fake accounts made by Rally Forge, which then created “thinly veiled personas” to carry out deceptive campaigning. In October 2020, the platform permanently banned Rally Forge and Hoffman for violating its policy against CIB, work that Facebook said the firm had undertaken “on behalf of Turning Point USA” and another client.

A spokesman for Turning Point USA disputed the characterization of the operation as a “troll farm” and noted that it was a project of Turning Point Action, which is a separate entity.

Facebook did not take any enforcement action against Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action or Kirk with regard to the Phoenix operation. Facebook also did not disclose Rally Forge’s connection to America Progress Now and the deceptive Green Party ads.

A forestalled investigation

In September 2019, CLC filed a complaint alleging that APN’s failure to register with the FEC violated federal law. The FEC responded by sending a letter to an inaccurate address that America Progress Now had listed on its Facebook Page, but it does not appear to have taken further action, prompting CLC to sue it in February 2020.

“If nothing is done, the FEC will instead be sending a message that anonymous or fake entities like America Progress Now can pop into existence just prior to an election, exploit lax registration and reporting requirements by digital platforms, spend unlimited sums of money, and then disappear into thin air once an election is over,” the group said at the time.

In April 2020, the FEC wrote again, this time to the address listed on an Arizona state business filing for America Progress Now.

On 15 April 2020, Evan Muhlstein responded to the FEC by email. Muhlstein described the lack of filing as an “error”,writing, “I believe that it is important for the commission to understand that any potential failure on either of those items is based entirely on my inexperience to the process.” He wrote that he had “assumed that Facebook’s ‘political disclaimer/disclosure’ was all that was necessary”, said his expenditures totaled “only $2,467.54”, and expressed surprise that “a spend as small as this would require any type of reporting”.

Donald Trump speaks at a Turning Point USA summit in 2019.]

“I again offer my sincerest apology for any potential errors in failing to disclose,” Muhlstein wrote. “Given the apparent obstacles and unknowns of participating in the election process in this manner (of which I am learning some of now), it is highly unlikely I will ever participate in it again. I feel terrible for having been so ignorant to the process.”

Muhlstein also expressed his desire to come into compliance “correctly and quickly”. At no point in the communication did Muhlstein disclose that the advertisements had been handled by a major political marketing firm.

“Muhlstein’s statement to the FEC is extremely misleading and might warrant a criminal investigation,” said Fischer, of the CLC.

Muhlstein did not respond to multiple attempts to make contact with him. His connection to Rally Forge is not known. He is a resident of Queen Creek, Arizona, the town where Hoffman also lives.

The FEC has the power to issue subpoenas and carry out serious investigations, but only after a vote of four of its five commissioners.

In a report dated 4 May, the FEC’s general counsel argued that, while it appeared that Muhlstein had violated federal law, the small amount of money involved and Muhlstein’s statement that he was unlikely to engage in further political spending led it to recommend that the FEC exercise prosecutorial discretion and dismiss the allegations with a warning.

In July, the FEC voted to follow the general counsel’s recommendation and dismiss the case, forestalling any actual investigation.

Commissioner James “Trey” Trainor went further, lambasting the CLC in a statement of reasons. “Contrary to CLC’s wild speculation, this case wasn’t about a ‘fake political group … exploit[ing] Facebook rules … and hid[ing] spending from the FEC,’” he wrote. “In fact, APN was established by an unsophisticated individual trying to show his support for several third-party candidates, but he got tripped by the myriad regulations governing online political speech.”

Trainor asserted that “there was no evidence to contradict” Muhlstein’s statement to the FEC “and no evidence to support CLC’s salacious theories about the ‘unknown person or persons’ behind APN”.

It would not be until 23 December 2020 – six months after the FEC had voted not to pursue the allegations of law violations and more than two years after the election – that Muhlstein would provide the FEC with that evidence, when he finally registered APN with the FEC and disclosed that the independent expenditure had been made through Rally Forge.

The FEC did not respond to questions from the Guardian, citing a policy not to comment on enforcement matters. Trainor did not respond to a request for comment. Fischer said: “It looks like we were right.”

Daniel Hernandez contributed reporting

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std boogie man roger stone dirty trick is to run fake/3rd cand to split vote, sometimes pick someoe w/ same name

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-spolier-candidate/?rs=182

ablind veteran who ran for Congress in Minnesota last year under the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party now alleges he was tricked into running by a Republican Party operative to siphon votes from then-Democratic-Farmer-Labor Congressman Collin Peterson in Minnesota's 7th Congressional District, according to local news outlet KMSP.

Kevin Ne Se Shores, said the report, "was surprised by the unsolicited call he got in June of 2020 from a man who encouraged him to run against Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) as a candidate for the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. Shores, who suffers from Gulf War Illness, used cannabis to get off pain killers. He told the FOX 9 Investigators he assumed he was being recruited by a member of the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. 'I was under the impression he was a part of that political party,' Shores said. 'That was my assumption.' He was wrong."

"Unknown to Shores, the man who called encouraging him to run was a Republican strategist, Kip Christianson, who at the time was on the payroll of the Republican National Committee, according to the Federal Election Commission," said the report. Shores also alleges that Christianson paid his $300 candidate filing fee, telling him, "Don't worry about it."

Shores only later became aware that Christianson was an RNC employee and 2016 Donald Trump delegate for Minnesota.

Ultimately, Shores lost the nomination for the third party to Rae Hart Anderson, and the combined 24,000 votes for the Grassroots Legalize Marijuana Party and the Legal Marijuana Now Party would not have been enough to secure re-election for Peterson, who lost to former GOP lieutenant governor Michelle Fischbach by 50,000 votes.

However, in races further down the ballot, GOP covert support for the Minnesota cannabis parties may have spoiled state Senate races, and may have been decisive in helping Republicans retain control of the chamber — which ironically makes cannabis legalization far less likely in the state.

Congressional candidate says he was tricked into running by RNC strategist | FOX 9 KMSP..[vid]

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/georgia-senate-race/

kennis, really about camp fin ref need

On the eve of the general election, Russ Silva and his family, like many fellow Georgians, watched as the results started slowly pouring across his television set. It was becoming more and more apparent that Georgia was destined to become a focal point for the entire country, not just because it was a contested battleground state between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, but also because it was setting the stage for an unprecedented situation.

As election night came to an end with many results still uncertain, Silva let out a sigh as he bemoaned to AlterNet what he suspected was inevitable: "Now I pretty much know I'm going to be barraged by endless ads."

By the time incumbent Senator David Perdue's slim advantage over challenger Jon Ossoff dipped to 49.9997 percent of the vote on November 5, it became all but official: a double-header runoff for two Senate seats and ultimately control of the chamber was going to happen in early January.

John Nichols, a veteran journalist,explained to AlterNet that, "We've never had a circumstance like this before with two seats up-in-the air while two seats are also needed for control of the Senate in two runoff elections before an inauguration with these kinds of stakes at play."

Unsurprisingly then, Georgia's unique double-header runoff has rapidly become ground zero for a legion of political consultants, pollsters and a blizzard of television advertising.

"There's a whole industry that does this from Washington and everyone is able to go to their donors and say, 'hey, I need 20 million dollars,' and then that money will then be found," says Nichols.

This unprecedented spending frenzy led Christian-right activist Ralph Reed to dub Georgia "crazytown" to the New York Times. It became that after Democrats suffered rough defeats in North Carolina (a race they lost by a mere 1.8 points), Iowa (where various polls showed the Democratic challenger leading through election night), Kentucky (where tons of money was spent in an unsuccessful effort to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Majority Leader) and most devastatingly, in Maine (where the New York Timesprofiled the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, as being a dinosaur out of touch with more polarized times and quite vulnerable to defeat).

Because of this string of defeats, Georgia's old southern-styled campaign system, which was originally fashioned to advantage white Democratic candidates in the Jim Crow era, wound up having greater relevance than ever before. No more than a mere percentage point separated the total Democratic and Republican Party votes in both Senate races, with all sides acknowledging that the Democrats are still facing steep odds of sweeping. By January, the double-header will decide not only party control of the Senate but also the future path to a potential economic recovery for both the U.S. and to a significant extent, the rest of the world.

While the anticipated record-breaking spending in Georgia's twin runoffs has gotten a lot of media coverage, the ramifications of so much hinging on contests that will likely be decided by a relative handful of voters is an under-explored aspect of the story. Leading researchers on politics, campaign finance and the media told AlterNet that the Georgia campaigns exemplify a system that is anti-democratic to its core.

Consulting and Pollster Industry Descends Upon Georgia

The numbers so far have been dizzying, and the campaign has only just gotten underway. According to AdImpact, by Thanksgiving week, $220 million had already been spent between all four campaigns (Ossoff has spent $41.6 million; Loeffler, $40.8; Warnock, $34.2 and Perdue, $30.1) while another $214 million in future buys had been reserved.

With this rate of spending, the campaigns are collectivelyon pace to reach a half a billion dollars in spending by Election Day or perhaps even more,according to Professor Thomas Ferguson, author of The Golden Rule.

"One private equity investor put a couple of million into the Maine senate race which clearly came during a late influx of money," Ferguson said. As a result, when it comes to Georgia, "you very well may not see what the real total spending will amount to until the end December."

You may be wondering what all of this money is even being spent on.

As Nichols explained to AlterNet, "party campaign committees, leadership PACs [political action committees], special interest PACs, political television advertising and hired gun political consultants and pollsters," form the bedrock of what he dubbed, "the media and election industrial complex, which Bob McChesney and I have written about because the truth of the matter is that there really is a huge industry that is solely dedicated to this."

The Atlanta metro area's television market, where three-fourths of Georgia's voters reside, is already approaching near total ad saturation well over a month before Election Day. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who has embraced Trump even more than her fellow Republican incumbent, has already spent 23 million of her own personal funds on television advertising and has already reserved an additional 40 million.

Georgian voters have already registered their fatigue with the advertising onslaught. Echoing the thoughts of many Georgia users in the Twittersphere, one posted, "Here in Georgia, I can't watch anything without being POUNDED with political ads. I get it, but I'm sooooooo tired."

Rich Campaigns, Poor Democracy?

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that campaign spending is the equivalent of protected political speech. As a result, each election year records for campaign spending set in previous cycles routinely fall, according to Gerald Sullivan, the author of Global Electioneering.

"Overall, more than $14 billion will have been spent on all Federal-level campaigns this year, doubling what was spent in 2016. The amount of money is abhorrent and disgusting," Sullivan told AlterNet, while adding that "the more professionalization of campaigns intervenes into the electoral process, the less democratic it will be."

To a whole generation of young people, it has become a fact of life that elections are synonymous with big spending. But to Sullivan, this is not consistent with a healthy democracy. "In the 1950s, things were done on a retail basis as politicians would have district and ward captains and everything was done locally." In modern times, however, "political consulting firms have centralized the whole process. Now it's just left up to the experts and professionals." Sullivan added that spending doesn't dominate the process in most democracies, which have relatively short campaign seasons. He pointed to the United Kingdom's six-week long election campaigns as a better model....

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/gop-operatives-push-to-get-kanye-west-on-the-presidential-ballot-reports/

alex h

In 2018 and 2019, Kanye West was President Donald Trump’s most prominent supporter in the hip-hop community, sometimes inspiring criticism from other rappers who considered the president overtly racist. But on July 4, West tweeted that he planned to run for president — running against Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in the general election. And according to reporting from the New York Times and CNN, some Republican operatives have been trying to help West get on the presidential ballot in various states.

One of the GOP operatives cited by reporters Maggie Haberman and Danny Hakim in the Times is Mark Jacoby, who they describe as “an executive at a company called Let the Voters Decide.” Jacoby, they note, “has been collecting signatures for the West campaign” in Ohio, West Virginia and Arkansas.

Others Republicans named by Haberman and Hakim include Gregg Keller, former executive director of the American Conservative Union, and Chuck Wilton — who they describe as “a convention delegate for Mr. Trump from Vermont” and “an elector with the West operation who could potentially cast an Electoral College vote for Mr. West."

[twt]

dan Merica and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, meanwhile, report that some GOP operatives tied to Trump “are actively helping Kanye West get on presidential general election ballots in states ranging from Vermont to Arkansas to Wisconsin.” And according to the CNN reporters, some Democrats believe that Republicans see West as a possible spoiler who could take African-American votes away from Biden.

“Democrats in Wisconsin and beyond called it a blatant attempt to appeal to young black voters who may be unenthused about the Biden campaign,” Merica and Zeleny report. “Any downturn in turnout for Biden among young black voters, a group the Trump campaign has tried to target in the race against the former vice president, could impact the outcome in states with traditionally narrow margins, like Wisconsin.”

However, Haberman and Hakim report that “if Mr. West’s goal is to disrupt the general election between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, he is going about it in a strange way.”

“Some of the states where he has filed to get on the ballot have been solidly red states, like Arkansas, where his presence would almost certainly do little to change the general election equation,” Haberman and Hakim note. “But other states he is targeting, like Wisconsin, are seen as pivotal.”

In some states, Haberman and Hakim observe, it is too late for West to get on the ballot — as he has missed the filing deadline.

Democratic Rep. David Bowen of Wisconsin described Republican efforts to promote West’s campaign as underhanded, telling CNN: “Thankfully, the Trump team is showing their cards that the real force driving Kanye West to run is not people, but Trump. This is clearly a targeted effort by Republican operatives to cause confusion and problems for typically Democratic voters on Election Day…. It’s sad to see a popular music artist like Kanye be used as a pawn to trick his own people (and) fans to vote for a fake campaign.”

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7/20 neglected?

aha: talk radio (loesch nra) and evang perry  reliable fallbacks on fail:

mma 720

As is the case in most cities across the United States, protests against police brutality have taken place in St. Louis, Missouri, for the past several weeks. In a since deleted video, Lyda Krewson, the Democratic mayor of St. Louis announced the names and home addresses of some residents who had contacted the mayor’s office about defunding the police. In response, last weekend, protesters took to the streets to demand the resignation of the mayor and continue protests against police brutality. In the midst of the protest, two people emerged from a nearby mansion and pointed guns at the peaceful protesters. A man pointed an AR-15-style rifle directly at protesters, while a woman pointed a handgun with her finger directly on the trigger.

This week, many right-wing media figures took the opportunity to defend the couple. Some figures praised the couple for defending their homes, while others asserted that the couple’s actions were justified because of panic caused by the recent coverage of protests and left-wing demonstrators around the country.

Here are just a few examples of right-wing media figures defending the couple::

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roll call 2014

Deputy District Attorney Elan S. Carr (Republican)

Chief strategist/media consultant: John Thomas of Thomas Partners Strategies

Pollster: Probolsky Research

Communications: John Van Winkle

Finance director: Susie Avila

State Sen. Ted Lieu (Democrat)

General consultants: Gale Kaufman and Bill Carrick

Pollster: Fred Yang of Garin Hart Yang Research Group

Columnist Matt Miller (Democrat)

Pollsters: Stan Greenberg and Drew Lieberman of GQR Research

Fundraising consultant: Tracy Austin

Media consultants: Jeremy Oberstein and Mattis Goldman of Three Point Media

Direct mail: Andrew Acosta of Acosta Consulting

Spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson (Independent)

Online and television: Joe Trippi of Trippi & Associates.

General consultant and direct mail: John Shallman, Dave Jacobson and Mac Zilber of Shallman Communications

Campaign manager: David Keith

In our previous Shop Talk column, we profiled the team of Democrat Wendy Greuel.

Two Democrats Join EMILY’s List

EMILY’s List, an organization that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights, announced Monday that two Democratic operatives have joined the group.

Alex Glass, a longtime aide to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., signed on as communications adviser with the group’s campaign department. Hilary Nachem joined the same department as digital adviser. In 2012, she was the new media director for Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s campaign.

Both women will advise federal and gubernatorial candidates.

“I know their expertise and advice is going to help EMILY’s List candidates to run stronger campaigns and to win this November,” EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock said in a statement.

Udall Staffer Is Colorado-Bound

Chris Harris, the former spokesman for American Bridge, emailed colleagues on Monday to announce his move to Denver. He recently left the Democratic opposition research firm to be the new communications director on Democratic Sen. Mark Udall’s re-election campaign.

Dem Tech Firm Hires House Operative

NGP VAN, a Democratic technology firm, announced Monday that Democratic operative Kat Skiles joined the firm.

She will be the group’s spokeswoman and manage the firm’s “marketing execution and strategy development,” per a news release.

Previously, Skiles was press secretary and online strategy director for the House Democratic Caucus. Skiles built her career working on the campaigns of California Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Jackie Speier.

Former California GOP Leader to Challenge Newsom

Former California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring announced Feb. 18 in an email to supporters that he has “decided to begin the process to become the Republican Party’s nominee” to challenge Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom this year.

Nehring acknowledged the endeavor is a “big challenge” in the heavily Democratic state.

Bentivolio Challenger Staffs Up

Former State Department official Bobby McKenzie, a Democrat running for Michigan Republican Rep. Kerry Bentivolio’s 11th District, recently hired two staffers to his campaign.

McKenzie named David Beard as his campaign manager. Beard is a veteran of Michigan Democratic Rep. Gary Peters’ 2008 House race, the DCCC, House Majority PAC and American Bridge.

Brandon Cox will be McKenzie’s finance director. Cox worked on Gary McDowell’s 2012 race. He also has experience in Massachusetts politics and was North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre’s finance director.

iVote Hires an Executive Director

iVote, a Democratic group with the mission to elect Democratic secretaries of state in battleground states, announced last week that Steven Walker will be its executive director. He is a former acting Democratic National Committee political director.

iVote is the brainchild of Jeremy Bird, a former Obama operative and founding partner at the political consulting firm 270 Strategies. The recently formed group’s mission is to elect Democratic secretaries of state in battleground states across the country.

The firm also hired Democratic operative Lucas Fleischer as creative director on its digital team. Most recently, he was the Democratic National Committee’s digital director.

Republican Pollster Launches Firm

Republican pollster Brenda Wigger Gianiny launched Axis Research Inc., which, per a Feb. 19 news release, is “a full-service public opinion research firm providing traditional phone polling, web research, focus group studies, and ad testing for domestic and international corporations, trade associations, issue advocacy coalitions and political candidates.”

Most recently, Gianiny was a senior vice president at Voter/Consumer Research.

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