AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Sunday's JJ Dinner
Clinton, Sanders, O’Malley blast Republicans at major NHDP fundraiser
by John DiStaso, wmur.com, November 30, 2015
MANCHESTER, N.H. —The three major Democratic candidates for president ripped Republicans to the cheers of 1,400 party faithful Sunday at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner fundraiser.
The party expected to raise more than $250,000 at its largest annual fundraiser, which was held at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Manchester.
While Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley jockeyed for the biggest applause lines without directly criticizing each other, the overriding theme was, as expected, unity against Republicans.
And, as expected, the biggest target was Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who was compared to Joseph McCarthy by O’Malley.
“To that immigrant bashing, carnival barker, Donald Trump, let us stand up together and say the enduring symbol of our nation is not the barbed wire fence,” said O’Malley. “It is the Statue of Liberty.”
Sanders and O’Malley worked to distinguished themselves from Clinton while the former secretary of state focused squarely on the GOP.
All three candidates received raucous ovations from their supporters in the crowd.
Clinton told the Democrats that during the campaign, “You have shared with me the feelings you have when you’re caring for an aging parent or a child suffering from substance abuse or a loved one with mental illness.”
“We’re going to make our economy and our country work for everyone, not just those at the top,” she said. “I’m running for everyone who has been knocked down but refused to be counted out.”
“We’re not going to do it by making promises we can’t keep,” Clinton said, “we’re going to do it how we’ve always done it, by rolling up our sleeves and getting the job done.”
Clinton called for raising the minimum wage “so it is no longer a poverty wage,” called, “finally” for equal pay for women, and called for universal pre-school.
She portrayed herself as the candidate for all Americans.
“It is unusual for a candidate for president, especially in these divisive times, to say we need more love and kindness, but that's exactly what we need in America right now,” said Clinton.
Clinton, like O’Malley and Sanders, promised to keep the United States safe in the face of terrorist threats and attacks.
“I promise you this,” she said, “I will get up every single day to do whatever it takes to make sure our country is safe and strong.”
As a U.S. senator from New York during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she said, “I take a back seat to no one when I tell you I will do whatever is necessary to protect us.
"But I also want to do it in a way that further promotes our values and makes it clear this country of ours will continue to lead the world, not only in danger spots, but also in the pursuit of opportunities that will make us even greater in the future.”
Sanders, without naming Clinton, drew sharp distinctions between himself and the former secretary of state.
Sanders said that if his support continues, he can pull off one of the great political upsets in U.S. history.
“From coast to coast, the American people are crying out for change, for real change,” Sanders said. “They are tired of the same old, same old establishment politics, establishment economics and establishment foreign policy. They want this county to move in a new direction.”
Sanders said that as he travels the country and draws thousands of people – including many political newcomers -- to his rallies, “I see a future not just for my candidacy but also for the Democratic Party.
“I believe the campaign we are running is a campaign that not only regains the White House but takes the Democratic Party in a huge step forward into the future.”
“We are running a campaign which calls for real change” Sanders said. “We are running a campaign which calls for a political revolution and tonight I ask all of you to join in that revolution.”
“I am running for president because the great middle class of this country, once the envy of the world, has been disappearing for the past 40 years,” Sanders said. “We need an economy that works for working families, not just millionaires and billionaires.
Sanders also reiterated his call for free tuition for public colleges and universities, paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation.
Sanders hit the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court ruling, insisting, “Millionaires and billionaires should not be able to buy elections.” He said he will fight to overturn Citizens United and “move toward public funding of elections."
Decrying “vitriolic Republican rhetoric,” Sanders said, “We must protect a women’s right to choose and we must defend Planned Parenthood.”
Sanders also addressed substance abuse -- calling it a health issue, not a criminal one.
“We have a major crisis in opiate addiction. And we need a revolution in mental health treatment so that all people, regardless of their income can get the help they need,” said Sanders.
Sanders announced his opposition to Kinder Morgan's proposal for a pipeline in New Hampshire.
“That would carry frack natural gas for 400 miles through 17 communities,” said Sanders. “It’s a bad idea and should be opposed.”
O’Malley took not-so-veiled shots at his primary opponents.
He said that he is “not a former socialist,” in a dig at Sanders. He made an unnamed reference to Clinton when he said, “We must stop giving a free pass to the bullies of Wall Street.
“I have never represented Wall Street and, I sure as hell won't be taking economic orders from the big banks of Wall Street when I’m in your White House,” he said.
“As Democrats, we must cast aside the worn out politics of the past."
O’Malley also promised to protect the nation from the threat of terrorism, but said, “Ultimately, our success in confronting this threat -- our long-term success in defeating this evil -- depends upon the power of our values.
“Democracies are very vulnerable to turning upon themselves in the aftermath of a terror attack. Denying this victory to terror depends upon the courage and resolve of the American people,” he said.
“Individual citizens across this great land must resist the fear-based appeals of their own politicians. Because panic and political opportunism are a toxic mix -- that can precede fascism or the plunging of our republic into a security state.
“Just as Joe McCarthy could look at any problem and spot an invisible communist lurking behind it, Donald Trump blames everything on new American immigrants and Muslim Americans,” O’Malley said.
“Trump says we should be monitoring everyone of the Muslim faith, keeping some kind of registry, maybe even issuing special ID cards. Who is next? Catholics? Trade unionists?
“We've seen this road before, and it does not end well,” O'Malley said.
Republican reaction focused on Clinton....
Supporters of all three presidential candidates held demonstrations outside of the event, with some showing up before sunrise.
Clinton and Sanders' crowds were about even in size, with several hundred each; Sanders’ campaign rented a propeller airplane which pulled a pro-Sanders sign around the area.
State Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley opened the event by reciting many of the issues Democrats are in favor of and blasted the Republicans as purveyors of “greed and anger and hate and willful ignorance."
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen called some of the GOP rhetoric “disgraceful” and Gov. Maggie Hassan criticized U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, whom she is expecting to face in a Senate race next year.
2. Agritourism Bill
BILL TO BROADEN AGRITOURISM RIGHTS
by LFDA Highlights, lfda.org, November 27, 2015
Rep. Robert Haefner and Rep. Tara Sad are sponsoring a 2016 bill that will increase the rights of New Hampshire farms to host weddings and other "agritourism" events.
HB 1141, the bill sponsored by Haefner and Sad, would explicitly add agritourism to the state definition of "agriculture" and "farming."
Last June the state Supreme Court ruled that weddings, receptions, and similar events are not included in the state's definition of farming, and therefore towns have the right to stop farms from hosting such events.
Supporters of that ruling argue that farms are not necessarily safe environments for large events, because farms do not have to satisfy the same safety requirements as entertainment venues. The value of neighboring properties may also decrease if rural farms turn into busy wedding venues.
On the other hand, agritourism supporters argue that the income from hosting events is essential to the survival of farms in today's economy. Arecent study from Plymouth State University also found that agritourism contributes roughly $300 million to the state's economy.
3. Safety Net Politics and NH
The politics of poverty, safety nets
Editorial, concordmonitor.com, November 29, 2015
Last Sunday, “What Turned My Blue State Red,” the lead story in the Week in Review section of the New York Times, was by former Monitor reporter and New Hampshire presidential primary veteran Alec MacGillis. Once reliably Democratic states like Kentucky and West Virginia, MacGillis found, began voting Republican – and the switch began before the collapse of the coal mining industry.
The more a state’s residents rely on government benefits like food stamps, the more pronounced the tilt to the right was. The phenomenon can be found across the south and, somewhat startlingly, in Maine, the state with the second highest percentage – after Kentucky – of residents on food stamps in the nation. Mainers have twice elected Paul LePage, a blustering, uncouth avowed dismantler of the social safety net, as their governor.
In theory, the more a state benefits from government programs the more strongly it should support the party most willing to confer those benefits – Democrats. So why don’t they? Why do people who’ve been helped by their government oppose the very programs that helped them and their families, and vote for candidates who wanted to reduce or abolish them?
MacGillis found a few reasons. They don’t explain the whole story, but they’re certainly a big part of it, a part that can be seen at work in New Hampshire. First, only a small percentage of the poor and near poor vote at all. There are lots of reasons for that, including Republican efforts to make voting harder in the name of fraud prevention, and the feeling of powerlessness that comes with being poor.
In the 2014 midterm election, 65 percent of Hopkinton’s registered voters went to the polls. In Stewartstown, one of the state’s poorest communities, the turnout was 41 percent.
Move one step up the five-step economic ladder and many more people vote, but they now vote for Republicans far more than they once did. Chalk that up to human nature. People who’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps (think presidential candidate and one-time food stamp recipient Ben Carson) expect others to do the same. Having worked very hard, they resent welfare recipients who won’t and above all those who cheat the system. Welfare fraud is rare, but its effect on voting patterns is large.
“These voters are consciously opting against a Democratic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people – especially the undeserving benefit-recipients in their midst,” MacGillis wrote. To hear a neighbor on disability boast about dragging his monster buck out of the woods is to become an opponent of the program and the party that backs it.
The vast majority of people receiving public support need it, at least temporarily. Though New Hampshire is a rich state, 8.3 percent of its residents – and 11 percent of its children – live in poverty. Forty percent of the students at Concord’s high school and middle school would qualify for free or reduced lunches.
Despite a willingness to work hard, some recipients lack the physical or mental ability to hold more than a low-income job.
Jobs in industry, especially the high-paying union jobs that allowed large numbers of high school dropouts and grads to earn a middle-class wage, are gone.
To ensure that the social safety net survives, those in it and those who’ve climbed up from it need to vote. Doing everything possible to eliminate fraud and the perception that many receiving help are unworthy of it will strengthen, not weaken, the net. What’s also missing, now that unions no longer play a big role, is an everyday educational and support presence in the lives of the poor and lower middle class, a role Democrats played long ago.
AND NATIONALLY
4. Can We Keep Out the Right-Wingers Instead?
You Are More Than 7 Times as Likely to Be Killed by a Right-Wing Extremist Than by Muslim Terrorists
by Ian Millhiser, thinkprogress.org, November 30, 2015
Friday afternoon, one week after elected officials all over the country tried to block Syrian refugees from entering their states in an apparent effort to fight terrorism, a white man in Colorado committedwhat appears to be an act of terrorism in a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Though the details of Robert Lewis Dear’s motives for killing three people in the clinic and injuring nine others are still being revealed, Dear reportedly told law enforcement “no more baby parts,” an apparent reference to heavily edited videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress, which numerous politicians have cited to falsely claim that Planned Parenthood sells “aborted baby parts.” Dear’s actions, in other words, appear to be an act of politically motivated terrorism directed against an institution widely reviled by conservatives.
Though terrorism perpetrated by Muslims receives a disproportionate amount of attention from politicians and reporters, the reality is that right-wing extremists pose a much greater threat to people in the United States than terrorists connected to ISIS or similar organizations. As UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.”
Kurzman and Schanzer’s methodology, moreover, may underestimate the degree to which domestic terrorists in the United States are motivated by right-wing views. As they describe the term in their New York Times piece, the term “right-wing extremist” primarily encompasses anti-government extremists such as members of the sovereign citizen movement, although it also includes racist right-wing groups such as neo-Nazis. Thus, it is not yet clear whether Dear, who made anti-abortion remarks but also reportedly referenced President Obama, was motivated in part by the kind of anti-government views that are the focus of Kurzman and Schanzer’s inquiry.
Kurzman and Schanzer also surveyed hundreds of law enforcement agencies regarding their assessment of various threats. Of the 382 agencies they spoke with, “74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction,” while only “39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations.”
5. Lies Beget Violence
Republican Candidates Finally Comment On Shooting, Continue False Attacks On Planned Parenthood
by Katie Valentine, thinkprogress.org, November 29, 2015
Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabeee responded to the deadly shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood Sunday by reiterating false claims that the organization sells babies’ body parts.
Trump said the attack was “terrible” and that Robert Lewis Dear, who allegedly killed two civilians and one police officer, was a “maniac.” But he didn’t directly comment on the potential political motives of the shooter, who, according to multiple outlets, said “no more baby parts” to law enforcement officials after the shooting.
Instead, he referenced claims that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue.
“I will tell you, there is a tremendous group of people that think it’s terrible, the videos that they’ve seen, with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car,” Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Now I know some of the tapes were perhaps not pertinent. I know a couple of people that were running for office or are running for office on the Republican side were commenting on tapes that weren’t appropriate. But there were many tapes that are appropriate… and there are people that are extremely upset about it.”
The claims that Planned Parenthood is selling parts of aborted babies emerged over the summer, when a video of Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services was published online by a group that has close ties to an anti-abortion organization. In the video, Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Deborah Nucatola explains — without the knowledge that she’s being filmed — how her organization deals with the donation of fetal tissue for research purposes. Anti-abortion activists and politicians have jumped on the video, saying it proves that Planned Parenthood is selling fetal tissue. But in the video, Nucatola says the organization is involved in “tissue donation.” And in a scene that didn’t make the cut in the published, five-minute video, Nucatola says “Nobody should be ‘selling’ tissue. That’s just not the goal here.”
Fiorina also responded to the shooting Sunday, calling the attack a “tragedy.” But she denied that rhetoric about Planned Parenthood selling babies’ body parts could have contributed to violence towards the organization.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Sunday whether language by Fiorina, who Wallace called “one of the toughest critics… of Planned Parenthood’s alleged harvesting of body parts,” could have incited violence against the organization. Fiorina brushed off the idea and reiterated claims that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts.
“First, it is not alleged,” she said. “Planned Parenthood acknowledged several weeks ago they would no longer take compensation for body parts, which sounds like an admission they were doing so.”
Fiorina has been hugely critical of Planned Parenthood during her campaign, calling for the organization to be defunded and using graphic language to describe abortions. But she reiterated Sunday that she doesn’t think that’s contributed to violence towards Planned Parenthood.
“This is so typical of the left to immediately demonize the messenger, because they don’t agree with the message,” she said. “What I would say to anyone who tries to link this terrible tragedy to anyone who opposes abortion or opposes the sale of body parts is, this is typical left-wing tactics.”
Mike Huckabee also commented on the attack Sunday. On CNN’s State of the Union, Huckabee called the shooting “mass murder” and “absolutely unfathomable.” But, like Fiorina, he also brought up claims that Planned Parenthood is selling body parts.
“I think that’s a little bit disingenuous on the part of Planned Parenthood to blame people, who have a strong philosophical disagreement with the dismembering of human babies and with the selling of body parts, to say that we would like to retaliate by sending some mad man into a clinic to kill people,” he said.
Details are still coming out about the attack and about its alleged shooter, Dear. But Planned Parenthood responded to updates on the political motives of Dear on Saturday.
“We’ve seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns against abortion providers and patients over the last few months,” Vicki Cowart, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, said. “That environment breeds acts of violence. Americans reject the hatred and vitriol that fueled this tragedy. We do not accept this environment as normal. We should not have to live in a world where accessing health care includes safe rooms and bullet proof glass.”
Why Hate Speech by Presidential Candidates is Despicable
by Robert Reich, robertreich.org, November 29, 2015
On Friday, a gunman killed three at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. Later, in explaining his motive to the police, he said“no more baby parts.”
Last Monday, gunmen opened fire on Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis who were demanding action against two white Minneapolis police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark, 24, an unarmed black man, on Nov. 15.
Evidence shows the accused shooters were linked to white supremacist organizations operating online.
Meanwhile, the FBI reports an upturn in threats on mosques and Muslims in the United States.
In Connecticut, police are investigating reports of multiple gunshots fired at a local mosque. Two Tampa Bay-area mosques in Florida received threatening phone messages. One of the calls threatened a firebombing.
In an Austin suburb, leaders of the Islamic Center of Pflugervillediscovered feces and torn pages of the Qur’an.
Hate crimes will never be eliminated entirely. A small number of angry, deranged people inevitably will vent their rage at groups they find threatening. Some will do so violently.
But this doesn’t absolve politicians who have been fueling such hatefulness.
Perpetrators of hate crimes often take their cues from what they hear in the media. And the recent inclination of some politicians to use inflammatory rhetoric is contributing to a climate of hate and fear.
Carly Fiorina continues to allege, for example, that Planned Parenthood is selling body parts of fetuses.
Although the claim has been proven baseless, it’s been repeated not only by Fiorina but also by other candidates. Mike Huckabeecalls it “sickening” that “we give these butchers money to harvest human organs.”
Even in the wake of Friday’s Colorado shootings, Donald Trumpreferred to videos “with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car.”
Some candidates are also fomenting animus toward Muslims.
Huckabee says he’d “like for Barack Obama to resign if he’s not going to protect America and instead protect the image of Islam.”
Ben Carson says allowing Syrian refugees into the United States is analogous to exposing a neighborhood to a “rabid dog.” Last September Carson said he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”
Since the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris earlier this month, Trump has advocated reg
He’s also claimed that Muslim-Americans in New Jersey celebrated by the “thousands” when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, although there’s no evidence to back that claim.
Indeed, much of Trump’s campaign is built on hatefulness. And Trump not only fails to condemn violence he provokes but finds excuses for it.
After a handful of white supporters recently punched and attempted to choke a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his campaign rallies, Trump said “maybe he should have been roughed up.”
Trump began his campaign last June by falsely alleging Mexican immigrants are “bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Weeks later in Boston, two brothers beat with a metal poll and urinated on a 58-year-old homeless Mexican national. They subsequently told the police “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.“
But instead of condemning that brutality, Trump excused it bysaying “people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again.”
I’m not suggesting Trump, Carson, Fiorina, or any other presidential candidate is directly to blame for hate crimes erupting across America.
But by virtue of their standing as presidential candidates, their words carry particular weight. They have a responsibility to calm people with the truth rather than stir them up with lies.
In suggesting that the staff of Planned Parenthood, Muslims, Black Lives Matter protesters, and Mexican immigrants are guilty of venal acts, these candidates are fanning the flames of hate.
This itself is despicable.
6. Whither Millenials?
What’s Up With Millennials?by Nancy LeTourneau, washingtonmonthly.com, November 25, 2015
The millennial generation is a nightmare for Republicans. They are more diverse, more urban, more college-educated, more tolerant and more liberal than their predecessors. The result is that in 2008 and 2012, they voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. In 2016, this generational cohort is predicted to make up 38% of the electorate. So it should come as no surprise that the topic of millennials has been addressed recently by two conservative writers: Carl Wagner at Real Clear Politicsand Donald Devine at The American Conservative.
Before taking a look at what these two writers have to say about millennials, it is important to keep in mind that conservatives often cling to the assumption that we all get more conservative with age. As the old saying goes:
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
But the trouble with that assumption is that research has proven that it is a myth. Here’s what Wagner has to say about that:
Over the past 100 years generations have tended to vote, for most of their lives, for the party on which they cut their political teeth. The “Greatest Generation” came of age during the FDR presidency and voted the Democratic nominee in every election (except the Eisenhower/Stevenson campaigns) for the next three decades. Same with the boomers, who came of voting age en masse in 1972. Nixon won them overwhelmingly and they voted for every Republican presidential candidate until 1992.
Wagner’s whole premise is that the GOP is in big trouble if they don’t do something different.
If Republicans don’t change their tune and their tactics, the “wall” Donald Trump says he wants to build won’t be on the U.S.-Mexican border, it will be between the Republican Party and victory in 2016 - and for decades to come.
Devine takes a different approach. He tries to argue that millennials aren’t as liberal as they’ve been made out to be. He makes the case that they don’t favor bigger government if it means paying higher taxes. But here are the two arguments that I found fascinating. First of all:
Millennials reported closer relationships with their families and were much more supportive of a responsibility to care for elderly parents than earlier generations. These do not seem to be wildly leftist views.
And secondly:
Pew found fewer millennials considered themselves religious, patriotic, or environmentalist than any earlier generation. Still, 86 percent said that they believed in God, although with less certainty than older Americans, and only 11 percent said they did not believe at all.
What Devine has done is fall for another myth - that liberals don’t believe in God and family simply because those are the spheres where the whole idea of “freedom” comes into play for them (as opposed to conservatives, who actually want to expand the government’s reach into decisions about religion and family).
On a purely anecdotal level, what I noticed about millennials from spending a lot of time working with them in my previous profession is that they don’t trust big institutions. That doesn’t bode well for liberals, but is understandable in light of the government’s failures going all the way back to Vietnam and Nixon up until the Iraq War and the Great Recession. They’ve also witnessed the corruption in large religious and nonprofit institutions.
But what I also noticed is that millennials have a great deal of trust in themselves…and this very old (by millennial’s standards) quote from Margaret Mead:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
7. The Candidate from Dark Money
Marco Rubio’s operation is relying on unprecedented dark money spending
by Andrew Prokop, vox.com, November 24, 2015
Marco Rubio's been called many things this primary season. A rising star. The GOP establishment's last, best hope. Sweaty.
Let's add one more to the list: He's the dark money candidate.
Rubio has benefited from anonymous, undisclosed cash to a degree that's unprecedented for a modern presidential primary contender. Indeed, the vast majority of ads aired to promote Rubio so far this year have been funded by a single group — one that won't reveal its funders.
And Rubio is unique in this. According to data from NBC News and SMG Delta, ads promoting every other candidate in both parties have been overwhelmingly funded either by the candidates themselves or by Super PACs (which disclose their donors).
This pro-Rubio group — the Conservative Solutions Project, a nonprofit — keeps its fundraising sources anonymous. It can raise, and has been raising, tons of money, and spending it on pro-Rubio ads, without telling the public where that money came from. And as of early November, it was the second-largest advertiser in the entire 2016 race, according to the Associated Press's Julie Bykowicz.
Campaign finance watchdogs are appalled. "Never before" have we seen an anonymously funded group like this "seemingly shoulder sole responsibility for a presidential candidate’s TV advertising in multiple early presidential primary states," says Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center. "It's a huge new problem." (A Rubio spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment on the topic.)
There have been various (excellent) one-off reports about all this over the past few months — first from National Journal, then from the New York Times, then from theAssociated Press, then the Times again. Yet this highly unusual situation hasn't really become central to the media narrative of Rubio's candidacy.
It should. At least $8.4 million has been spent on these pro-Rubio ads so far. Who provided the money?
And what might these generous donors hope to get in return?
Why dark money groups have avoided presidential primaries — until now
"Dark money" groups — nonprofits that don't have to publicly disclose their funding sources — have become increasingly popular among wealthy donors over the past few years, on both the left and right.
But there's a catch. Most groups like these were created under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, and that means they have to be "operated exclusively to promote social welfare," according to the IRS. So they're not supposed to exist just to help candidates win elections — and they're especially not supposed to just help one candidate win one election. So while some dark money groups have seriously pushed the limits of this definition, they've generally been hesitant to get involved in presidential primaries, due to concern about legal exposure.
That's changing this year. Despite the potential legal risk, the allure of extra anonymous cash has proved too tempting for the many candidates' operations to turn down. By July, supporters of eight GOP candidates — including Rubio, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum — had also set up dark money groups.
"These nonprofits are being created by presidential campaigns for one reason — and that is to allow secret money to be given to benefit them," says Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21.
Yet the other candidates' nonprofits have, for the most part, not seemed particularly noteworthy so far. That’s because they’ve stayed away from one of the biggest and most visible expenses of traditional campaigns — TV advertising. (The Jeb Bush–affiliated dark money group, for example, has described itself as a policy development operation.)
Rubio's dark money group takes us the furthest into uncharted territory — by spending millions on TV ads
The Conservative Solutions Project describes itself as a nonprofit focused on "issue education" — not on the 2016 elections. But it’s been spending heavily on TV spots that look a whole lot like ordinary campaign ads for Marco Rubio.
Take the one below, which shows Rubio speaking about American greatness for nearly 30 seconds, over soaring music and patriotic imagery like billowing American flags — you'll notice that specific issues are absent from the spot:
The ad never advocates that the viewer vote for Marco Rubio, and indeed never even mentions that there's a campaign going on. But it's clearly trying to make viewers feel really, really good about this Rubio guy while he's running for president.
The other ads are similar. Some have a policy fig leaf — for instance, the group's first adstrashed Obama's nuclear deal with Iran and urged people to tell their senators to "join Marco Rubio" in opposition to the deal. But they were clearly aimed at promoting Marco Rubio's opposition to the deal as a special and noteworthy thing, even though every Republican senator and GOP presidential candidate also opposed it.
In an email, Jeff Sadosky, a spokesperson for the Conservative Solutions Project, said the purpose of the group's ad spending was "to drive opposition to the President's dangerous deal with Iran and to highlight effective methods of communicating with American families so that we win the battle of ideas and are able to enact conservative solutions to the problems they face." He added that the group also supports "an overhaul of our nation’s tax code" and "restoring our military and America’s standing in the world."
But much of the group’s spending has been targeted at the first primary and caucus states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. So, though the group can't say it, it’s apparent to basically everyone that the true purpose of these ads is to introduce Rubio, his oratory, and some of his policy views to voters at the start of primary season.
This group is really, really closely tied to Rubio's team
Though the Conservative Solutions Project calls itself an independent group, it’s effectively an extension of the operation trying to elect Rubio president. Consider:
It has the same root name and some of the same consultants as a pro-Rubio Super PAC called "Conservative Solutions PAC."
Its current president is Pat Shortridge, a top adviser to Rubio's 2010 Senate campaign. Its founder was J. Warren Tompkins, who is currently running that pro-Rubio Super PAC but still sits on the Conservative Solutions Project's board.
Though founded in January 2014, the group kept a very low profile until just before Rubio was to announce his presidential campaign, when National Journal's Scott Bland first reported its existence.
The group decided to voluntarily reveal how much money it had raised in July, right around the time campaigns and Super PACs were disclosing their fundraising — in an apparent attempt to make the overall haul of Rubio’s operation look more impressive.
Perhaps most significantly — in contrast to several other major candidates, Rubio’s own campaign hadn’t paid for any TV ads at all yet as of mid-November. (It justreleased its first ad on Monday.) This hesitance was likely because the campaign knew the Conservative Solutions Project had Rubio covered on the airwaves. "The candidate can stand back and not make a single TV ad buy, knowing that his ad campaign is being bankrolled by this dark money group," says Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center.
Even Jeb Bush's allies — surely no opponents of big money in politics — are scoffing at all this, albeit a tad opportunistically. "It’s cynical to run as the creature of new, fresh — while it’s all secret dark money," Bush Super PAC strategist Mike Murphy told Sasha Issenberg last month. That same week, Bush communications director Tim Miller tweeted about Rubio's "secret money TV ads." (Bush, of course, raised vast, record-breaking sums of money for his Super PAC this year — but, again, those donors had to be disclosed.)
Campaign finance reformers are even blunter. "This is the most dangerous form of political money that exists," says Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21. "Unlimited secret contributions given to directly benefit an officeholder or candidate is the most dangerous and potentially corrupting money in American politics."
Accordingly, complaints against the nonprofit have been filed with the IRS (by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) and the Justice Department (by Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center). "My view is that this group is likely violating federal campaign finance law — any group trying to influence the election is supposed to register as a PAC and disclose its donors," says Ryan.
In his email to me, Sadosky said that "DC’s left-wing elites are incredibly afraid" of the group’s "positive conservative message focused on solutions." Asked if the Conservative Solutions Project had any plans to disclose its donors, he only said that it would file its required forms with the IRS — forms that are not made public.
Rubio has a history of being very close to his top donors
Dark money has its defenders. Bradley Smith, a former Republican FEC commissioner who has authored the article "In Defense of Political Anonymity," told me that while he hadn't followed this particular case too closely, "I always wonder, what do people think they'll learn?"
Disclosure of particular donors' identities, in Smith's view, tells us little about "what the candidates actually think." He adds, "If we put a bunch of names out there that nobody’s ever heard of, it wouldn’t make much difference; I doubt that anybody would find much that’s interesting."
Furthermore, Smith adds, the non-disclosing money will, in the end, be a small part of the overall spending on the presidential election — a drop in the bucket. Indeed, Rubio has recently won some public endorsements from billionaires such as Paul Singer and Frank VanderSloot. If he wins over the GOP establishment, more money will pour in, making the Conservative Solution Project's spending look quaint.
But politicians owe the most to people who've had their backs the earliest. And Rubio has shown a propensity to remember his financial backers in the past.
For instance, in 2008, the Miami Herald's Marc Caputo reported on how Rubio — then speaker of the Florida state House — "quietly slipped tough-to-spot language" into a bill to help "a friend and political money-man bid on a major fuel contract in a $265 million turnpike overhaul proposal." (The donor, Max Alvarez, had previously said Rubio was "like a son to him.")
And Rubio's closeness with donor and billionaire auto dealer Norman Braman is even more remarkable. As the New York Times's Michael Barbaro and Steve Eder chronicled, Rubio fought hard to win state funding for both a cancer center and a genomics center that were named after Braman. Afterward, Rubio went to work for Braman's company as a lawyer for a few months, Braman gave $100,000 to fund Rubio's teaching salary at Florida International University, and Rubio's wife, Jeanette, became a paid adviser to Braman's charitable foundation despite little experience in philanthropy. This year, Braman gave $5 million to Rubio's Super PAC.
Furthermore, there's the precedent that's being set — which stretches far beyond Rubio. "If the Conservative Solutions Project gets away with this, then it will become the new normal," says Ryan. "Candidates will offer a dark money option to any of their billionaires who don’t want to be publicly associated with the candidate for whatever reason." Billionaires could be able to secretly fund these operations with impunity.
Earlier this year, Rubio was asked at a New Hampshire town hall about all the outside money flowing into the election. "Full disclosure and sunlight into all these expenditures is critical to getting to the root of this problem," Rubio replied, according to the New York Times.
"As long as you know who’s behind the money and how much they’re giving and where they’re spending it," he continued, "I think that’s the sunlight that we need."
FINALLY couplet
The Republican platform?
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