Did dark money help or hurt 3rd CD winner?
The relative positivity of the just-completed Democratic primary race for northern New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District seat was disturbed near the end by an invasion of “dark money.”
Among its sources were two groups whose donors weren’t disclosed and which put more than $300,000 into the race to help out Teresa Leger Fernandez, the eventual winner. Avacy Initiatives, with a Washington, D.C.-area address listed on Federal Election Commission documents, and Perise Practical Inc., of New York City, bought TV ads supporting Leger Fernandez.
These were positive ads, not the attack pieces often associated with an influx of “outside” campaign money. The standard playbook is for the candidate to stay positive and allow outside groups to do the dirty work of tearing down opponents.
Still, other Democrats in the 3rd CD were quick to blast the entry of dark money into the race. Aren’t Democrats, particularly liberals such as Leger Fernandez, supposed to oppose dark money in campaigns and, overall, the influence of big spending on American politics?
In this particular race, a majority of the seven candidates were proud liberals whose voting records in Congress probably wouldn’t have varied much. But Leger Fernandez was the candidate of many major pro-Democratic influencers, including EMILY’S List and NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Democrats argue they have to have their own big-spending independent groups, dark and otherwise, to counter similar entities on the Republican side.
They can’t unilaterally disarm.
But, in this case, the influx of dark money gave the other 3rd CD candidates an issue to use against Leger Fernandez. Isn’t it hypocritical for dark money to used for internecine campaign warfare among progressive Democrats?
As when public employee unions weighed in with big bucks to slime the opponents of Javier Gonzalez in his successful run for Santa Fe mayor in 2014, in a campaign that voters expected to be paid for with an evensteven $60,000 in public financing for each of the three candidates, outside spending creates the impression that liberal Democrats oppose bigmoney politics, except when the big money is on their side.
It’s unclear whether the dark-money ads helped or hurt Leger Fernandez, who was a strong candidate from the beginning. She got more positive ads on TV. But she also had to endure incoming from her opponents and was left to explain she had nothing to do with the outside support, while noting that she had endorsements from a list of national progressive groups.
She ended up winning the primary handily over runner-up Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative whose history as a victim of shenanigans by the Bush-Cheney administration had made her into a national figure and a progressive icon for some.
There’s a bit of a twist to this story. Avacy and Perise Practical, the independent spending entities that got the most attention in this campaign, are not on the lists of well-known Democratic super-PACs or prominent progressive groups.
Both Avcacy and Perise Practical made their first FEC filings only in May. The signer on both groups’ forms is one David Brett Krone. That’s apparently the same David B. Krone who was the highprofile chief of staff for Harry Reid, the former Democratic U.S. Senate majority leader from Nevada.
Krone, a Democrat, is Jewish and worked for years for a policy change that resulted in President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order against anti-Semitism in December. The controversial order effectively interpreted Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion, a move that could be used to penalize colleges as discriminatory for promoting campus movements in favor of divestment from, boycotting or sanctioning Israeli enterprises.
So the campaign spending supporting Leger Fernandez by two groups associated with Krone could well have been another negative reaction to Plame’s infamous 2017 tweet of an anti-Semitic article headlined “Jews are Driving America’s Wars.” She has repeatedly apologized, but the tweet controversy continued into the congressional campaign.
Still, unless the David B. Krone who filed the FEC reports for Avacy and Perile Practical ever speaks up, we’ll never know for sure what motivated their campaign spending or where their money came from.
That’s the problem with dark money. And at least when it comes to their own primaries, progressive Democrats should get over their addiction to its use.