Conservative Billionaires Think They Can Buy Democratic Primaries-- Can They?

The day after the New York congressional primaries, geniuses in the mass media, including in New York City, were running around asking how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spells her name. They missed the boat on that one-- missed it entirely. Now they're missing the boat on another big story-- that Republican billionaires are spending heavily in Democratic primaries. They want to pick the Democratic nominees, just the way they pick the Republican nominees. I sent one of the smartest mainstream media guys a tip-off about it. His response was "hey man, will def take a look and give it some thought! maybe not today, buried. but this week. will be in touch." Let's see, that was on August 8 so it's no longer "this week," nor even the week after.

The money is being funneled into Democratic primaries by one of the shadiest conservative operatives in American politics, Nancy Jacobson who controls a network of SuperPACs through her No Labels/Problem Solvers outfits. I first noticed when she was up to when she dumped a ton of last minute sewer money into the IL-03 race pitting progressive Marie Newman against right-wing Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. Marie was winning the race when a tidal wave of Jacobson slime flooded the district, one smear after another. In the end all the No Labels garbage ads saved Lipinski's neck. He beat Newman 48,675 (51.1%) to 46,530 (48.9%). Who put up the millions of dollars for a Democratic primary? Republicans and conservative Democrats. One name I noticed today was in a letter from progressive candidate for Rhode Island Lt. Governor, Aaron Regunberg, running against a conservative Republican with a "D" next to his name, Dan McKee (who took $150,000 from the Walton family and from Jonathan Sackler, the big Bobby Jindal and Joe Lieberman financial backer and the pharmaceutical billionaire behind the nation’s OxyContin crisis. The name I recognized from the Wall Sreet billionaire campaign to save Lipinski was Tony Davis, a Rahm Emanuel ally who founded and is president of Linden Capital Partners. He just dumped $50,000 into the relatively low-profile Rhode Island race.

"We think," wrote Regunberg, "this is just the beginning of the corporate dark money coming into our state to support Dan McKee... I’m proud to run a campaign that doesn’t take money from Wall Street, corporate PACs, fossil fuel interests, drug manufacturers or the gun lobby. We don’t have out-of-state millionaires and billionaires, because we have something more powerful-- the people. And in a fight with Big Money, the people can win."

I hope he's right because billionaire Republicans are spending big to defeat progressive Democrats in every part of the country. And that trend is accelerating right now. James Rupert Murdoch-- yeah, the Fox guy-- gave Jacobson SuperPACs to support conservative Democrat Darren Soto against Alan Grayson in their primary. Jacobson is also spending dark money in favor of Arizona conservative Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick in her primary against Matt Heinz. Sad Horrifying that the DCCC and EMILY's List and the Republican billionaires-- including James Murdoch-- behind the Progress Tomorrow right-wing PAC, are all spending money against the progressive in the Tucson primary, Matt Heinz, and trying to bolster Kirkpatrick. So far they've spent half a million dollars to make sure the Democratic nominee is a conservative. Ironically, the ugliest and most vicious and untruthful of all the ads are from EMILY's List, a group that never used to but now absolutely hates progressive men even more than the DCCC or the GOP does.

Jacobson's web of sleazoid SuperPACs include innocuous-sounding outfits like United for Progress, United Together, Forward Not Back, Progress Tomorrow, Patriotic Americans PAC, Citizens for a Strong America, etc, but they are entirely funded by contributions from 5 and 6-figure right wing donors, such as Rupert Murdoch and his son, Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan Selig and Wheels Inc. executive Jim Frank. As of Friday they had poured almost $600,000 into the smear campaign against Grayson. Jacobson has already lost in primary races for right-wing Democrats John Morganelli (PA) against Susan Wild (PA) and against Debra Haaland for No Labels DINO, Damon Martinez in Albuquerque.

Darren Soto is exactly the kind of fake Democrat Jacobson, the Murdochs and other GOP billionaires want to see beat progressives like Grayson. Soto voted to prosecute all abortions as murder and voted to force women who want an abortion to undergo a humiliating procedure called "transvaginal ultrasound." Since being primaried by Grayson he's been apologizing for those votes, saying he "made a mistake." He hasn't apologized for the votes that earned him "A" ratings from the NRA-- twice. And because of those hair-raising votes, the NRA endorsed him. He voted for Trump-sponsored laws 58 times in Congress and both times impeaching Trump came up in Congress, Soto voted NO. The reason No Labels is so enthusiastic about him is because he has said that he is "open-minded" about phasing out Social Security benefits or eliminating them altogether, No Labels' top issue.

Meanwhile, Soto is one of Congress' most corrupt Democrats, well known for partying with lobbyists, spending taxpayer money and campaign money illegally on personal items for himself and his wife. He has even accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign support from Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her charter school allies. Generally speaking he's been a big waste of a solidly blue seat in Congress, accomplishing nothing for anyone... but himself. That compares badly with Grayson's record:

During a debate with Grayson two weeks ago, Soto claimed "to be a great champion of women’s rights," a lie Grayson directly challenged, bringing up the specifics of Soto's shameful voting record-- like voting twice to criminalize abortion so that doctors could be charged with murder for performing one. Soto had no answer... except to say he regrets those votes. He doesn't regret them enough to turn down the help he's getting now from the anti-Choice extremists who are flooding central Florida with lies against Grayson and nonsensical assertions of Soto's grandeur.

Blue America members have been helping Grayson with his election campaigns since 2006. And he's never let us down-- always one of the 2 or 3 best members of Congress and living up to his promises. He needs us again now. The primary is August 28 and he really needs to get on the air and respond to the lies Jacobson and Murdock are flooding TV and radio with. Please consider contributing what you can by clicking on the Blue America 2018 congressional elections thermometer on the right. As of yesterday another dark money PAC had bought ads on one of the big Spanish language radio stations-- one ad every hour until election day! That's called brain-washing. It's what fascists do; it's what Republicans do. Republican billionaires know their party is going to lose control of Congress in November. So they are working to defeat progressives and make certain friendly conservative DINOs become the nominees of the Democratic Party. We can't let this happen. It's our party, not theirs.