End Citizens United-- Still A DSCC/DCCC Scam For The Corrupt DC Establishment

End Citizen United's very ironic logo

What does it signify when a candidate is endorsed by a scammy campaign group called "End Citizens United?" Nothing whatsoever to do with the crucial goal of actually ending Citizens United. The campaign organization that uses that name really just has one over-arching goal: raising grassroots money for DSCC and DCCC establishment candidates. Once grassroots/netroots small dollar donors started understanding that the DCCC and DSCC are rotten and corrupt organizations, pushing establishment, status quo candidates and never candidates representing fundamental change, the two organizations cooked up End Citizens United as a way to keep the small dollar contributions flowing in their direction. DSCC and DCCC staffers started End Citizens United-- a super PAC-- not to end anything, just to direct grassroots money towards ConservaDem candidates who would not normally get it-- even if that meant occasionally throwing in a few progressive names to make it look legit.

If you look at their endorsement pages, you will always see a few bright shining progressive stars-- among the piles of shit-- to mislead people. They've been doing this since inception and it works for them. The first time I wrote about them was in 2015 when they started up-- and when they used Russ Feingold as a front to raise money for a slate of vile New Dems and Blue Dogs who are generally hated by progressives: Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA), Julia Brownley (New Dem-CA), Ami Bera (New Dem-CA), Annie Kuster (New Dem-NH), Raul Ruiz (New Dem-CA), hen-DSCC chair Michael Bennet (CO), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)...

At the time, I wrote that the more I looked into their initial e-mail, the more I smelled a rat and the more I looked into the group itself, "the less grassroots or progressive credibility I found. Its website looks like a phishing operation to collect e-mail addresses for partisan Democratic Party operations like the aforementioned DCCC and DSCC. The website's domain registration is hidden from the public-- very suspicious for a 'grassroots organization.' It smells like a scam, a New Dem/Blue Dog/DCCC scam using Russ Feingold as bait to lure naive, uninformed progressives into sending unaccountable cash. I hit reply and sent them an e-mail about their list of endorsees, 9 out of 11 of whom are grotesque DINOs who have spent their time in Congress crossing the aisle and voting with the Republicans-- Blue Dog shitheads like Kyrsten Sinema and Cheri Bustos and utterly worthless New Dems like Pete Aguilar, Scott Peters, Ann Kuster and Ami Bera. And the only senator on the list is DSCC chair Michael Bennet, one of the worst Democrats in that body. Stinky! The reply was an automated plea for money, typical of what one would expect from grifters. Beware."


The next candidate the grifters endorsed was "ex"-Republican-- and no friend of reform-- Patrick Murphy, a right-of-center and über-corrupt Florida New Dem. Have they changed since then? Nope-- although instead of Bennet dictating which Senate candidates to endorse, it's Schumer. What "progressive" or "reform" or "grassroots" group would pick Hickenlooper over Romanoff in Colorado? Or Sara Gideon over Betsy Sweet in Maine? Schumer's handpicked candidates in Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Mexico and Texas are also on the list. What about Charles Booker in Kentucky? Don't make me laugh. They never endorse progressives fighting for fundamental change against establishment shills.

Among their House candidates, they think "ex"-Republican Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran is a better pick than Eva Putzova, whose entire career has been about reform! How about their endorsement of New Dem Eliot Engel instead of Jamaal Bowman? That should tell you how grassroots and legit they are! Another worthless Blue Dog-- Kendra Horn (OK City)-- got their nod instead of reformer Tom Guild. By the way, Guild and Putzova have been fighting for DC statehood while Horn and O'Halleran are among the tiny handful of House Democrats who refuse to co-sponsor the pending statehood bill.

The scam operation has also jumped into the New Hampshire gubernatorial primary that pits the kind of establishment hack "End Citizens United" loves against the kind of reformer they fear. They endorsed a pro-corporate money-- at least for himself-- Democrat, Dan Feltes instead of the guy who actually wants to end Citizens United, Andru Volinsky. It's worth noting that the "End Citizens United operation in New Hampshire is headed by Jeff Taylor, whose brother, Nick Taylor, is Feltes' campaign manager. But, more important is a look at how sleazy Feltes has been about campaign finance reform. He's exactly as crooked as "End Citizens United" itself!

Gubernatorial candidate Dan Feltes is running ads on Facebook that claim “he isn't taking corporate PAC or LLC contributions, so the public can be sure their governor is working for them-- not himself.”

That message is consistent with Feltes’ record in the state Senate, where he’s sponsored bills to outlaw corporate campaign donations and to limit political activities of limited liability corporations.

But a review of Feltes’ campaign filings show that in his run for governor, he’s collected thousands of dollars from political action committees tied to industries like banking, real estate, car dealers, trial attorneys, doctors, and dentists. Gambling interests, several Concord lobbying firms, and corporate entities like Federal Express and Liberty Utilities also show up as campaign donors in his filings.

Feltes’s campaign has also taken advantage of what he’s derided as “the LLC loophole” by banking cash from three LLCs controlled by Ben Kelley, his own campaign treasurer. Kelley used the LLC loophole to donate $11,200 to Feltes’ campaign over the course of the past year. The per-person legal limit is $7,000, though wealthy donors can skirt that limit by donating additional money through LLCs. Three of those contributions, from three separate Kelley-linked LLCs-- Jarbel Realty LLC, 21 Perley Street LLC and JP Irving LLC-- came into the campaign on the same day last November.

The source of the money could only be pieced together by cross-checking LLC registration filings with campaign finance reports. And the donations to Feltes’s campaign-- by his campaign's own treasurer-- are the precise sort of arrangement Feltes himself has decried as undercutting “transparency and accountability” in how campaigns are funded.

Feltes, a Democrat, has made ending the loophole a centerpiece of his criticism of Gov. Chris Sununu, the incumbent he’s seeking to replace in November. In July, when Sununu vetoed Feltes’ most recent attempt (and his third in three years) to limit the ability of individuals to use multiple LLCs to funnel money to candidates, on the grounds it would limit speech, Feltes was quick to chastise.

“The people of New Hampshire should know who is funding elections,” Feltes, the Senate majority leader, said at the time. “Unfortunately today Governor Sununu sided with corporate special interests rather than Granite State voters.”

This week, the Feltes campaign offered varying explanations for the discrepancy between his campaign finance records, his advertising claims and his apparent change of heart on the role of corporate and LLC money in New Hampshire politics. In response to inquiries from NHPR Thursday, his campaign said it was returning up to $11,000 in LLC and other corporate contributions received after his official campaign announcement-- Sept. 3, 2019-- but would keep those collected before that date.

“People are increasingly concerned about corporate money in politics,” Feltes said in a statement to NHPR Thursday. “Which is why in this campaign we are not accepting corporate contributions, we’ve returned any and all such contributions received to date.”

Later in the day, Feltes campaign manager Nick Taylor said the collection of corporate and LLC donations was, in fact, intentional: “The reality is, we made a decision at the start of this campaign to not unilaterally disarm and tie one hand behind our back,” he said. Taylor did not explain how that view squared with Feltes’ multiple efforts to outlaw LLC loophole contributions over the years.

The video of Andru Volinsky tearing up an unsolicited corporate PAC check (directly above) wasn't good enough or compelling enough for the End Citizens United grifters. But I guess this was just fine for them: