Inside the Left's $80 Million Dark Money Attempt to Take Over Local Elections
by Spencer Brown, Townhall.com, April 20, 2022
After congressional Democrats repeatedly failed in their attempts to pass a radical federal takeover of elections and have been unable to stop red states from passing election security laws, a leftist dark money group is taking matters into its own hands. Their plan: elect thousands of sympathetic local election officials across the country to ensure Democrats retain power in the electoral process.
According to a report in POLITICO this week that revealed the plan, a group — Run for Something — is launching a three-year program with a goal of flooding local supervisor elections with $80 million to elect 5,000 officials with direct oversight of elections.
Run for Something's website states that it's mission is to get "progressives to run for down-ballot races in order to build sustainable power for Democrats in all 50 states," making their goal of taking over offices responsible for planning, executing, and certifying elections all the more concerning. Their website also curiously notes that it provides "behind-the-scenes mechanics" to its leftist candidates.
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"The program would recruit candidates in 35 states for everything from county probate judges in Alabama to county clerks in Kansas and county election board members in Pennsylvania — all offices that handle elections and will be on voters’ ballots between now and 2024," POLITICO reported of the plan that will include funding and staffing resources for those supervisory officials.
As POLITICO explains of Run for Something's fear-mongering efforts to get Democrat donors to open their wallets to support the local races:
Amanda Litman and Ross Morales Rocketto, Run for Something’s co-founders, call the project “Clerk Work” — a way-down-the-ballot effort of the type that Democratic donors and national groups have traditionally struggled to focus on.
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“Election subversion in 2024 is not going to be a mob storming the Capitol, it’s going to be a county clerk in Michigan or a supervisor of elections in Florida who decides to f[**]k the whole thing up,” Litman said. “The only way to make long-term democracy protection is by electing people who will defend democracy.”
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Partners include American Bridge, a Democratic group that compiles and shares opposition research, and Open Democracy PAC, a super PAC that’s spending on advertising to boost these candidates.
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“Election subversion in 2024 is not going to be a mob storming the Capitol, it’s going to be a county clerk in Michigan or a supervisor of elections in Florida who decides to f[**]k the whole thing up,” Litman said. “The only way to make long-term democracy protection is by electing people who will defend democracy.”
[...]
Partners include American Bridge, a Democratic group that compiles and shares opposition research, and Open Democracy PAC, a super PAC that’s spending on advertising to boost these candidates.
Run for Something plans to find their 5,000 candidates through advertising calls as well as hand-picking candidates from states across the country, according to the report. The group's donor pitch is based on what they see as a coming Republican attempt to subvert elections — even though it has been Republicans who've led the way with election security laws that Democrats have consistently opposed.
Leftist progressive groups have been increasingly focused on local elections, as seen from groups like George Soros' to elect district attorneys, often with disastrous results for the communities in which they serve.
"The $80 million dark-money project to elect left-wing election administrators has nothing to do with safeguarding democracy," noted Jason Snead, the executive director of Honest Elections Project Action. "This is about putting partisans and ideologues in charge of the local offices that run our elections and count our votes. It is detestable that these special interests are unnecessarily politicizing offices that should be impartial," Snead added. "We need to bolster the integrity of our elections by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat, but this dark money fueled plot puts confidence in our democracy in greater jeopardy."
