Democrat Dark Money Group Tried To Portray GOP Candidates Like Josh Hawley As Left-Wing

A new report reveals that a dark-money group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) paid for political ads during the 2018 election cycle that were designed to suppress Republican voter turnout.

Even though these races happened in 2018, new details are coming to light that Democrat campaign operatives pretended to be right-wing in order to paint Republicans as insufficiently conservative. 

As one example, the group tried to paint Republican Josh Hawley as anti-Second Amendment.

Back in 2018, Dean Heller in Nevada and current Rep. Matt Rosendale, who were targeted by the group, lost their Senate races. Also targeted at the time were Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mike Braun (R-IN).

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Dark Money Overwhelmingly Benefits Democrats

For all of the moaning, groaning, and gnashing of teeth over “dark money” in politics that liberal Democrats love to do, turns out they are pretty good at taking advantage of it.

A Fox Business report says that during the 2020 election, over $1 billion in dark money exchanged hands, with Democrats tipping the scales with roughly $514 million going to liberal groups, and $200 million towards conservative groups.

President Joe Biden was no slouch in the dark money department either. His campaign benefited from about $174 million in “dark” or anonymous donations. A number that far exceeds Donald Trump, who only brought in $25.2 million.

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How Did It Work?

Axios reports the process like this. Senate Majority PAC is a high dollar Super PAC affiliated with Senate Democrats. Majority Forward is the nonprofit arm of that Super PAC.

In 2018, Majority Forward donated almost $2.7 million to another nonprofit PAC called Coalition for a Safe and Secure America (CSSA).

Of the $4 million raised in 2018 by that PAC, the bulk of it came from Majority Forward. CSSA in turn used those funds to finance mailers and digital ad campaigns in what they viewed as the most competitive Senate races that year.

The idea was to depict the GOP candidates as being soft on things like gun control, immigration, and taxes. Things that would make their conservative, and more than likely pro-Trump, base think twice about voting for them.

For instance in Nevada, Sen. Dean Heller (R) was the target of ads claiming he, “allowed almost 200,000 foreign workers a backdoor entry into our country.”

In Missouri, another ad portrayed now-Sen. Josh Hawley (R) as “siding with Washington liberals against gun owners.” In Indiana, Sen. Mike Braun (R) was portrayed as being pro-tax hike.

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Democrats: Spreading Disinformation And Dumb Ideas

Fighting disinformation is a high priority for Democrats going into 2022. However, what they deem misinformation often just means disagreement. 

Unless its Democrat groups pretending to be right-wing.

A prime example of Democrat campaign disinformation, one of CSSA’s ads in Missouri stated that Josh Hawley was a “career politician.”

The only other elected office Hawley held prior to his Senate run was as Missouri’s Attorney General. That hardly makes Hawley a candidate for “career politician-hood.”

Politics and elections are a messy business. No matter how distasteful it may be, Republicans will have to get their hands dirty in 2022.