It turns out that there are organized for-profit operations doing this and taking delivering barely more than 5% to the candidates. (Not referring to Act Blue)
We need to lead with the preface, which shows just how eager these rat-f%$s
are to suppress this information:
This investigation was originally developed for The New York Times, where
it underwent eight months of editing, multiple rounds of fact-checking, and
independent replication of the underlying methodology. The piece had a
scheduled publication date when requests for comment were sent. It was only
after the Times reached out to the subjects of the investigation for routine
comment that the Elias Law Group, representing the DCCC and DSCC, sent a
cease-and-desist letter demanding the paper not publish. Although the
paper’s fact-checkers and legal department later cleared the piece before
sending out a second round of requests for comment, the Times ultimately
decided to kill the piece.
The piece was subsequently slated for
publication at The Bulwark, where it underwent additional fact-checking,
data verification, and legal review. When requests for comment were sent to
the subjects of the investigation, lawyers representing the Progressive
Turnout Project and Mothership Strategies likewise responded with legal
letters demanding that the article not run. From there, publication was
repeatedly delayed. The piece cleared successive rounds of legal review.
When I asked for a committed publication date after months of delay, The
Bulwark conditioned publication on my accepting an extensive rewrite
prepared by its editors that, in my assessment, removed key empirical
findings without explanation, introduced claims contradicted by the data and
fact-checking record, and presented the subjects' legal defenses as my own
conclusions. When I declined to publish under those terms, the piece was
released back to me.
What follows is the complete investigation
that emerged from this year-long process.
To quote P.C. Hodgell, "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."
If you’ve ever donated to a Democratic campaign, you know the messages
never stop: “All hope is lost.” “We’re BEGGING.” “Quadruple-match EXPIRES in
180 MINUTES!” They arrive at all hours, claiming to be “close to tears”
because you haven’t sent $15.
Most of us dismiss them as annoying spam. But federal election records
reveal a hidden population of seniors for whom these messages prove
surprisingly effective. What reads as parody to one recipient may be
psychologically triggering for another.
To understand how this system works, I combined contribution data from the
Federal Election Commission with age data from voter registration lists,
covering more than 300 million donations. The donors who send money in
response to Democratic fundraising spam are overwhelmingly elderly, and a
surprisingly concentrated group of them accounts for the bulk of the money
raised.
Looking closely at the donation data can be heartbreaking. An 85-year-old
retiree in Oxford, Ohio made more than 7,800 donations totaling over
$648,000 to Democratic causes, more than double the estimated value of his
home. A 91-year-old woman residing in a senior living facility in
Indianapolis donated over 25,000 times, totaling over $250,000, burning
through money she may need for care.
………
Who is behind this flood? A thriving industry of digital-fundraising
consultants who specialize in offering spam as a service, and the political
action committees and candidates who adopt their methods. Together, they
form a broader network of fundraising that deploys these methods at
scale.
The most visible players in this ecosystem are what I call “spam PACs” —
organizations that use high-volume digital fundraising firms to raise
small-dollar contributions, only to sink a disproportionate share of those
funds right back into fundraising. They are built on a common financial model: outsized spending on
aggressive digital messaging that repeatedly extracts donations from a
disproportionately elderly group of donors. But these tactics have spread
throughout the party. Even the party’s own congressional campaign committees
and some of its most senior leaders have embraced the spam.
………
Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that
they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who
oversee multiple committees at once. The largest I found is a group of PACs
connected to the Progressive Turnout Project. Harry Pascal, a longtime
accountant turned Democratic fundraiser, is treasurer for the Progressive
Turnout Project PAC and seven additional PACs whose affiliated status allows
them to operate as a single network.
Through 2025, Pascal’s
network of PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors.
According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went
directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures
supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and
get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20
million more went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249
million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising
itself.
The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is little more than a pale echo of Mel Brooks' character Max Bialystock from his first film, The Producers.
I am not sure what to make of the most recent unemployment figures.
