Thank you for reporting on this. I have 25 years of experience doing digital marketing in Silicon Valley. I learned that the DCCC will only give its money to candidates who use their approved vendors. That seemed ripe for abuse to me, so I never got involved. the downside is the candidates are deprived of the best advice they can get.
And I will tell you from experience that these benchmarks are abysmal and well below industry standard that these people were working inside of a for-profit company they’d be fired.
I have personally unsubscribed and blocked all fundraising campaign emails because I just cannot stand the way they’re spamming people.
Thanks for your analysis. I've ignored most of the emotional garbage ("Wait, you're not supporting Dems and you're supporting Trump?") and unsubscribing seemed wrong. However, with the 1.6% efficiency, I can now unsubscribe to the "Mothership" in good conscience. I hope the DCCC will come to their senses and not use these creeps.
I tried to be one of those vendors once, but they would only put you on the list if you didn't work on any primary challengers to incumbents. Which is a good way to make it really hard for challengers to get good staff, especially for stuff like ad buying where they will need a consultant.
This money goes directly to the candidates. He set up all the Act Blue pages himself and doesn't take a cut (or at least didn't when I spoke to him last fall).
I've gotten to know a Charles a tiny bit over the past several years.
He does a great job promoting Democrats in down-ballot races and off-cycle elections, and focusing candidates who have a chance of winning. He posts fundraising updates and alerts social media (charlesgaba.com on Bluesky and @charles_gaba on Twitter). I only donate via his fund-raising pages.
His main focus is healthcare policy analysis (which is how I originally ran across his work). He was one of the first to analyze the relationship between Trump support in 2020 vs. COVID vaccinations/infections/deaths by House district. These days, he's been providing assessments of Medicaid losses in Republican House districts, and increases in Obamacare private insurance rate hikes due to the Republican's failure to continue expanded premium assistance.
one statement from a campaign spokesperson is no match for robo texts getting sent to hundreds of millions of people. the proliferation of scams flooding everyone's phones added to the sense that Biden was asleep at the wheel.
"The DNC needs to clean house", yes, and in more than just fundraising. The old guard (losers) must go and the young turks (winners) must lead. Fundraising is broken in both parties. I'm an independent voter and I gave a small donation to a Republican candidate 25 years ago. For the next 15 years I suffered with a blizzard of mailings and emails from the Republican party to give. Not learning my lesson I gave to a local democratic candidate 10 years ago and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of follow up. No emails, no calls, not texts. I gave again and also to other democratic candidates with the same outcome. I would never give to the DNC itself. I'm sure my experience would have been very different. So, give local and spare yourself the onslaught.
Ha! Some Republican did some small thing with actual integrity a couple of months ago, and, thinking myself way more important than I am, I sent them ten bucks as a thank you. OMG I am inundated daily. Never, ever, ever again. Except I'm getting old so I'll probably forget and.... 🙄
So grateful for this post! It breaks my heart to think of all the folks I know who are living in or near poverty and so desperate for change that they do without essentials in order to donate to Dems.
I'm one of them. My only income is Soc. Sec, and finding outn that my many $5-$10 donations just get swallowed by aparatchiks. No more donations to anyone until I can filter out the parasites.
I only donate directly to local democratic candidates & down ballot dem candidates through Actblue. BTW, ActBlue is not part of this Mothership network.
These guys are a effectively a huge tax on the whole party -- costing us both reputational capital and actual capital. We all just go on paying it despite getting no benefit back.
Agree or grassroots Dem aligned groups that register people to vote, keep in touch with them all the time & get them to the polls like Working America!
Mothership is charging clients far too much for fundraising, and its hyperbolic, slash-and-burn tactics are damaging to the broader ecosystem. That said, the 1.6% "political efficacy" figure cited in the article is misleading. Some of these PACs run independent campaigns that aren’t included in that statistic.
We shouldn't stop supporting Jon Ossoff just because his campaign previously used Mothership. If we want to help him win, the best way is to contribute directly through ActBlue, GiveGreen, or Oath.Vote - platforms where funds go directly to the candidate without a middleman taking a cut.
For the same reason, if we care about getting money out of politics, we shouldn't withhold support from End Citizens United/Let America Vote simply because they once worked with Mothership. AFAIK, both Ossoff’s campaign and ECU/LAV stopped using Mothership several years ago.
It's unfortunate that the ecosystem is being tainted by Mothership’s aggressive tactics, especially at a time when donors are already pulling back. I hope the author will consider clarifying the article to avoid causing harm to legitimate campaigns and organizations - particularly those that have long since cut ties with Mothership.
Thanks, Adam, for this deep look into Mothership. Have you done, or are you aware of, a comparable analysis of ActBlue which, based on my inbox/messages employs comparable high-hysteria tactics and appears to have similar linkages to the DNCC, DCCC, etc.?
ActBlueis a payment processor that doesn’t send emails. However! Their main sin is negligence. They could do a lot to clean up the ecosystem and choose not to.
For example, they could enforce standards on groups like Mothership and kick them off their platform if they don’t comply. Similar to the way Apple has rules for app developers who use Apple Pay.
But they have no particular lock-in or network effect to keep anyone with them. If you get kicked off ActBlue, that's a hindrance but it's not like digital fundraising can't happen otherwise. Plenty of other payment companies you can use even if they're not as well adapted for politics.
ActBlue reduces so much friction for donors that not using it would be a big negative. As a donor, I'd be skeptical of any campaign or PAC that isn't taking donations via ActBlue.
Thanks to everyone for the comments / clarifications. I have received so many "alarmist" text messages that include links to ActBlue that I pretty much reflectively block the numbers from which they come. It's probably not 'fair' to ActBlue, but it highlights the problem with the fundraising machinery. As Adam says, its really important for the party to clean up its fundraising act — and that would start with shutting down/out Mothership and its progeny/partners.
I’m 74 years old and the first and only time I donated money to a politician was when Kamala was running. I sent $ to her until the 6 or more texts a day asking for more felt so predatory that I finally unsubscribed from all of her asks. And then found out toward the end that her campaign raised billions and was still asking for more. Infuriating! I did also donate to a number of down ballot candidates and feel good about that but I will never donate to a presidential campaign ever again and will seriously consider and reconsider before donating down ballot. I have thought during my entire voting life that campaign finance reform is necessary and that has been my reason for not donating before 2024. The amount of money in political campaigns is disgusting. My donations now go to public tv, public radio, and animal and planetary conservation.
Exactly. It’s hard to argue that money isn’t important when it is. But what if instead of every $10 donation, the candidates organized events — No Kings! comes to mind — to engage their supporters in democratic speech?
If you’ve not seen Joyce Vance’s interview with Shomari Figures take a half and hour to watch it. It’s the most hopeful I’ve felt in months.
Re-analysis with corrected methodology shows the 1.6% efficiency claim is wrong by an order of magnitude. Several commenters (Rob, Johan, Jake, Tracey, Kim) identified the fatal flaw: Adam's analysis excluded Schedule E independent expenditures (money spent directly on campaign activities like ads and voter outreach) while counting only direct transfers to candidates. Running the same FEC queries with the missing Schedule E endpoint reveals $122M in candidate-related independent expenditures that were ignored, bringing the true efficiency rate to ~20%, not 1.6%. The core critique about excessive consultant fees ($282M to Mothership) remains valid, but excluding an entire category of legitimate political spending that PACs are designed to perform undermines the post's central claim. https://github.com/abonica/Mothership-Strategies-FEC-Analysis/pull/2/files
Even if Mothership has an efficiency rate closer to your estimate, it is still an abomination. The Harris campaign rightly called them out on it last year. Hell, people have been calling them out for years. This "side hustle" by Greg Berlin, Charles Starnes, and Jake Lipsett has become a giant tick feeding on the lifeblood of the party fundraising apparatus.
This is amazing work. I have been deleting and reporting these spammers for months, as have most people I know. I suspected something was up, and now I know. I donate directly to candidates and organizations through their web sites.
There is a cure. Don’t give them money. Fed up, I unsubscribe to every email I get with their hyperbolic messages. I only donate money directly to candidates through ActBlue. My concern is that the right-wing is out to destroy ActBlue.
How do we know if ActBlue is any better? I find their tactics to be queasily similar to the ones Adam is calling out. A nonstop barrage of requests for money to save the world for over 20 years now. Are they doing better than Mothership? I genuinely do not know. Did they help pave the way for this type of all-caps emergency-mode hammer-on-your-door fundraising? Looks like it to me and it’s not an approach that gets my donations any more.
Isn’t the point of PACs to do campaigning *independent* of the candidate and party? These organizations were never designed as simple pass-throughs—they actually run their own ads. Claiming that only the cash they hand directly to candidates matters to their “efficiency” seems wildly disingenuous.
This comment seems a bit disingenuous if you read the actual post. These PACs clearly aren't using the vast majority of money raised to do campaigning either. $282M in consultancy fees alone! And then there's the payments to vendors who spam us.
"I agree with the general point even if the actual numbers are fake!" isn't exactly a defense. I'm not at all saying that Mothership is an efficient organization. I'm saying this methodology, of focusing entirely on direct transfers to candidates, is about as relevant as claiming that Red Cross is a wildly inefficient organization because it spends so little on direct cash payments to disaster victims.
My understanding is that the figures *also* include PAC expenditures that appear campaign-related (e.g. hiring canvassers).
I will say, the overall efficiency this article claims might be a little low. Mothership could also be receiving funds to place digital media buys, which could be apart of legitimate campaign activities. But the overall picture is pretty damning.
Your understanding is at odds with the text itself, which highlights one single $19M expense for canvassing, yet still claims a *total* of $11M as the numerator for "efficiency".
Again: I am not at all suggesting Mothership is a good PAC. I am suggesting that the methodology here would make even a good PAC look terrible.
Rob, I had the same thoughts. I think the article raises some very important points but when the thesis is based around the 1.6% efficiency claim and that claim is so clearly suspect, it makes it hard to evaluate the rest of the arguments Adam is making.
Ah good flag. I think a better number would include all campaign activities — not just transfers. But it's harder to divine because not all vendors or payments are obvious.
The FEC filings are pretty easy to read, and the main expenditure categories are "operating expenses", "transfers to affiliated committees" (which one could pessimistically assume are just to other Mothership entities), "contributions to other committees" (which are the ones to actual candidates...although for whatever reason *some* of those get listed in the next category instead), and "independent expenditures", which include paying for campaign ads, rallies, etc.
What is so frustrating is that just looking at operating expenses gets you the story you need! PTP, Mothership's largest PAC, spent almost $70M of its $83M on operating expenses! If you just don't want to do the work, that's a fine metric. But to take the "contributions to other committees" line item yet ignore "independent expenditures", which I assume is what was done here...well that doesn't seem like an innocent mistake. It's either a complete misunderstanding of what PACs are meant to do, a blatant attempt to produce eye-popping numbers whether they're meaningful or not, or both.
Yes this is my question. Specifically, the author separates out "media buys" as though they are operational expenses (like ad buys marketing the firm itself) when it seems much more likely to me that those ad buys are for independent expenditure ads for candidates or causes (ie, exactly what I would expect those firms to do with those funds). I don't think TV ads are an especially good use of political dollars either, not an explanation of what is included in that number (and not) would be helpful here.
The FEC reports PACs need to file (I linked one above) are required to list fundraising as operational expenses, but actual campaign advertising as "independent expenditures". So media buys have *already* been separated into the two different categories in these public filings. The author does not choose to ignore actual campaign activities because it would be difficult to identify them; he does so for...other reasons.
It's only an "independent expenditure" if it directly identifies a candidate. If it is for a broader goal, like, say *Turnout*, and involves sending postcards directly to every eligible voter in an area saying "your registration to vote deadline is X" - that's operating expenses.
The other way you can ID these scam text is by their opt-out process. Many times you’ll see the text, “StoptoEnd” or “Stop2End”. Unfortunately, typing these prompts doesn’t stop the text from flooding your inbox.
I’ve spent more time than I can count typing variations of both to stop these spam text from flooding my feed. I’ve resorted to blocking the contacts, which quiets the noise for a few days. Then boom, they’re back.
I met a guy who worked for one of these orgs, and he explains how they “Burned the list” to max out donations. I never looked at those texts the same way again.
Don't respond to text messages, just delete and report junk. If you respond to their text message they know they found a valid cell phone number.
They usually just use random numbers in their autodialer. When someone responds they know they have a valid cell number.
The same game was played years ago looking for fax machine phone numbers. The scammers would dial numbers randomly and if the fax machine respond with a tone they knew it was a fax.
It is the reason you get so many calls where the caller just hangs up as soon as you answer. They are just validating that they found a working number.
Are you sure? My impression is that replying "STOP" messages the sender and means they will (supposedly) not send you any more texts. On my carrier, I can click "Delete and Mark as Junk" which I think goes into the carrier's database of junk reports.
Of course the lack of transparency is appalling, but is it fair to call Progressive Turnout Project a "spam PAC"? My only involvement with the organization has been through the Postcards to Swing States initiative; regardless of postcarding's diminishing returns, the initiative pays to print and mail hundreds—thousands!—of postcards for free to anyone who signs up to fill them out. I wouldn't characterize that expenditure as pure waste even if it's not going directly to candidates or party committees.
But Dems and legit PAC have to blow the whistle and put a stop to this or they will suffer the consequences of people not giving to any PACs that send unsolicited texts.
Yeah the thing that is really missing from this analysis is an examination of funds donated to candidates vs funds spent on independent expenditures (IEs) vs funds spent on fundraising, vs purely operational/ administrative costs. It feels very incomplete without an examination (or even explanation) o independent expenditures.
Yes. they also did massive amounts of "wrap-around" canvassing last election in my swing state. I know because I almost worked for them. They placed canvassers in rural areas that candidate campaigns were not reaching. Also, they have a internship program that trained interns and placed them directly with campagns to supplement paid staff.
Thanks for your comment. The article made me question the authenticity of PTP. I have a stack of postcards right now for Postcards to Swing States and wondered if i should trash them instead of participating in this scam that is way above my paygrade. Thoughts?
What about Field Team 6? The free texting thing, not what i call the Pay-A-Pa-Looza part.
SAME. I just sent a stack of 100 postcards a couple weeks ago for their news literacy project in VA. Are they even really doing the tracking they claim? I feel like I can't trust them with this now.
And thanks for the investigation! Really important work here, Data4Democracy!
Thank you for shining a light on these awful tactics. Would you be interested in doing a Substack live or coming on the Find Out Podcast? We need to get these guys out of politics once and for all.
Best place to put money is directly with your local and state Democratic Party committees first, trusted viable candidates second, and then finally on projects the first two groups explicitly support
Thank you for reporting on this. I have 25 years of experience doing digital marketing in Silicon Valley. I learned that the DCCC will only give its money to candidates who use their approved vendors. That seemed ripe for abuse to me, so I never got involved. the downside is the candidates are deprived of the best advice they can get.
And I will tell you from experience that these benchmarks are abysmal and well below industry standard that these people were working inside of a for-profit company they’d be fired.
I have personally unsubscribed and blocked all fundraising campaign emails because I just cannot stand the way they’re spamming people.
Thanks for your analysis. I've ignored most of the emotional garbage ("Wait, you're not supporting Dems and you're supporting Trump?") and unsubscribing seemed wrong. However, with the 1.6% efficiency, I can now unsubscribe to the "Mothership" in good conscience. I hope the DCCC will come to their senses and not use these creeps.
I tried to be one of those vendors once, but they would only put you on the list if you didn't work on any primary challengers to incumbents. Which is a good way to make it really hard for challengers to get good staff, especially for stuff like ad buying where they will need a consultant.
Same.
And the Dems are the party of moral rectitude that will lead us out of the abyss we are mired in?
The message is clear:
Guiltlessly unsubscribe.
How?
The Harris campaign did make noise about this: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/harris-camp-warns-of-democratic-scam-pacs
Dan, the Harris haters here are already finding ways to shit on this.
Donate to honest outfits like Charles Gaba's https://blue26.org/
This money goes directly to the candidates. He set up all the Act Blue pages himself and doesn't take a cut (or at least didn't when I spoke to him last fall).
who are you referring to?
Charles Gaba
I've gotten to know a Charles a tiny bit over the past several years.
He does a great job promoting Democrats in down-ballot races and off-cycle elections, and focusing candidates who have a chance of winning. He posts fundraising updates and alerts social media (charlesgaba.com on Bluesky and @charles_gaba on Twitter). I only donate via his fund-raising pages.
His main focus is healthcare policy analysis (which is how I originally ran across his work). He was one of the first to analyze the relationship between Trump support in 2020 vs. COVID vaccinations/infections/deaths by House district. These days, he's been providing assessments of Medicaid losses in Republican House districts, and increases in Obamacare private insurance rate hikes due to the Republican's failure to continue expanded premium assistance.
I've wondered about him. This is so helpful. Thanks.
one statement from a campaign spokesperson is no match for robo texts getting sent to hundreds of millions of people. the proliferation of scams flooding everyone's phones added to the sense that Biden was asleep at the wheel.
It wasn't just one statement.
Maybe not, but I followed fairly closely, listen to the bulwark guys, and never saw or heard it.
"The DNC needs to clean house", yes, and in more than just fundraising. The old guard (losers) must go and the young turks (winners) must lead. Fundraising is broken in both parties. I'm an independent voter and I gave a small donation to a Republican candidate 25 years ago. For the next 15 years I suffered with a blizzard of mailings and emails from the Republican party to give. Not learning my lesson I gave to a local democratic candidate 10 years ago and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of follow up. No emails, no calls, not texts. I gave again and also to other democratic candidates with the same outcome. I would never give to the DNC itself. I'm sure my experience would have been very different. So, give local and spare yourself the onslaught.
Ha! Some Republican did some small thing with actual integrity a couple of months ago, and, thinking myself way more important than I am, I sent them ten bucks as a thank you. OMG I am inundated daily. Never, ever, ever again. Except I'm getting old so I'll probably forget and.... 🙄
To be clear, the DCCC is not the DNC and is in many ways a real thorn in its side.
So grateful for this post! It breaks my heart to think of all the folks I know who are living in or near poverty and so desperate for change that they do without essentials in order to donate to Dems.
Love and gratitude, Adam.
I'm one of them. My only income is Soc. Sec, and finding outn that my many $5-$10 donations just get swallowed by aparatchiks. No more donations to anyone until I can filter out the parasites.
Calvin, I am sorry... I also feel preyed upon and have just gone through my in box to unsubscribe from all that are not from candidates themselves.
I only donate directly to local democratic candidates & down ballot dem candidates through Actblue. BTW, ActBlue is not part of this Mothership network.
These guys are a effectively a huge tax on the whole party -- costing us both reputational capital and actual capital. We all just go on paying it despite getting no benefit back.
No more. Support individual progressives and organizations like Indivisible.
and Hopium :)
and Democracy Docket
and other name brands
Jayne Converse does a great job, for free, though I tip here on Instagram.. Also on SS
Agree or grassroots Dem aligned groups that register people to vote, keep in touch with them all the time & get them to the polls like Working America!
Mothership is charging clients far too much for fundraising, and its hyperbolic, slash-and-burn tactics are damaging to the broader ecosystem. That said, the 1.6% "political efficacy" figure cited in the article is misleading. Some of these PACs run independent campaigns that aren’t included in that statistic.
We shouldn't stop supporting Jon Ossoff just because his campaign previously used Mothership. If we want to help him win, the best way is to contribute directly through ActBlue, GiveGreen, or Oath.Vote - platforms where funds go directly to the candidate without a middleman taking a cut.
For the same reason, if we care about getting money out of politics, we shouldn't withhold support from End Citizens United/Let America Vote simply because they once worked with Mothership. AFAIK, both Ossoff’s campaign and ECU/LAV stopped using Mothership several years ago.
It's unfortunate that the ecosystem is being tainted by Mothership’s aggressive tactics, especially at a time when donors are already pulling back. I hope the author will consider clarifying the article to avoid causing harm to legitimate campaigns and organizations - particularly those that have long since cut ties with Mothership.
Thanks, Adam, for this deep look into Mothership. Have you done, or are you aware of, a comparable analysis of ActBlue which, based on my inbox/messages employs comparable high-hysteria tactics and appears to have similar linkages to the DNCC, DCCC, etc.?
ActBlueis a payment processor that doesn’t send emails. However! Their main sin is negligence. They could do a lot to clean up the ecosystem and choose not to.
For example, they could enforce standards on groups like Mothership and kick them off their platform if they don’t comply. Similar to the way Apple has rules for app developers who use Apple Pay.
But they have no particular lock-in or network effect to keep anyone with them. If you get kicked off ActBlue, that's a hindrance but it's not like digital fundraising can't happen otherwise. Plenty of other payment companies you can use even if they're not as well adapted for politics.
ActBlue reduces so much friction for donors that not using it would be a big negative. As a donor, I'd be skeptical of any campaign or PAC that isn't taking donations via ActBlue.
I don't understand exactly what Act Blue or GoodChange is doing then. Exactly how does it differ from the "bad" funraisers?
This is why I encourage candidates and committees to use GoodChange. It’s a great alternative alternative to AB.
good to have the option. thanks.
actBlue does not send emails. It is a payment processor. campaigns ... and email consultants ... send emails
Thank u. Good to know that we can trust them!
Thanks to everyone for the comments / clarifications. I have received so many "alarmist" text messages that include links to ActBlue that I pretty much reflectively block the numbers from which they come. It's probably not 'fair' to ActBlue, but it highlights the problem with the fundraising machinery. As Adam says, its really important for the party to clean up its fundraising act — and that would start with shutting down/out Mothership and its progeny/partners.
I’m 74 years old and the first and only time I donated money to a politician was when Kamala was running. I sent $ to her until the 6 or more texts a day asking for more felt so predatory that I finally unsubscribed from all of her asks. And then found out toward the end that her campaign raised billions and was still asking for more. Infuriating! I did also donate to a number of down ballot candidates and feel good about that but I will never donate to a presidential campaign ever again and will seriously consider and reconsider before donating down ballot. I have thought during my entire voting life that campaign finance reform is necessary and that has been my reason for not donating before 2024. The amount of money in political campaigns is disgusting. My donations now go to public tv, public radio, and animal and planetary conservation.
Exactly. It’s hard to argue that money isn’t important when it is. But what if instead of every $10 donation, the candidates organized events — No Kings! comes to mind — to engage their supporters in democratic speech?
If you’ve not seen Joyce Vance’s interview with Shomari Figures take a half and hour to watch it. It’s the most hopeful I’ve felt in months.
Looking for it on YouTube to no avail. Is it on Substack?
Yes it is. In Joyce Vance’s substack Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance. I've also reposted it to my substack.
Thanks Henry, I’ll check it out. We need all the hope we can get!! 😃
Excellent question!
Re-analysis with corrected methodology shows the 1.6% efficiency claim is wrong by an order of magnitude. Several commenters (Rob, Johan, Jake, Tracey, Kim) identified the fatal flaw: Adam's analysis excluded Schedule E independent expenditures (money spent directly on campaign activities like ads and voter outreach) while counting only direct transfers to candidates. Running the same FEC queries with the missing Schedule E endpoint reveals $122M in candidate-related independent expenditures that were ignored, bringing the true efficiency rate to ~20%, not 1.6%. The core critique about excessive consultant fees ($282M to Mothership) remains valid, but excluding an entire category of legitimate political spending that PACs are designed to perform undermines the post's central claim. https://github.com/abonica/Mothership-Strategies-FEC-Analysis/pull/2/files
Even if Mothership has an efficiency rate closer to your estimate, it is still an abomination. The Harris campaign rightly called them out on it last year. Hell, people have been calling them out for years. This "side hustle" by Greg Berlin, Charles Starnes, and Jake Lipsett has become a giant tick feeding on the lifeblood of the party fundraising apparatus.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/24/mothership-strategies-democratic-fundraising-00128548
Fully agree. My comment is not a defense of Mothership, it's a response to the ambiguity created by the gaps in the methodology.
This is amazing work. I have been deleting and reporting these spammers for months, as have most people I know. I suspected something was up, and now I know. I donate directly to candidates and organizations through their web sites.
OK. Can somebody write a list of organizations that don't "efficiently" raise money? We need a Charity Navigator-type clearing house!
There is a cure. Don’t give them money. Fed up, I unsubscribe to every email I get with their hyperbolic messages. I only donate money directly to candidates through ActBlue. My concern is that the right-wing is out to destroy ActBlue.
How do we know if ActBlue is any better? I find their tactics to be queasily similar to the ones Adam is calling out. A nonstop barrage of requests for money to save the world for over 20 years now. Are they doing better than Mothership? I genuinely do not know. Did they help pave the way for this type of all-caps emergency-mode hammer-on-your-door fundraising? Looks like it to me and it’s not an approach that gets my donations any more.
ActBlue is a payment processor. Campaigns and consultants send the emails with a link to pay using Actblue.
Same.
Isn’t the point of PACs to do campaigning *independent* of the candidate and party? These organizations were never designed as simple pass-throughs—they actually run their own ads. Claiming that only the cash they hand directly to candidates matters to their “efficiency” seems wildly disingenuous.
This comment seems a bit disingenuous if you read the actual post. These PACs clearly aren't using the vast majority of money raised to do campaigning either. $282M in consultancy fees alone! And then there's the payments to vendors who spam us.
"I agree with the general point even if the actual numbers are fake!" isn't exactly a defense. I'm not at all saying that Mothership is an efficient organization. I'm saying this methodology, of focusing entirely on direct transfers to candidates, is about as relevant as claiming that Red Cross is a wildly inefficient organization because it spends so little on direct cash payments to disaster victims.
My understanding is that the figures *also* include PAC expenditures that appear campaign-related (e.g. hiring canvassers).
I will say, the overall efficiency this article claims might be a little low. Mothership could also be receiving funds to place digital media buys, which could be apart of legitimate campaign activities. But the overall picture is pretty damning.
Your understanding is at odds with the text itself, which highlights one single $19M expense for canvassing, yet still claims a *total* of $11M as the numerator for "efficiency".
Again: I am not at all suggesting Mothership is a good PAC. I am suggesting that the methodology here would make even a good PAC look terrible.
Rob, I had the same thoughts. I think the article raises some very important points but when the thesis is based around the 1.6% efficiency claim and that claim is so clearly suspect, it makes it hard to evaluate the rest of the arguments Adam is making.
Ah good flag. I think a better number would include all campaign activities — not just transfers. But it's harder to divine because not all vendors or payments are obvious.
The FEC filings are pretty easy to read, and the main expenditure categories are "operating expenses", "transfers to affiliated committees" (which one could pessimistically assume are just to other Mothership entities), "contributions to other committees" (which are the ones to actual candidates...although for whatever reason *some* of those get listed in the next category instead), and "independent expenditures", which include paying for campaign ads, rallies, etc.
What is so frustrating is that just looking at operating expenses gets you the story you need! PTP, Mothership's largest PAC, spent almost $70M of its $83M on operating expenses! If you just don't want to do the work, that's a fine metric. But to take the "contributions to other committees" line item yet ignore "independent expenditures", which I assume is what was done here...well that doesn't seem like an innocent mistake. It's either a complete misunderstanding of what PACs are meant to do, a blatant attempt to produce eye-popping numbers whether they're meaningful or not, or both.
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00580068/?cycle=2024#total-spent
Yes this is my question. Specifically, the author separates out "media buys" as though they are operational expenses (like ad buys marketing the firm itself) when it seems much more likely to me that those ad buys are for independent expenditure ads for candidates or causes (ie, exactly what I would expect those firms to do with those funds). I don't think TV ads are an especially good use of political dollars either, not an explanation of what is included in that number (and not) would be helpful here.
The FEC reports PACs need to file (I linked one above) are required to list fundraising as operational expenses, but actual campaign advertising as "independent expenditures". So media buys have *already* been separated into the two different categories in these public filings. The author does not choose to ignore actual campaign activities because it would be difficult to identify them; he does so for...other reasons.
It's only an "independent expenditure" if it directly identifies a candidate. If it is for a broader goal, like, say *Turnout*, and involves sending postcards directly to every eligible voter in an area saying "your registration to vote deadline is X" - that's operating expenses.
The other way you can ID these scam text is by their opt-out process. Many times you’ll see the text, “StoptoEnd” or “Stop2End”. Unfortunately, typing these prompts doesn’t stop the text from flooding your inbox.
I’ve spent more time than I can count typing variations of both to stop these spam text from flooding my feed. I’ve resorted to blocking the contacts, which quiets the noise for a few days. Then boom, they’re back.
I met a guy who worked for one of these orgs, and he explains how they “Burned the list” to max out donations. I never looked at those texts the same way again.
I started out this thread feeling furious. The more I read, the more I feel gullible and dumb. Hoo boy gonna be a good day.
Don't respond to text messages, just delete and report junk. If you respond to their text message they know they found a valid cell phone number.
They usually just use random numbers in their autodialer. When someone responds they know they have a valid cell number.
The same game was played years ago looking for fax machine phone numbers. The scammers would dial numbers randomly and if the fax machine respond with a tone they knew it was a fax.
It is the reason you get so many calls where the caller just hangs up as soon as you answer. They are just validating that they found a working number.
Texting STOP in no way works- how can you not know this fact?
Are you sure? My impression is that replying "STOP" messages the sender and means they will (supposedly) not send you any more texts. On my carrier, I can click "Delete and Mark as Junk" which I think goes into the carrier's database of junk reports.
I have typed Stop dozens of times with only occasional and temporary effect.
You can block the number. Of course, they can use another number
Of course the lack of transparency is appalling, but is it fair to call Progressive Turnout Project a "spam PAC"? My only involvement with the organization has been through the Postcards to Swing States initiative; regardless of postcarding's diminishing returns, the initiative pays to print and mail hundreds—thousands!—of postcards for free to anyone who signs up to fill them out. I wouldn't characterize that expenditure as pure waste even if it's not going directly to candidates or party committees.
But Dems and legit PAC have to blow the whistle and put a stop to this or they will suffer the consequences of people not giving to any PACs that send unsolicited texts.
Agree!
Yeah the thing that is really missing from this analysis is an examination of funds donated to candidates vs funds spent on independent expenditures (IEs) vs funds spent on fundraising, vs purely operational/ administrative costs. It feels very incomplete without an examination (or even explanation) o independent expenditures.
Yes. they also did massive amounts of "wrap-around" canvassing last election in my swing state. I know because I almost worked for them. They placed canvassers in rural areas that candidate campaigns were not reaching. Also, they have a internship program that trained interns and placed them directly with campagns to supplement paid staff.
Thanks for your comment. The article made me question the authenticity of PTP. I have a stack of postcards right now for Postcards to Swing States and wondered if i should trash them instead of participating in this scam that is way above my paygrade. Thoughts?
What about Field Team 6? The free texting thing, not what i call the Pay-A-Pa-Looza part.
SAME. I just sent a stack of 100 postcards a couple weeks ago for their news literacy project in VA. Are they even really doing the tracking they claim? I feel like I can't trust them with this now.
And thanks for the investigation! Really important work here, Data4Democracy!
I am so furious
Thank you for shining a light on these awful tactics. Would you be interested in doing a Substack live or coming on the Find Out Podcast? We need to get these guys out of politics once and for all.
Best place to put money is directly with your local and state Democratic Party committees first, trusted viable candidates second, and then finally on projects the first two groups explicitly support