Mondaire Jones’ bid to succeed a powerful House Democrat in New York has him on the cusp of progressive stardom. But while he runs a campaign on pledges to combat corruption and the influence of money in politics, Jones’ team has also quietly and adeptly sidestepped major campaign-finance rules.
Jones, a lawyer and activist affiliated with the progresive Working Families Party, was officially declared the winner this week in a crowded Democratic primary for the seat held by Rep. Nita Lowey, the chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee who did not seek re-election. Jones’ victory came with a helping hand from a super PAC devoted solely to supporting his campaign. Fight for the American Dream PAC spent a sizable $160,000 on his behalf. It did so by way of a firm that just weeks earlier had been consulting for the Jones campaign itself, using resources the campaign had quietly made available to the super PAC, with money that appears to have been raised for the super PAC with the campaign’s assistance.
The tactics the campaign and super PAC used to complement each other’s efforts do not appear to have violated laws barring coordination between campaigns and independent political spenders supporting them. Indeed, some of the tactics are common methods of circumventing super PAC coordination rules.
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Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reforms at the Campaign Legal Center, told PAY DIRT that the Jones campaign’s “close relationship with a supportive super PAC may not be unprecedented and may not cross any legal lines, but it certainly looks more like the kind of thing we’d see from an establishment-backed candidate.”
Indeed, it’s just that sort of status quo practice that Jones has pledged to combat in Washington. “Our broken campaign-finance system—aided and abetted by a series of Supreme Court decisions, the most infamous of which is Citizens United—has allowed a torrent of dark money to flood our political system,” he wrote last month. “This has pushed our democracy into crisis, and nowhere is that more apparent than in our legislative process.”
“In this election cycle, Democrats have been talking about enacting big, systemic change,” Jones added. “But we cannot just talk the talk; we have to walk the walk.”
In an emailed statement to PAY DIRT, Jones campaign manager Charles Blaettler defended the campaign’s relationship with the super PAC, and stressed the candidate’s commitment to campaign-finance reform.
“Our campaign was supported by a variety of groups, mainly organizations dedicated to supporting LGBTQ, Black, and progressive candidates. These groups recognized that Mondaire will represent his constituents as he has run his campaign: with integrity and moral clarity,” Blaettler wrote. “And they know that in Congress, he will champion the restoration of democracy and comprehensive campaign-finance reform, ensuring we have a democracy where every voice is represented.”
Jones has pledged not to accept any corporate PAC money, and as of its most recent Federal Election Commission filing, Fight for the American Dream PAC hasn’t done so either. But the overlap between funders for the super PAC and the campaign is substantial: Eighteen of the super PAC’s donors, who provided about 93 percent of its revenue from its founding in May through the end of June, are also donors to the Jones campaign, according to FEC records.
Asked whether the campaign had shared fundraising leads with the super PAC, Blaettler did not deny that they had. “FEC guidance permits campaigns to provide information about prospective donors to interested PACs who make such requests,” Blaettler said in an email. He didn’t respond to follow-up questions.
There was significant overlap on the expenditure side as well. From the fall of 2019 through early June of this year, the Jones campaign paid a little over $75,000 to the company Middle Seat Consulting, a digital firm run by former aides to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The last payment from the Jones campaign came on June 2, FEC records show.
Less than two weeks later, Fight for the American Dream PAC began buying digital ads promoting Jones’ campaign. And it retained Middle Seat to produce and place those ads. That means the vendor that had consulted on the campaign’s digital strategy was in a position to apply its knowledge of that strategy to its digital work for a group with which the campaign was legally barred from coordinating its advertising strategies.
Middle Seat did not respond to questions about its overlapping roles for the campaign and the super PAC. In general, vendors are permitted to work for both campaigns and supportive super PACs as long as they establish internal “firewalls” between their work for the clients.
Blaettler said the campaign was not aware, when it stopped working with Middle Seat, that the firm would soon be producing and placing ads for Fight for the American Dream PAC. “The campaign was notified by Middle Seat that Middle Seat would be engaging in an independent expenditure in our race and Middle Seat provided proper legal notification of their internal firewall as advised by their attorneys,” he wrote. “The campaign was unaware of what specifically Middle Seat would be doing.”
The content of the ads Middle Seat produced for the super PAC underscored its apparent synergy with the Jones campaign. A week after its last payment to Middle Seat, the campaign uploaded two hours of “b-roll” footage to its YouTube page, featuring audio-free clips of Jones talking to voters and gazing thoughtfully at the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (formerly the Tappan Zee Bridge) in New York’s 17th District, among other shots.
Three days after that footage was uploaded to YouTube, segments of it popped up in Facebook ads run by Fight for the American Dream PAC. Those ads—and dozens more run by the super PAC since then, which also drew from the campaign’s b-roll—directed viewers to Jones’ campaign website, even as they disclosed that they were paid for by an independent group.
The b-roll tactic is a common method for campaigns and super PACs to circumvent rules barring direct cooperation between the groups, as Blaettler noted.
But that practice allows campaigns to provide resources to supportive organizations with which they’re legally banned from coordinating without running afoul of federal law, effectively providing an end-run around those election rules. Campaign-finance watchdogs have criticized the practice, even as they acknowledge it’s perfectly legal.
“It has become common practice for candidates to signal to supportive super PACs or dark-money groups their preferred messaging and images and video b-roll,” according to Fischer. But “it does represent an embrace of the big-money political system made possible by Citizens United.”
It’s exactly that system that Jones has pledged to take on if he prevails in November. And he’s received the backing of some of the nation’s chief Citizens United antagonists to do so. Progressive stalwarts such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have endorsed Jones’ candidacy. He also has the backing of the group End Citizens United, which reported spending more than $70,000 on his behalf during the primary.
Whether Fight for the American Dream PAC will continue backing Jones in the general election remains to be seen. It hasn’t yet reported any spending on Jones’ behalf since the June 23 primary date, and it won’t report more income or operating expenditures until October.
