For years, Democrats have publicly slammed Fox News for acting as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. But privately, dozens of Democrats have been cashing campaign checks bankrolled by the network’s top executives.
Between 2019 and 2020, the political action committee for Fox News and other Fox entities (FOX PAC) donated $96,500 to Republicans and $91,000 to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets data. That’s a nearly even partisan split in a historically rancorous and polarizing campaign season that did untold damage to any hopes of political reconciliation.
Rewinding the clock to the 2018 midterms, Democrats actually came out on top, outraising GOP counterparts by more than $13,000 in contributions from the previous version of the company's PAC. The money helped fund a Democratic takeover of the House.
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Still, the most recent filing from FOX PAC shows that some Democrats may be rethinking those donations. Five Democrats appeared to return their FOX PAC contributions, though it’s also possible the returns were only clerical errors, creating the mirage of a principled stand.
Among the five Democrats—Reps. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), and Peter Welch (D-VT), and former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA)—the only Democrat who responded to a request for comment about the seemingly rejected donation was Swalwell, and he told The Daily Beast that his campaign team had a “bank fraud issue that delayed cashing of checks.”
“That check was reissued and cashed, my team tells me,” Swalwell said.
“On the larger issue,” Swalwell continued, “despite daily lies against me from Fox News, I’ve worked well with Fox Corp, which includes their studios and sports network.” Both of those entities are based in Swalwell’s home state of California.
“The lies of Fox News have cost my campaign thousands in personal security. The Fox Corp contributions help offset that,” he said.
Ultimately, all of those donations that appear to have been returned might be clerical issues. The contributions, all marked “void,” add up to $12,500—a small fraction of FOX PAC’s overall contributions to Democrats.
Either way, plenty of Democrats continue to accept the political largesse from network executives whose programming fuels a simmering and sometimes dangerous resentment that has boiled over into political violence targeting liberals.
But while Fox News makes its bread by boosting conservatives and bashing liberals, when it comes to spending that bread, FOX PAC doesn’t seem to play by the same rules.
In fact, in the 2020 election cycle, FOX PAC—bankrolled almost exclusively by executives, including patriarch Rupert Murdoch, lobbyist honchos, and the top brass at Fox News—set one of the most evenhanded examples of bipartisan support in the country.
And even though the network has always marketed itself almost exclusively on its conservative bias, the Trump era marked a shift into aggressive, often dishonest attacks on liberals and the institution of democracy itself.
Last year, with Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress, FOX PAC contributions shifted back toward the GOP. The trend echoes the PAC’s Democratic tilt the previous midterm, when the political power imbalance was a mirror image, favoring Republicans.
But as the Fox News rhetoric escalated over the last two years, running parallel with rhetoric that inspired the attack on the U.S. Capitol, dozens of Democratic campaigns cashed in—53 of them over the 2020 and 2022 cycles, so far.
The top 2020 candidate recipient in the House was a Democrat: Debbie Dingell of Michigan. Her campaign banked $7,500, the same amount FOX PAC meted out to the campaign committee belonging to former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), whose loss made the difference in partisan control of the upper chamber. The PAC shined brighter only on the campaign of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the lone candidate to receive the maximum allowed amount of $10,000.
Other top Democratic recipients of Fox News-backed cash include Dingell’s fellow Michigander, Sen. Gary Peters ($6,000 to his campaign), along with $5,000 each to Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), New Jersey Reps. Frank Pallone and Bob Menendez, Cheri Bustos of Illinois, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to OpenSecrets data. Some, such as Peters and Pallone, raked in thousands more for their affiliated leadership PACs.
None of them have returned their checks.
That stance is now drawing criticism from some Democratic operatives. Max Berger, who has worked for a number of liberal causes including Justice Democrats, said it was a “damn shame” that Democrats would take donations from Fox News.
“No one who wants to take money from Fox News or Rupert Murdoch should consider themselves a Democrat,” Berger told The Daily Beast. “Some establishment Democrats have gotten so used to taking money from odious sources like big Pharma and fossil fuel lobbyists that nothing seems too dirty.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a frequent target for Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, has recently been vocal about the effects that Fox News segments have on her.
Over the weekend, she wondered on Twitter why Tucker Carlson was allowed—and indeed paid—”to engage in clear, targeted, libelous harassment that endangers people.” She said Fox drives so many “violent threats” that people “have to fundraise for their own safety.”
And as far as these Fox donations go for offsetting any harm that Fox News does to Democrats, it’s not much help.
Swalwell—a House manager during ex-President Trump’s second impeachment for instigating the Jan. 6 riot who has been in a running feud with late-night entertainer Tucker Carlson—has racked up some of the highest personal security campaign costs in Congress.
Last year, those security expenses added up to $87,000. Fox’s PAC has given him $5,500.
