Unknown donors pouring millions into what could be Minnesota’s most expensive Senate primary
-Minnesota Star Tribune
I saw this headline recently and it made my heart hurt.
Millions upon millions of dollars — much of it from PACs and dark money groups that don’t have to tell you where the money came from — have been spent on TV ads and direct mail across the state. Crypto money. Data center billionaires. The new, usual suspects? We’ll never know. Thanks, Citizens United.
We need to fund work in Minnesota now more than ever.
If you’ve turned on a TV in Minnesota lately, you’ve seen the ads. It’s the kind of spending that dominates the airwaves to the point where everyone can recite the words. A political consultant’s dream!
Except here’s the thing they don’t want you to notice: it isn’t necessarily working.
Turns out there’s a ceiling on what a Super PAC ad can buy. At some point, the tenth attack ad has the same effect as the ninth. Diminishing returns. Economics theory, applied to democracy!
For more than 20 years, Midwest Values PAC has operated on a theory that’s unfashionable in an era of nine-figure Super PACs: that a nurse’s $10, a teacher’s $15, and a retiree’s $25 — put to work smartly — can outperform a billionaire’s blank check.
We don’t try to outspend billionaires. Instead, we invest strategically. We put real weight behind the unglamorous stuff that we know wins elections — volunteers door-knocking, working hours on phone banks, calling neighbors, and organizing volunteers.
So yes, the spending numbers coming out of Minnesota and elsewhere in the country are grim. But they’re also proof of something hopeful: all that dark money is going to run into a ceiling. Our goal is to make sure the campaigns doing the patient, on-the-ground work are the ones still standing when the ad buys simply stop moving the needle.
Help us keep doing what we’re doing.
Al
P.S. I’ve seen so many campaigns be outspent by the bad guys — by a lot, and more than a couple times. It sucks! Donate today, and let’s keep proving that people can beat dark money.
