Former Federalist Society Vice President Leonard Leo has reportedly landed a $1.6 billion donation from a manufacturing mogul that will help Leo’s new group, CRC Advisers, support conservative causes in the years to come.
Democrats are freaking out.
Here is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI):
The dark money machine heats up, and of course around the guy who used dark money to capture the Supreme Court for big special interests. All the more need for DISCLOSE vote. https://t.co/z5zpeRyS7V
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 22, 2022
And here is Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern:
After stacking the federal courts with conservative friends and allies, Leonard Leo has single-handedly amassed a $1.6 billion dark money slush fund that will dwarf Democratic spending for years to come. An extraordinary manipulation of loopholes in tax and campaign finance law.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) August 22, 2022
But is that true? Will this $1.6 billion donation “dwarf Democratic spending for years to come”?
Not according to the same New York Times story that broke the news:
So, if anything, this donation will only help even the playing field between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to dark money. And the New York Times database of politically active nonprofit organizations doesn’t even include far-left groups such as the Ford Foundation, that don’t spend money directly on elections but do give half a billion dollars a year to far-left causes such as Black Lives Matter.
Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of the little guy, but Wall Street now gives more money to them than to Republicans.
The Democrats of today are a party funded by the rich and fueled by dark money, which might explain why so many working-class voters are leaving the party.
