Interview Only w/Adam Bonica - Scamming Grandma: The Corrupt World Of Political Fundraising

In this episode of the Chuck ToddCast, Chuck sits down with Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica to unpack the dark underbelly of political fundraising. Bonica reveals how the Democratic consulting firm Mothership Strategies helped shape modern campaign fundraising — and how their tactics, often resembling internet scams, have extracted hundreds of millions from small-dollar donors, many of whom are elderly or unaware they’ve been opted into recurring donations. Together, they explore how much of that money never reaches campaigns at all, instead being funneled into consultant fees and internal operations that border on money laundering.

The conversation broadens into the systemic corruption of campaign finance: both parties’ use of apocalyptic fear-mongering, the rise of Super PACs with minimal voter impact, and how America’s extreme wealth inequality has distorted democratic accountability. Bonica explains why the public now views the very need to raise money as inherently corrupt — and how anti-corruption could be the strongest defense against authoritarian drift. As billions pour into elections with diminishing effect, Chuck and Adam question whether the next era of U.S. politics can ever be disentangled from the cash that drives it.

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Timeline:

(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)

00:00 Adam Bonica joins the Chuck ToddCast

03:00 Fundraising tactics are beyond bizarre

05:30 Mothership strategies behind much of the Dem advertising

08:00 Democratic candidates were enamored by Mothership’s strategy

10:15 Many donors had been suffering from cognitive decline

11:30 PAC’s were basically money laundering

13:35 Most fundraising dollars were spent internally on consultants

15:00 Both parties use apocalyptic language when fundraising

17:00 Campaign fundraising using the same tactics as scammers

18:30 Political fundraisers prey on older people

20:30 Donors have to actively uncheck recurring donations

21:15 ActBlue adopted new rules after Adam’s reporting

24:00 Mothership has raised hundreds of millions of dollars

28:00 Mothership claims their fight is a “necessary evil”

31:00 The public is very concerned about corruption

31:45 Anti-corruption is the #1 anti-authoritarian strategy

33:15 Public sees the need to raise money as a form of corruption

34:45 There is so much corruptibility on the fundraising side of politics

35:30 Money spent by Super PACs has almost no effect on public opinion

36:45 Trump was outspent and still won

37:30 Democrats have fundraising advantage they are squandering

38:15 Most Republican donor money came from $1M+ earners

39:00 Democrats dominating donations from young professionals

42:00 Democrats would gain credibility advantage disavowing dark money

44:30 American wealth inequality is reaching extreme territory

46:15 Billionaires aren’t aligned with root Democratic party politics

49:15 Will we see $5B presidential elections in 2028?

50:45 There is more money per swing voter than ever

52:30 $500m will be spent on CA redistricting

55:00 Mainstream journalism rarely audits where money goes

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So joining me now is somebody who did a deep
dive in investigation. Not a journalist that you know by name,
per se, but it's a political science professor from Stanford University,
and he went deep on a topic frankly, that many
of us journalists have been assuming wanting to do. But

(00:25):
it's in some ways so resource heavy, so time, so
much of a time sucked that it's always something you
put off and every once in a while you delve
into it and you realize there's something that isn't right here.
But you know, is this what I need to be
focused on in the moment or not? And then if
you're like me, and if you're my age and you

(00:47):
have parents of a certain age, they always ask these questions,
how come so and so is always asking me for money?
My mother says this to me all the time. They
claim if I don't send them money in the next
twenty four hours, you know, the democracy is doomed. Who
are these people? And I'm like, oh, mom, it's a
scam pack And that's all I usually say. But my

(01:09):
guest today Adam Bonica, political science professor at Stanford. He
did the hard work here and he did this substack
post a couple months ago, showing his receipts of a
long dive into the murky waters of digital fundraising. I'm
going to read the first couple of paragraphs of his
substacks so I can sort of set the scene, and
then I'm going to bring Adam in to explain his

(01:31):
work and explain his findings. He starts out this way.
The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on
a democratic fundraising list. It's a relentless cacophony of bizarre
texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last,
promising that your immediate fifteen dollars donation is the only
thing standing between democracy and the abyss. The main rationtale

(01:53):
offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it's a necessary evil,
that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at race
the money needed to win. But an analysis of the
official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising
model is not a brutally effective tool for the party.
It's a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of

(02:15):
every dollar it raises, and Adam, I think this is
the number that's going to shock people for every one
hundred dollars that people have been sending to these various
democratic entities, and we'll get to the details of them
in a minute, For every one hundred dollars you sent,
one dollar and sixty cents actually went to the cause,

(02:38):
ninety eight dollars and forty cents went to servicing services
rendered either to the consultants themselves or essentially a vicious
loop that just funded one pack or the other. I
am only giving you the top line atom. That's how
I thought we could try to begin to try to

(02:59):
lay the predicate there. What have I missed? What didn't
I mention that you feel like people need to understand
at the beginning in order to understand this really byzantine
digital fundraising scam.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, I think I would start by saying, most people,
not just I talked to, but just in the sort
of realm of democratic politics, have had a strong sense,
as you mentioned early on, that something here is awry,
that the tactics alone, they're a bit bizarre. They are

(03:38):
bordering sometimes on deceptive, maybe even predatory in a lot
of ways they're set up. And one of the things
that I had been really stored by in the run
up to the twenty twenty four election. Was just how
bombarded I was with these types of messages, not just
on email, which was you know, completely overflowing, but also

(04:01):
in my text messages.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Because an email you can at least put it in
a spam folder. It's the text messages that become there
is no spam folder for text right now.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
And this was the main messaging I was getting from
the Democratic Party and the run up to a crucial election,
and it just felt wrong to me that this was
the way that the brand was being leveraged. You know,
as a local scientist, I think of, you know, parties
like the most important thing they have is their brand.
That's what wins you elections. How people view your party,

(04:35):
and the way that the brand was being presented to
voters and especially two potential donors was really problematic to me.
And so that's why I started looking into it. And
I've been studying campaign finance for fifteen years now. It's
sort of an area that I have a lot of
expertise in and so and all the ends and outs
of it and sort of how you know FEC or

(04:57):
the Schedual Election Commission record and all these public disloatures work.
So I thought, I mean, I'll just take a look
and see if there's anything connecting these types of messages.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
And let me pause you here because you note this
in your sub stack. You really thought, man, that I'm
just going to spend a couple of days and that
after a couple of days, I'll be able to unravel
this in a couple of days. Well, tell me how
long a couple of days go.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, the first Insight book about five minutes, which was, Oh,
all of this is going back to like all these
messages that I'm getting that are of this type are
coming from basically one firm, Mothership Strategies.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
It's really called Mothership, right, that's the actual name of
the first You know, there was a part of me
that thought, is this is this satire? Is this part
of the parity? Right? Like I mean, you know, I
guess you could say the founders of this scam had
a sense of humor. So Mothership Strategies.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Well, yeah, so it goes even deeper than that, and
I'll explain it a bit. The Mothership strategy So this
is a firm that is part of a larger sort
of digital fundraising industry that exists within both parties, but
focusing there on the Democratic side. This firm was started

(06:16):
by three former employees who had run the digital fundraising
operations for the D Triples, the Democratic Congrettional Campaign Committee.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
That House, Yeah, the House campaign arm yep, so like
the official party committee, and it had spun off and
they had left and sort of private ties a tactic
that they had sort of perfected while they were at
the D triples set.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
And what cycle were they? Were they there? This is
like twenty fourteen.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Right, twenty fourteen. They didn't seem to get much traction
early on.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, well and then a certain orangehaired man came down
the stairs elevator.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, it happened actually before that. So they didn't seem
to have many clients early on, and their first client
was a pack called end Citizens United. If you get
these messages you may be familiar with it. It turns
out that they had started this pack that three people
had started Mothership to be their first client, and so

(07:16):
they started.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Basically, the consultant needed a client, so they invented the client.
Let's create a client. So they were immediately on both
sides of the transaction.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Okay, got it, And in terms of fundraising. Because of
the types of tactics that they were using, it happened
to be very effective at raising money, and so just
caught the attention of a lot of people who were
more were interested in raising a lot of money for
their campaign or their cause, and it just sort of
took off from there.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Anything that makes fundraising easier a consultant is going or
a candidate would love to do. In a weird way,
I get why this was attractive at first. Oh my god,
you mean I don't have to dial for dollars or
I don't have to like show up to a fundraiser.
I don't to travel to Martha's Vineyard or Napa Valley
and suck up to rich people that I really don't
have anything in common with. Boy, this would be great.

(08:08):
If this really works as great as you tell me
it works. Mothership.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean, this is the number one complaint camp.
Like Kennedy, it's give you all the time. It's like,
I am sick and tired of fundraising all the time.
And so if someone comes and says I can raise
a ton of money for you through small donors, that's
going to be attractive. The problem is is once you
start seeing the types of messages they're sending and actually

(08:33):
who they are getting money from, it becomes a whole
different set of questions. It's really that's where the really
troubling aspect of this come from, not just the damage
it does to the Democratic Party brand, but the more
and more I dug into this, it was this isn't really,
in my sort of like reading of the data, a

(08:53):
very predatory approach to fundraising, to the.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Point where if you wanted to make a criminal you
might be able to look at this through criminal statutes.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
I don't think there are any if it is predatory knowledge.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yeah, well I would use the term predatory, not in
the uh like illegal sense, but in the like they
are doing everything that I believe from my reading of
campaign finance law, I do not see anything that they
are doing that is technically illegal.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
So this is technically right right right? So yeah, so
when they now, could this be under I mean, could
the FTC or could a state attorney general say you're
committing borderline fraud slash predator You're you're you're, you're, you're
you're using predatory practices to raise money.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, So there was a CNN UH like in depth
reporting UH investigation on these a thousands of different complaints
that had been sent by largely like children of people
who had been the children of elderly parents, right of

(10:07):
elderly parents, who had given hundreds of thousands of dollars
did these fundraising operations. Many of them were suffering from
dementia and other forms of cognitive decline, and they were
rightfully very upset about what had transpired. And so the
complaints are there, but there's not at this moment anything

(10:27):
you know, at the federal level that would suggest that
this is outright illegal. Now, should the Democratic Party be
engaging or condoning this type of activity, I think that's
an entirely different question, and they have no obligation to
say that this is okay. The problem is the e
trip will see the d SEC, the official campaign committees

(10:48):
are engaging in these same tactics. They may not be
employing Mothership, but they're they're the way in which their
fundraising looks a lot like what we see from these
more unsavory packs.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Let's go back to Mothership, because you ended up discovering that,
I don't know what else to call this but a
form of money laundering because it was moving money around.
Money would be in one place, then it would show
up in another pack. Then that pack would take the
money that it received from one pack and pay it
to another pack, and it all ended up back at mothership.

(11:27):
Explain how that loop worked, because you found you'd find
one enity and as in Citizens United, would then be
working with. And let me get these other entities. You
named quite a few of them, and I do think
people want to know which names you had. The Progressive
Turnout Project, Stop Republicans, National Democratic Training Committee, a couple
of campaigns, John Assof's campaign for Senate and Jamie Harrison's

(11:50):
campaign for Senate. And it's interesting that Jamie, when I
first read your piece, the first campaign I thought about
that I thought got scammed by their own fundraising team
was Jamie Harris. Because here's a guy, how'd you raise
one hundred million dollars but not really have one hundred
million dollars? And now you've explained the story of how
that happened. So how did you connect and Citizen Gunited

(12:12):
and Progressive Turnout Project for instance.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
So the one of these structures that you see in
these pack vilands, so everything needs to be disclosed to
the FUC and they're they're usually come in these clusters
of packs. So, for instance, there's a cluster of seven
packs including Progressive Turnout Project and Stop Republicans and also
Stopped Trump. There's a number of pretty high fundrate, high

(12:38):
raising packs in this group. They're all run by the
same treasure so it's the.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Same individual who signs the forms to the FBC. Basically okay, right,
and so you can see they share a po box too.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
I mean it's just the same person. So like you said,
he he like reports as being these packs being affiliated too,
So it's not. It's not some sort of like hidden secret.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Now they make their alternative to the as far as
the FBC is concerned, they're like, oh, okay, these facts. These
packs are all affiliated, so it's not unusual. So which
which tells you Leathership isn't alone here by the way,
that this is a semi common tactic.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yes it is, And so what they'll do is though
there So, for instance, Stop Republicans, which has raised a
lot of money in recent election cycles, it's spent nothing
on campaigns or elections. Most of the money that they
raised went back to like fund raising fees and consultants.
What didn't was transferred over to Pressive Turnout Project, which

(13:43):
seems to be an operations hub, and Progressive Turnout Project
does appear to employ people for turnout operations. If like
I've done a really deep dive into their their campaigns,
that spending and maybe fIF teen percent of what they
spend goes towards actual turnout operation and independent expenditures, but

(14:06):
otherwise the vast majority is not. And so you see
all these six packs, only one of them is actually
spending on campaigns and the other ones will just raise
money and then transfer the money over. But if you're
someone who's not wise to what these packs are, which
until I looked into it, I wasn't either, you would
think I'm getting you know, these text messages from six

(14:29):
different operations, right, They're not connected. There's no reasons for
me to think they are. This is just a normal
way for people to fundraise. But really it's you know,
you could unsubscribe from one still get messages from the
others and have no idea that they're run by the
same person is in the same donor list.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Look, if you get I'm somebody who I've signed up
for enough mailers that I get these fundraising emails from
both parties and from candidates to both parties. The tactics
are very similar on both sides. Now they eat this
end of the world is coming tactic. I don't know
what else to call it, but it's some form of that,
like you know and with the Right, with MAGA, it's

(15:07):
Donald Trump personally is asking and if he you know,
he's keeping he's checking a list, he's looking to see
if your name's there. That's sort of but it's it's
it's very similar in tone, urgency, agitation and all of this,
which which is like you say, it's it's not illegal,
but maybe maybe it should be, but it's certainly predatory.

(15:30):
But it's been lucrative.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
And he's been lucrative for the consultants. The amount of
money going back to actual things that it that they
are claiming to hop as a support is a very
small fraction of the overall total. So in terms of
you know, being a great thing for digital fundraising consultants. Yeah,
the thing about it, like the point you raised about
that both parties having very similar tactics, that's absolutely like

(15:59):
an astute observation. Republicans are probably even worse on these
types of tactics, and Democrats are. They seem to have
more of the money going directly back to Donald Trump.
So I don't know, oh it's even right.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
No, no, no, no, I mean there is right. In fact,
there's some where he demands a piece. If you want
to use his list, he's got to get a He
basically wants a licensing fee essentially to use his name, name,
image and likeness.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
And I like, one of the things I pondered was,
you know, Chris, you know, I thought what was happening
was there was like, you know, these sophisticated algorithms that
they were employing that they were sending out and doing
av testing, so like some people would get one version
another a group of people would get another version of message,
and they just, you know, over time sort of landed

(16:45):
on these types of urgent, ridiculous like all maps messages
that you know, to most of us just seemed really
off putting, but at scale may have been somewhat effective
at fundraising. The more I looked into the So now
I don't think that because the types of tactics that
are use looks like they just transferred directly directly from

(17:07):
the tactics that are used in elder financial fraud schemes.
So I did a bunch of reading through the FDC
and the ways in which they sort of manipulate people
emotionally through this urgency that like making people think they
need to make a decision immediately. These are all known tactics,
and it was really quite jarring when I started looking

(17:28):
through those and being like, oh, I can just categorize
most of these messages into one of these different like
elder financial fraud tactics, and that was that was a
pretty depressing movement, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
You know, Adam, I have a sort of a friend
I've become more friendlier with over the years who was
a source of mine at the RNC and Quit, I
think I have this story right. Essentially quit when he
saw a piece of mail that they sent out that
got returned and either it was either the woman called

(18:04):
or she wrote in and said, hey, I know you
need this money. You know tomorrow I don't get my
Social Security check for another week. I said, okay, if
I wait a week, Well, it was like and it
was like he was like, I'm out and I mean,
and that dude left politics. He was like he couldn't.
He is out of campaign politics altogether. Dr you name.

(18:26):
It was just like sick to his stomach, right, it
was just one of those hit him and he was out.
And you know he's desperate to find any character, you know,
left in politics. But it really does prey on older people.
And both parties are doing this.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
And let me give you a couple SATs. So the
other aspect of it is it's not like most of
his money's coming from people just getting five or ten
dollars and then being done with it. And the way
they described the tactics the Mothership has described themselves this
way I believe as burning churn. So this idea that
you're just burning through these donor lists and like, you know,

(19:06):
scraping up a little like a few people, like one
out of ten thousand who might be donating, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
They don't even care. And they're not even getting a
one percent return rate, are they. It's less than a
one percent.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's not even close to that. But what I learned
was that's not what's happening. So here's some example. So
I was looking through the types of people who were
giving this money. So the vast majority, so five hundred
and forty million of the dollars ra since twenty twenty
of these spam packs have come from individuals who have

(19:35):
donated at least ten times. But most of that money
is coming from a really small group of what I
would say like captivated donors, so franstance. There's an eighty
nine year old woman in Indianapolis. She's donated to these
spam PACs seventy five hundred times, oh my god, and
she has given a total of sixty eight thousand dollars.

(19:56):
There's an eighty four year old retiree in Ohio who's
and two thousand times, totally, totally, not two hundred thousand
dollars almost. There's just I have lists of people like this,
and you can see where they live. They live in
usually sort of middle class or rural areas and not.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
These aren't wealthy people, and they're just oh my god,
so whatever I mean, they're just getting nickel and dime
the way the way somebody, you know, the way somebody
gets nickel and dime by in app purchases. Sometimes when
a kid, you know, when you're five or six year old,
and all of a sudden you realize, why am I
paying five dollars a week to what? And these elderly

(20:35):
and they also end up clicking the make it a
recurring payment? Right? Isn't that what?

Speaker 2 (20:39):
They usually don't click it often, So this is sort
of like a dark patterns thing. They often automatically put
that on you.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
You have to uncheck it if you don't want it. Yes,
it's a negative check. Oh god, this is just tragic.
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Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yes. So one good development that I've seen happening is
so act Blue. I believe they had been working on
this beforehand, but immediately after I published that piece, the
CEO from act Blue reached out to me and interested
let's talk, and they about a week later they implemented

(22:31):
new rules changes so that most of these tactics that
I had described would no longer be allowed on the platform.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
And we're the word mothership using Act blue was at
their primary facilitator.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yes, and they The problem is they still are because
it's the problem for Act Blue is they're stuck in
this like hard place where they want to clean up
the fundraising like environment that's that's uh, they seem to
and they're like putting rules in place, but the party
leadership seems to be using these tactics too. This is

(23:04):
something that has been pretty problematic, or at least I
think in terms of like if they want to enforce
this stuff, they would have to kick off the d
Triple C. They would have to kick off the d SEC.
I literally just got a message from the d s
CC this weekend saying that they were going to four
x match my donation. And that's not a thing. You
can't do that.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, it's illegal. That's actually if you did that, that
is a crime, by.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
The ways, but it's extremely effective for a certain type
of bonner who believes that's happening. And you know, so
where does that leave you know, act clue? I think
they want a clean house, but it's politically you know, is.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
It politically though? But I mean like this is where
you know. I mean, my friend Jining Cornanizer likes to say,
they answered all your problems is money, and sometimes the
answer to all your uh, the solution every problem is money,
and the diagnosis for every problem sometimes is money. Right,

(24:06):
how much do they not want to give up? How
much is being fun. You know, they make money for
anybody that raises money off of their platform. Well, yeah,
so they make some money for this tax so Mothership
they in theory have made a lot of money off
of Mothership. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Oh Act Blue, Yes, yeah they have and Act Blues.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
So they just went under a sort of leadership change.
So I think that has something to do with this.
They've been responsive to me and other people who have
worked in the space about trying to eliminate these tactics
from the platform. I'm hoping to see more progress in
the near future, and so at least that's a good

(24:48):
signal that something's being done.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Now, I want you to do that. Big numbers, Yeah,
tell me how. I still I couldn't believe the number,
the amount of money that Mothership has raised through all
of these packs, and the amount of money that has
actually been spent on campaigns as they promised to do.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
So we can take uh the so they get the
Mothership has raised something like two hundred and eighty like
correctly going to the firm as payments has been getting
like transferred about two hundred and eighty million dollars they have.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
That's how much they've pocketed r Yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
My estimate is that this is based off of about
six hundred and eighty million dollars raised.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Okay, so and so where where's the other four hundred million?

Speaker 2 (25:45):
The other four hundred million?

Speaker 1 (25:46):
So if they've pocketed two and eighty two, they've raised
about six hundred and eighty So let's like round abup
to eighty six eighty. We're missing about four hundred million.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yes, so about of that another one hundred and thirty
two two million I believe was spent on other consulting
firms like related in that space, you.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Brought up a firm called Message Digital LLC.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
That's it's digital. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Did you ever who pocketed a twenty two million? Did
you ever figure out who they are?

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Really? Just another They're another democratic fundraising operation. You can
go look at their website and they have clients like
Chuck Schumer. They're the ones. What their their Their service
that they sell or like they pitch to campaigns and
candidates and consultants, is that they can get around the
like mobile carriers, spam filters, so they know how to

(26:40):
get around and get those messages to us. That seems
to be their pitch. If you read the website and
you can get a sense of why that would be
a valuable for you know, a spam fundraising firm like
this other.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Show, right, I got you, Okay, So there's there's that
were we got about another two hundred and fifty million here.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, so the other so another about fifteen million of
that goes to campaign contributions and independent expenditures. Another like,
as far as I can tell, my best estimate is
another about one p eight million, and I've done like
much deeper digging into this more recently goes to what

(27:23):
could be classified is organizational or turnout efforts, okay. And
then another chunk of about ten million goes to refunds
to donors who said I didn't want to donate. Who's
going back my money? And then the rest just sort
of disappears into administrative costs and payroll and so it's hard,
it's hard to get an exact number where everything's going,

(27:45):
but that from the disbursement data that you I have
access to, those are my best estimers.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
And again seventeen million total to the campaigns themselves.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Well and most of us going to the d triple CE.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Around half of the next just the big chunk of
cash that they just said to the three big committees,
this isn't necessarily to house. You know, that special election
House race that they may have been talking about in
the fundraising email may not have gotten a dollar.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, this is excluding the money they've raised for people
like Jamie Harrison. Like I consider that as a different category.
So I think they've raised another like four hundred million
in four campaign like nidates themselves. But I'm looking more
at the sort of spam pack and they no longer
have those types of clients. As far as I can
tell that the Nitis are no longer hiring Mothership, there

(28:39):
are other firms that do the same thing that they're
now hiring, or they say peer to be all the
people who had been hired, that had hired Mothership now
have shifted over to other related Mothership.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Try to explain what they're doing. Did they push back?

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Did they?

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah? What did they? What did there? What is their explanation?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
They sort of make the argument, and they put out
a public statement on medium. I can't find it anymore
than they have taken it down, but they basically made
the argument that look, this is a necessary evil that
you know, we need to combat the Trump administration and
our health tactics or effectives in like they did not

(29:20):
like they would not respond to it like idiom my
like questions uh, in sort of response to their statements
about like what about these like predit like the why
are all your why is all your money coming from senior?
But why are your tactical look like elder financial fraud?
They have not addressed that at all. They basically fell
back on look where where uh, you know, fundraising because

(29:44):
we need to oppose the Trump administration and that's just
a necessary evil. And then they also sort of brought
it out some like candidates who had who had backed
their efforts or like put out statements. So like Cherry
Bustos was one of them, and like she came to
their fence and said, look, I've worked with Mothership and
there's this great organization and they you know, raise a

(30:06):
bunch of money and so you know, I'm proud of
the work that I've done with them. She used to
be the chair of the dtble C, right, So you
sort of get the sense that this is, you know,
this connect to the party in a way that is
really troubling.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Well, you know, it's interesting you're booking. Obviously you put
this out in August. You know, we were able to
finally get time for this for the podcast now here
at the end of September. But it's actually good timing
because I don't know if you've been paying attention to
the debate about the so called autopsy of the twenty
twenty four campaign that the DNC was and that there's

(30:42):
this huge lobbying effort by consultants to basically, you know,
they don't want to be shame for how much money
they made off of a bad campaign, essentially, and they're
afraid of their names showing up and essentially having happened
to them what I believe. Look, Mothership earned this, this
is what they did. So you're going to get scrutiny,

(31:02):
which you came up with. But I think frankly seeing
what happened with Mothership and realizing there's gonna be a
lot more people asking questions and if those firm names
get out there, there's going to be deeper dives and
trying to figure out you know, look, James Carvill sort
of threw it out there without name and names, but
he got angry one day in a rant and he said,
you know, if you're trying, you know, you can't be

(31:24):
worried about the carried interest lobby when you're trying to
save democracy. And he was referring to a couple of
close Harris consultants who were had clients that were worried
about carried interests going away, you know that in the
tax code. And you're just like, okay, you know what
I mean. You just your head goes right in your hand.

(31:44):
You're like, you know, you're telling us democracy is on
the ballot, but hey about carried interest. You know.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
I think this finally mentally feeds into some of the
weaknesses that democrats have experienced in recent years. Right now
and then, like there's this trend in polling data that
is just like shelped out at you, which is when
people are asked what they're most concerned about corruptions, like
at the top of the list. Yugov just did a
poll about what percentage of like what percentage of people

(32:15):
thought that like a member of Congress would accept a bribe.
It was like seventy one percent of people there, and they're, well.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
You mean, they're shocked that somebody might accept a bribe
in public service when the former head of the Border
Patrol took fifty thousand dollars and they just they didn't
even charge them. They didn't deny it happened. Yeah, well
we don't have enough evidence to charge. Yeah, but you
got your back of cash.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Okay, they're not wrong. So the public is very concerned
about public corruption. It is, from what I can tell
right now in polling data, issue number one that is
a massive opening for the Democratic Party. Anti corruption has
been probably, bar none, the most effective anti authoritarian strategy globally.

(33:05):
We see tons and tons of examples of it.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
It works anytime any parties, any party that's out of power,
who's trying to get rid of a party, you know,
beat back a party that's been in power, say more
than eight years, there's always a corruption angle that usually succeeds, right,
it says, one party rule. We all know after about
year eight or nine, somebody's deciding to make money off
of this, and you start to see it. It happens.

(33:30):
We've we've experienced it in our lifetimes. We've watched the
parties do this. It's effective in our democracy. But you're right,
it's times one hundred when it comes to stopping authoritarian.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yeah, and so this is this is the opening democrats.
It's the type of coalition you build that doesn't have
the types of trade offs where you have to you know,
push people to left out of the way or moderates
that they're no longer really important or anything like that.
You don't have those types of trade offs, and it
appeals to the working lots. So like we're on the
same page of this. I think to the problem is

(34:03):
you look at the same polling gata and people think
Democrats are just as corruptive Republicans. I would personally take
issue with that, even like the scale of things, but
I think people look at what happens in fundraising. They
look at the Democratic parties insistence on the need to
raise money from billionaires and mega donors, and they see

(34:25):
that effectively as a type of corruption as well. And
for Democrats to effectively take on this anti corruption angle,
I think the first thing they need to do is
clean house, and that starts with their fundraising practices. This is,
you know, beyond the pale, the type of stuff you
see from these digital fundraising and consultants by anyone evolved
in this type of thing should have nothing to do

(34:46):
with an anti corruption party, right, Like these consultants who
are upset about this, they you know this not all
consultants on the democratic side, but the most the most
successful consultants appear to be the ones g type of behavior.
And you know that's so bad.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
You know, it's interesting. The consultants you know by name
are not the corrupt ones because their name is out
there in some ways. They they they're they're trading on
their own reputations. The most corrupt ones are always the
people that do this stuff that's like a layer or
two below that we all don't see. The digital guy,
the phone people, and it's it's always in this arena

(35:26):
where there's only like a handful of vendors and they
they've become the vendor for like it. It is the
most corruptible part of the political consulting world. I'm not
saying they are all those guys that do phones and
do this are corrupt. I'm not saying that. But there's
a lot of evidence of corruptibility there in the fundraising
side because there's just so much cash it and it's

(35:50):
moving around all the time. It really is, it's like
any cash business. You know, you you you know, we've
all watched Ozark. It kind of works that way. You
hate to say say it, but it does.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
And the sad irony of this all. So, as I mentioned,
I've been studying campaign finance for a lot of time,
Like I know, but spend all my time in this
data and how it affects elections. It really matters in
a lot of ways for American politics, like who we
select to end for office, and like primaries, this like

(36:23):
mega donor fundraising or the type of fundraising that's coming
in from these like more corrupted channels. It's almost like
the evidence is it's basically not effective at all. So
like money going to a campaign so they can hire
staff and put together an operation is useful. Money spent
by super PACs appears to have basically no effect on

(36:45):
both sharing like little to no effect, you know, maybe
a tenth of a percentage point if you double your
opponents like super pac fundraising, you know, just you know,
tiny little slipper of the population. But to do that,
you're giving your credibility and a party that can fight corruption.
It's just I don't see the trade off as being

(37:06):
worth it. Consultants get very mad when I say that,
But they're the only ones who do.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
So. All right, let me get you to answer this
sort of pushback about fundraising tactics, which is which I
hear all the time from my friends on the left. Well,
we don't want to tie one arm behind our back.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, look to you. So first of all, you didn't
tie that arm behind your back. You cut it off
and give it to consultants. That's where we're at if
we just want to be realistic about it. But secondly,
the money you raise there, I just that's not what
wins contemporary elections. They're raising more money than your opponent.

(37:45):
Having a better party brand is going to win that battle.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
Every time Donald Trump has been outspent in twenty sixteen,
in twenty twenty and in twenty twenty four discuss.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
That is consistent with the empirical evidence that we have
that the ad campaign advertising has very small effects. There
was this really great study that came out recently that
was that has the highest quality standard of like experimental
study on campaign ads. They had Facebook like show ads
to some people, but randomly have other people not. Then

(38:21):
they could track all their political behavior after like whether
they supported prompt or Biden. Because it was in twenty twenty,
they found zero effect. That's like the highest level would
be there's like a thirty thousand people involved in the
in the study, zero effect on their political behavior. But
this is where there's tons of money being spent. And

(38:41):
the other thing that I think is really tragic here
is that the Democrats have this massive built in fundraising
advantage right now that they are squandering that a young
perfect so the young like they are out fundraising Republicans,
like right now, Republicans in this last election cycle, for
they're if half of their money came from from one

(39:04):
hundred donors, one hundred mega donors, got it. Fifty six
percent of their money came from people giving over a
million dollars.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
That's like the Adelson's and Elon mossk in that crowd. Yeah, okay,
got it.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
For Democrats, it's about eighteen percent. If you cut that
eighteen percent off, they still would have outfund raised Republicans.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
But so they have more upper middle Basically, they have
more upper middle class donors than the.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Republican valley like it used to be the other way.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Like this is the law. This goes to the whole
loss of the suburban vote. The suburban vote, which once
lead Republican and therefore they had a lot of the
five thousand dollars donors. Now it's the Democrats that have
the five thousand dollars dollars.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, and it's good to this. This advantage is just
going to continue to grow if they don't squander it.
Whi's eighty percent of people under forty who are donating
boltics know, I mean federal elections or giving to Democrats,
exclusively to Democrats. They have won this hire sort of
young professional class that will be that's money is speech.

(40:05):
Money is speech. How are you going to I mean.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
This gets I've I've come, I've come around on campaign finance.
I was a I always like to use the example,
and I don't know if you've ever heard me use
it in some of my apologies if you have, but
the metaphor I would use was always a the Jeffrey
Goldblum character in Jurassic Park. This is my issue with

(40:32):
campaign finance laws because every every time you try one,
it almost seems to create new loopholes. And so Jeffrey
Goldblum said, when when the old man in Jurassic Park said, hey, oh,
they're not going to breed and Goldblum says, life finds
a way. Well, that would always been my attitude about
money and politics. No matter what you do, money finds

(40:54):
a way. Oh, you're not going to let them do
soft money to the parties. Well, we're going to create
five oh one, seed three, and then we're going to
do the Then you know, oh, you're not going to
let this. We're going to do the super pac and
then we're going to you know, there was always a
new tax gimmick, using the tax code to find another way. Well,
this money will only be able to be spent on

(41:14):
political organizing, but it's softer over here. And then we
have our hundred dollars of it. And the point was it,
money always found a way. But we are getting to
the point of absurdity right where every candidate now has
to have their own billionaire. And if you don't have
a sugar billionaire, sugar mommy or sugar daddy, you can't

(41:36):
run for state wide office in America. And that that's
when you realize, uh, oh, we have a kleptocracy.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yes, I mean, I think that's an excellent analogy, but
that fits my reading of the history of campaign finance
regulation that you do see this pressure. The Supreme Court's
mostly culpable in the recent version of But is.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
That the on was that what you'd like to see?
You know, I had this. There's this movement to try
to reinterpret Citizens United and reinterpret the campaign finance, all
using mains a referendum that was passed in Maine. We'll
see what happens there.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, I mean ideally in the long run. Yes, I
don't see that as a viable strategy in the near run,
and so, you know, as a pragmatist, I don't see
that as something the Democratic Party, like if they say,
we want to know constitutional amendment on to band Sitisens United. Fine,
I mean it's like eighty percent under the population supports that,

(42:42):
So you're not going out on the limb there. But
I think we're the real advantage that they could gain
right now is this is more of a they actually
don't need this money. If they went back to saying
we're only going to let people give us up to
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars limit that was in
place before or uh for Cystens United, and you know,

(43:03):
the rest of that money you'll spend on pro democracy stuff.
But you can't give it to us because we don't
want that appearance of corruption. The Democratic Party did that,
they'd have more than enough money to fund their operations,
and they would as a as a party, gain a
huge credibility advantage against Republicans because they could say we're
not the corrupt ones, look what we did. I don't

(43:25):
see that as a realistic thing that the Democratic Party
will do, but my god, I think it's something that
they would absolutely be advantage from doing because that money,
the amount they can raise from traditional fundraising sources, will
more than make up for what they lose from these
mega donors.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
I think we're in a moment. Look, I would have
been more skeptical of that a couple of years ago,
because it does you know. My my issue is I
can't find an example of somebody losing over campaign finance issues,
right you don't? You know? Are you know? It's one
of those issues that when you ask a voter about it,
they're like, yeah, I don't like the system, But when

(44:13):
you ask them what don't you like in general? This
is it's like fifth or six on the list, right,
you know, And that's and it's like it is a
prodding issue it's an issue if you tell the voter about,
you educate them about. Yeah, they are going to be
pretty They're not going to They're probably going to be
willing to come your way. But it is one of
those you're trying to get them to agree with you
on a problem. And in politics, you know, the party

(44:37):
that is able to agree with the voter and what
the voter thinks are the problems usually has the advantage.
And so that's where I've been a skeptic on this.
I say, all that this big, mega rich tech community
that is trying to buy up land all over the country,
take up the power grid, decide what you and I

(44:59):
get to see. You know, we're going to have four
families controlling all of media, right that the consolidation the
Robber Baron type mindset that I think, you know, the
consolidation of wealth connecting it to the campaign finance issue
that I buy.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeah, I mean it's it's a risk, but it's one
that I think is well justified given the moment. The
anti oligarchy angle is really important to consider.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Now.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
One of my colleagues, Walter sneidel As is staper from
a few years back showing that uh, economic inequality in
the US is higher than it was at the end
of the Roman Republic or during right before the French Revolution. Right, Like,
we're in pretty extreme territories and it's getting worse and
worse and worse in terms of what we're seeing. These

(45:52):
are these are types of things that are very you know,
destabilizing to democracies. And we've known that for a long time.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Well, the greatest true the billionaires ever pulled was convincing
the working class that they were on their side.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, but even and like there's this Ken Martin, the
chair of the DNC, like that a few months back, like, look,
there are good billionaires and bad billionaires, and we're going
to continue raising money from the good billionaires. I don't
actually disagree with the claim that there are good billionaires
out there, but it just comes off as so self serving.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
And remember who he thinks is a good billionaire. Half
the country might think they're not that good, or they're
the son or daughter of somebody that made money the
wrong way. Like, it isn't going to be as clean
as you think it is, Ken Martin.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
And also the like we just have to go back
to the twenty twenty four election and if you remember
Mark Cuban, who was stumping for Kamala Harris, and at
one point the Harris campaign had come out pretty forcefully
with a we're going to tax unrealized games on fortunes
over one hundred million dollars, so affecting a tiny time

(47:04):
in slights of the population. Very few people have that
type of money, and it was a pretty populist measure
had come out of the Biden campaign, and it was
probably the strongest economic populist message that they had. Mark
Cuban went off script that it would destroy the economy
and like at one of the stub speeches, instead that

(47:26):
if Paris had been elected and gone through with it,
he would can pain against her next time. Right. This
is back to James Carville's point that if you're really
chasing this money, their interests are just not aligned with
what a party like the Democrats probably need to do
to regain power, which is not to cater to those
who already have power, but to cater to a working class.

(47:49):
That these things is completely rigged against them.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
You know, in our closing a few minutes here, because
we've gone almost forty five on this topic, proof that
you can you can go along on campaign finance issues.
What you've been studying this for a long time, You've said,
You've said, were there other forks in the road, that

(48:16):
if we'd not taken then we'd be in a better spot,
at least on the campaign finance was I look at
McCain fine Gold and think it was a The unintended
consequences made it bad legislation, even though it was it
was attempting to do good.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Let's say you yeah, so I tend to agree that
it didn't achieve all its goals. Part of that it
was sort of decapped by what the supret core did
in response.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Sure, we did get it for about ten years, and
I would argue it gutted the parties in a way
that I don't think we all saw coming, and it
moved the money outside of the parties harder for people
like you and I to track. That's my this.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah, there's also something many political scientists say that the
weakening of the parties as a result of McCain fine
Gold was a negative consequence that was not expected. I
tend to agree with that that stronger parties tend to
be a little more I don't know, protective of their brands,
and I think we've saw that sort of fall off.
The other thing I just want to bring up is,

(49:20):
you know, campaign finances. We think of it as this
like a US thing, but the US is very like
perceptional on how we operate campaign fundraising in compared to
the democracies. It's just not the same thing in Europe
or or even like even Japan, even in South Korea,
where it's a big problem, they have much much stricter

(49:42):
regulations on it that make it look nothing like the US.
And so I guess my general point is, yes, there
were like it's hard to see where the like missteps were.
Is just sort of mad starting point. The institutionally was
always going to be very difficult to fix, even for
all meaning reformers because of the hurdles there. But the
truth is the way that we have approached campaign finance,

(50:05):
this notion that it like money is speech that has
nothing to do with how democracy operates worldwide. And I
think having that perspective for moving forward should be helpful
for when we do have a moment to engage in
actual institutional reform, which seems like abi will be coming
around the corner. Because it's hard to say, our institutions

(50:27):
are so unstable right now.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
So in the two thousand election, both presidential nominees took
the took the federal matching funds, which meant they each
agreed to only spend about sixty five million dollars total
in their general election campaign. Twelve years later, Barack Obama
and Mitt Romney each spend a billion dollars. It's one

(50:50):
of the fast So if we hit the billion dollar
per campaign mark in twenty twelve, we just hit the
two billions. I mean, we're going to have a five
I assume the twenty twenty eight to twenty thirty two
we're looking at a five billion dollar per party presidential election.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Oh, we exceeded that in twenty twenty. The amount raised
the federal leven twenty twenty exceeded for both presidents and
congressional exceeded twenty billion.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
No, right, I knew that, But I'm just talking about
just for the presidency.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Right, Oh yeah, wow, that's that's very viable. And then
I guess I think, so what is like advertising cannot
be the most efficient way to spend that at this point.
The thirtieth AD you see in you see this in Pennsylvan.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Well, the joke is just right. Just write a check
to the voter that you need. I mean, at this
point right where you're fighting over the last forty thousand
swing voters in Michigan, you know, buy I'm a new
buy them a new fishing vote. I mean, my goodness,
I mean, I'm being facetious, but we're it. There is
an inefficiency about this right where we have fewer swing

(51:57):
voters than ever and more money per swing voter to spend.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, I mean the alternative is more of it spent
on mobilization. So that's where we see variation in elections,
is these turn out differentials and democratically like more motivate
and they turn out a high rates and Republicans that
swamps any sort of who's winning the swing voters in
recent elections. It's not an easy thing to do. So
it's not clear that spending money on that type of

(52:23):
mobilization will yield the types of returns. But I don't know.
I look at the New York City election, which is
not representative of the country, but the youth turnout that
man Danny saw was off the chart. I've never seen
anything like it in terms of like young people were
turning out at nearly the same rates as old people

(52:44):
in the unit in a US election. It's just not
something you see. And so I you know, and his
stity of using money is like he raised up to
the limits that stop sending me money. I don't need
it anymore, but I need volunteers. So maybe there's a
different model that is less reliant on what you can
spend money to do and more reliant on traditional mobilizing

(53:06):
and saying like I don't need your money, I need
your help, all right, but let.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Me get you. Let me get a pep peeve of
mine that's in new the state you teach it. The
California referendum process feels like a system that only gives
political consultants a reason to live in the state of California.
That the amount of money that two entities spend against

(53:31):
each other. I mean, the fight over mobile sports gambling
is probably the best example where you had each side
was you know, there was no good side. It was
we want to be the monopoly. No, we want to
be the monopoly, and we're going to We're going to
make you, the voter, decide which side is least evil
to be your monopoly in sports gambling. You're also going

(53:54):
to see probably half a billion dollars just on this
redistricting initiative.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, it is, you know, so in some ways it's
more democratic because it is broken away from sort of
the type of quid block you can see in legislative institutions.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
No, I mean it's the one, the one differ. But yeah,
the one thing I say that you could defend that
I'll defend. At least they're going to the voters with
this disenfranchising idea, but at least they're asking for the
voters to approve disenfranchisement.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
But any god if I could. But I completely share
your uh right with the way that it often operates.
Often it's just too special interests trying to get upper hand.
It's and there should I wish there was more editing
of that process, uh, and that we had an institution
set up so that that just wasn't you know, we
actually asked questions that were of relevance to the public.

(54:47):
I was voting on a ballot measure about what like
like kidney dialysis like regulations, so I have no about did.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
You wonder, like why the hell is this even on
the ballot for people for lay people to decide dialysis regulation.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Right, Well, I knew why because they didn't get what
they wanted out of the legislature, so they went to
a consultant. They figured out how to get it on
the ballot. So yes, I mean I think there's there's
a lot of craft that goes on in that process.
You know, it's and it's not necessary. So again, like
as someone who's more of a reformer, I would absolutely

(55:24):
put much more limitations on the types of things that
should appear on ballots.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Well, Adam, you're why your analysis and investigation and what's
your your substec is called on data and democracy? Is
that right? Yeah? I highly recommend it. Go check it out.
It's it's it's methodical in all the right ways. And
this is sort of this is independent journalism at its best.

(55:49):
Because you're not. I will tell you. I tried to
do an audit. I was obsessed. After twenty twelve, I
tried to get NBC and partner with another news organization
because we always worry, we always worry about where money
comes from. Well we never actually do what you did,
which where does this money go? And I thought a
billion dollars. Look, I know some of it's going to
the TV stations, but not all of it. Right, who's

(56:13):
making you know, you know, besides you know Verizon cell
cell phones and at T cell phones. Who's making so
much money off of the industry that is politics? But
you know, it's it's a it's a tough thing to
get people excited about and and it and yet it's
you know, it's arguably what's weakening the democracy more than

(56:36):
anything else we're dealing with. Ill.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, well, thank you, and I agree, and thanks for
having me on. I think it's to man, great conversation.
You really need to.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Get it when you when people take your class, what
are they at Stanford? I'm just curious what what what
do you spa What are your specific areas of political
science that you teach.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
So I teach intro to American politics.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
The big big anybody that all the athletes, everybody gets
into that class, right, that.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Was retitled in Defensive Democracy. So I tase that with
my colleague Kim Jefferson. I teach Americans book constitutions, and
I teach machine learning and politics, so the institution and
data big person.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah, and at a place like Stanford. That's actually that's
probably next level potentially the opportunity to be next level
stuff and understanding that that area, because I do think
I do think a lot of politicians get taken by
people coming in from the tech world saying, oh, I

(57:41):
can do all of this, and they sort of like
the way a mechanic can con somebody who doesn't know
anything about cars, Oh, you need a new Johnson rod
that you see sometimes the tech community. So it's good
to see political people getting a little bit of tech education,
because I do think sometimes those people take advantage of
the lack of knowledge that say it Chuck Schumer and

(58:03):
his chiefest staff have for this stuff.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Wow, absolutely, And I do. And that is sort of
one of the public services I'm trying to provide, is,
you know, bring data in empirical evidence in ways more
accessible so that people who are not just as such
a maker's but the public and so to see through
some of the things that they sort of feel are
wrong but don't really have to have a asappoint too.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Well. If the DNC is trying to turn the page
and rebrand, embracing an investigation like this would probably be
a step in the right direction. I just don't know
if the leader. I don't know if the current leaders
that the party has right now are ready for that
kind of reform. I don't see evidence of it, do you.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
No, I'm quite so. Part of my analysis is I've
looked at the leadership and they tend to it. So
keing Jeffrey is about eighty percent of his small donors,
So he's raised three million dollars from small owners the
selection cycle. Eighty percent of those donors have also given
to these fan packs. Then he uses many of the
same tactics, and you can look at his Facebook ads

(59:10):
and see who he's targeting, and his consultants are targeting
people who are sixty five plus almost exclusively, And so
I don't see that being a likely scenario. But you know,
I tell people, this is the Year of the Snake,
is the year where it get like a Chinese horterscope,
you know, the skin sheds and there's renewal. And the
Democratic Party looks like it's going under a renewal and

(59:32):
I think, I think there's a lot of energy in
sort of reform.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
So I who knew that the Year of the Snake
would bring about renewal rather than something more to very
I like that the Year of the Snake. We're shedding
our skin, we're shedding our brand. Anyway, Adam, this is terrific.
Appreciate your time well, Thank you so much