Who’s behind all the negative ads in the Republican primary for Congress?
Pulling back the curtain on the three groups who’ve been flooding the airwaves in Northeast Indiana
It’s almost over.
The highly contested GOP primary for Northeast Indiana’s open 3rd District Congressional seat will finally come to an end on Tuesday. Until then, residents will have to wade through one last deluge of advertising on television, on the radio, and in their mailboxes.
The biggest reason for the closing blitz? Three outside Super PACs that have dumped millions of dollars into the race trying to sway your vote.
Super size me
Most voters are familiar with political action committees — commonly called PACs — that can donate funds directly to candidates. In federal races, FEC regulations restrict those donations to a maximum of $5,000 per year per candidate.
With competitive Congressional races costing as much as a million dollars or more, the influence a traditional PAC can have on the outcome is severely limited.
Super PACs, however, operate under very different rules. They came into existence in 2010, after the Supreme Court ruling that overturned parts of the McCain–Feingold Act regulating campaign financing.
Super PACs cannot directly communicate or coordinate with federal candidates. They cannot give them money or talk with them or their representatives during the campaign to discuss what the candidate wants the Super PAC to do.
But they have no limitations on how much money they can raise from individuals — many are funded by large donations from a small number of millionaires or billionaires — and are free to run advertising and send out mailers on their own, in support of or in opposition to any federal candidate.
That’s why you haven’t been able to turn on your TV the past few months without seeing negative ads from Super PACs about the three leading candidates in the race to replace Jim Banks: Tim Smith, former Allen Circuit Court Judge Wendy Davis, and former Congressman Marlin Stutzman.
How can you tell if an ad is from a Super PAC? Listen to the end. The FEC requires every ad to include information about who is behind it. If the spot comes directly from a candidate, you’ll hear them say that they “approve this message.” If it’s from a Super PAC, there will be a voiceover saying which one is “responsible for the content of this ad.”
There are three Super PACs that have been running negative ads in the 3rd District Congressional race: Club for Growth Action, WFW Action Fund, and America Leads Action.
Here’s an in-depth look at each of them.
Club for Growth Action
Club for Growth Action is the Super PAC of Club for Growth, an organization founded in 1999. It is primarily an anti-tax group, and has raised millions of dollars to support Republican candidates who share its values.
Since 2015, it’s been run by former Indiana congressman David McIntosh, who also lost a race for governor in 2000. “We’re now the largest independent super PAC on the Republican side,” he said of Club for Growth Action in early 2023.
Club for Growth Action’s largest donor is Jeff Yass, a billionaire who has given the group $20.5 million since the beginning of 2023. Yass is best known as a major investor in TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, and according to some reports, could lose up to $21 billion if a new U.S. law requiring the app to sever its connection with China ends up forcing it to shut down.
Club for Growth Action made headlines in early 2023 when it released an ad preemptively attacking former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who was considering running for the U.S. Senate against Jim Banks in this year’s GOP primary.
“Club for Growth Action will spend eight figures or whatever it takes to get Banks elected,” a spokesman said at the time. (Daniels eventually decided not to run; Banks is unopposed in Tuesday’s election.)
Last week, Club for Growth Action again was in the news when Wendy Davis’s campaign sent them a cease-and-desist letter alleging that a new ad they’d started running against her broke a recent Indiana law against using digitally altered media in campaigns.
“The entire ad is fabricated,” Davis told WPTA. “The entire ad is a lie.”
The commercial included audio excerpts of a Civil Conversation panel discussion sponsored by AVOW (Advancing Voices of Women) that was later broadcast on WBOI in Fort Wayne.
A Club for Growth spokesman acknowledged the audio had been spliced together but argued that it accurately reflected the spirit of her comments, releasing the full context to an Indianapolis TV station.
Davis isn’t the only candidate in the Club for Growth’s sights. They’ve also been hammering Tim Smith on a series of youth sexual abuse claims against Lasting Change, an organization he has served as CEO since 2022. (Lasting Change is also known as Lifeline Youth and Family Services, Inc.)
In April 2023, Smith testified before an Indiana Senate committee in favor of a bill that would prohibit negligence claims like those brought against Lasting Change for sexual abuse of teens in their care.
After the Indy Star reported on the allegations Smith’s organization was facing, that provision was dropped by state lawmakers.
Smith’s campaign felt the ad against him necessitated a reply, which his team produced quickly and had up on the air soon after.
The Club for Growth took Smith’s reply and used it as the basis for another ad that hit back even harder. They included clips of Smith’s testimony to that Senate committee where he asked lawmakers to give the organization he oversees “absolute immunity.”
WFW Action Fund
WFW Action Fund is the Super PAC of Winning for Women, a group formed to support “right-of-center” women. According to its website, it raised over $17 million in 2022 to support Republican women running for office.
According to recent FEC reports, WFW Action Fund’s largest donors are investment banker Warren Stephens ($255,000) hedge fund manager Paul Singer ($250,000) and hedge fund manager Ken Griffin ($1M). Other notable donors include financial executive Charles Schwab ($5,000) and WWE co-founder Linda McMahon ($5,000).
It’s no surprise that WFW Action Fund is supporting Wendy Davis, who is the only woman running in the GOP primary. They’ve actively promoted her candidacy, sending out mailers and running ads on her behalf for the past several weeks.
At the same time, they’ve gone after Marlin Stutzman. Those spots focus on Stutzman’s 2012 vote to cut border funding when he was previously in Congress and calling him an “open borders politician.”
America Leads Action
America Leads Action is the newest of the three Super PACs trying to influence the 3rd Congressional district race. It has been largely financed by just two men: former Walmart chairman Rob Walton ($2 million) and SnapAV founder Jay Faison ($2.95 million).
Both are long-time GOP mega donors who share a commitment to environmental issues. Faison formed a multi-million dollar foundation to fight climate change and Walton’s own website calls him a conservationist.
The two appear to have formed America Leads Action in an attempt to target candidates aligned with or endorsed by the House Freedom Caucus.
Formed in 2015, the House Freedom Caucus is a group of the farthest-right Republican members of Congress. They are perhaps best known for helping force the resignation of then-Speaker of the House John Boehner, who was a Republican they viewed as not conservative enough.
Stutzman was a House Freedom Caucus member during that period and played a key role in Boehner’s ouster. Multiple GOP insiders told me that Mitch McConnell recruited then-Congressman Todd Young to challenge Stutzman in the 2016 primary for Indiana’s open U.S. Senate seat because he didn’t want Stutzman to come after McConnell’s leadership position like he had Boehner’s.
McConnell’s own Super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, even ran ads against Stutzman during that race, which he lost by a 67% to 33% margin.
It’s no surprise, then, that America Leads Action has been attacking Stutzman in his bid to win back his former seat in Congress. They’ve called attention to his vote in the Indiana General Assembly to raise legislator salaries, unresolved allegations that he paid for a family trip with campaign funds, and past support for trade deals, among other things.
Thank you. I was going to ask about the who & why of these ads.