Conservatives spent heavily in key Democratic primaries, filings show

By David Wright, Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — An influential conservative nonprofit covertly funded a series of super PACs with names suggesting liberal provenance as the groups injected hundreds of thousands of dollars into key nominating Democratic contests across the country.

A new round of Federal Election Commission filings Saturday confirmed national Democrats’ suspicions that Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC and Blue California PAC were purposefully boosting candidates perceived as weaker contenders in a general election in hopes of engineering more favorable matchups for Republicans.

In the most striking example, Lead Left PAC spent more than $750,000 on advertisements in the Democratic primary in Texas’ 35th District, according to AdImpact data, boosting Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist and housing advocate whose use of antisemitic tropes in criticizing Israel drew national attention and widespread condemnation from members of both parties. Galindo denied that her remarks are antisemitic.

“She’s the only candidate who will stop Trump and ICE,” says one of the group’s ads – which ultimately proved unsuccessful, as Galindo lost in the primary runoff by nearly 30 points to Johnny Garcia.

Despite the group’s name and messaging, filings show that Lead Left PAC received more than $3 million in May from Conservative Americans PAC — itself funded by American Prosperity Alliance, the influential Republican nonprofit with ties to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

In a statement, Conservative Americans PAC acknowledged its role in seeking to shape the Democratic primaries.

“Republicans are leveling the playing field after over a decade of Democrats meddling in our primaries, and with the Democrat Party in the midst of a civil war, Republicans would be stupid not to take advantage while pushing their candidates farther left,” spokesperson Samantha Bullock said.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee condemned the tactics but claimed that Republican efforts have backfired in the races, pointing to how concerns about Galindo powered Garcia to a landslide win.

“The electoral outlook for MAGA Republicans has become so bleak that they’ve turned to their failed former Speaker of the House, who is helping to bankroll this cynical effort to rig Democratic primaries, including boosting a dangerous antisemite in Texas,” spokesperson Justin Chermol said in a statement. “These desperate tactics have backfired, elevating the profile and on the ground excitement behind our formidable Red to Blue candidates.”

CNN has reached out to American Prosperity Alliance for comment.

Shadowy super PAC spending

Quirks in campaign finance reporting deadlines allow for outside groups like these super PACs to register with the FEC in the weeks leading up to an election and spend unlimited amounts before they are required to file their first reports detailing fundraising and spending. Timed strategically, those reports won’t reach voters until the election is over.

That’s allowed groups like Lead Left PAC to mask the source of their funding, and intervene aggressively in primaries without tipping their hands to voters.

In addition to Texas’ 35th, Lead Left PAC spent $1.4 million in Pennsylvania’s 7th District opposing Bob Brooks, a top Democratic recruit who went on to win the primary anyway, and $300,000 in Nebraska’s 2nd District, another key battleground, targeting state Sen. John Cavanaugh, who lost to Denise Powell.

Another super PAC, Real Change PAC, mirrored those tactics. Filings show that it received about $1.2 million from Conservative Americans PAC in May, while it was booking hundreds of thousands of dollars of ad time in Democratic primaries in New Jersey’s 7th District and Maine’s 2nd District – both of which concluded before its disclosure.

The results were mixed. In New Jersey, efforts to boost Tina Shah against eventual Democratic nominee Rebecca Bennett failed, though in Maine, they helped tilt the field against state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who lost the primary to state Auditor Matt Dunlap.

Additional examples, confirmed and suspected, litter the campaign map. Conservative Americans PAC funded another group, California Blue PAC, which engaged in the all-party primary in California’s 40th District earlier this month, supporting Democrat Esther Kim-Varet in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the member-on-member matchup now set between GOP Reps. Ken Calvert and Young Kim, a result of the state’s partisan redistricting.

And Democrats suspect that more Republican meddling is underway in New York’s 17th District, where a group, Progressive Champions PAC, is on the air against Cait Conley, an Army veteran and former national security official looking to challenge GOP Rep. Mike Lawler.

CNN has reached out to Progressive Champions PAC for comment.

A chaotic campaign finance landscape

The GOP meddling comes as Democrats have already been divided on whether their House campaign arm should be intervening in their own party’s primaries during an intensely competitive midterm cycle. Some of the Democratic candidates whom the GOP-linked PACs have sought to undermine, such as Baldacci, have had the backing of the DCCC.

Both parties have employed the strategy over the years to obscure their activities and interfere in each other’s primaries. The tactics underscore the Wild West character of campaign finance in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United decision and another federal court ruling that spurred the creation of super PACs that spend unlimited sums influencing elections.

As far back as 2018, pop-up super PACs with Democratic and Republican ties were spending millions in a critical West Virginia Senate primary, battling over the optimal matchup for the then-vulnerable incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

But efforts to prop up rival-party candidates seen as having less general election appeal have also faced internal backlash.

In 2022, DCCC spending to boost the Trump-backed challenger of GOP Rep. Peter Meijer, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the Donald Trump after January 6, 2021, set off an intraparty debate. John Gibbs, Meijer’s conservative primary challenger, ousted the moderate Republican and went on to lose the general election.

CNN’s Fredreka Schouten contributed to this report.

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