They seem to be doing well in making money for themselves (through mildly obfuscatory means) and siphoning big amounts of money that might otherwise go towards Democrat or even good left causes so well done to them. Another Republican success story.
Can you show me proof of this? I’ve been hearing about it, but never any evidence and I’d like to see it.
TIA
PACs like this are intentionally opaque, so frankly, you have to make some inferences from what we do know. The people who started the Lincoln Project were largely political operatives for Republicans. Making money from elections is what they do.
We know they raised just under $82 million. FEC Disclosure Form 3X for The Lincoln Project
Of this $24.9 million went to “Operating Expenditures.” This would cover office space, office supplies, travel, services, etc, but for the Lincoln Project, in a coronavirus year when no one was renting offices, buying equipment, or going really anywhere, it would mostly be salaries of the people who ran the organization. They only gave $300,000 to political parties or other PACs.
They spent $48.5 million of it on “independent expenditures,” which is basically all the remaining money they spent doing what they do.
Much of this money was directed to subcontractors associated with their founders, allowing plenty of chances for its founders to cash in. OpenSecrets.org said about the Lincoln Project that, "The Republican super PAC has amassed a substantial war chest, but it has come under scrutiny for funneling money to its advisory board members and spending relatively little airing political ads to influence voters. The group also hides some of its vendors by stealthily paying subcontractors, making it difficult to follow the money. " The Lincoln Project reported spending nearly $1.4 million through March. Almost all of that money went to the group’s board members and firms run by them. The super PAC spent nearly $1 million with Summit Strategic Communications, a firm run by Lincoln Project treasurer Reed Galen. Another $215,000 went to Tusk Digital, a company run by Lincoln Project adviser Ron Steslow.
The Atlantic picked up on that reporting as well. The Tactics of the Lincoln Project - The Atlantic
There has been coverage of how they spend their money by right-leaning sources too. Lincoln Project Paid More than $2M to Firms Owned by Its Founders
All of this coverage is from early in the Lincoln Project’s works so it discusses only a relatively small pile of money but we can see from their last Federal Election Commission filing that between 10/15/2020 and 11/23/2020, the Lincoln Project paid out another $4 million to Summit Strategic Communications and TUSK Digital, which are entities associated with two of the Lincoln Project’s founders.
Most of their funding came from Democrats. Lincoln Project Funders: Exactly Whom You Expect | National Review
I’m getting tired of digging up old articles I read but there was also coverage of the fact that they were principally running ads in heavily Democratic markets, including heavily in Washington, DC… This would be exactly the strategy you would adopt if your goal was to attract donations from people who already oppose Trump rather than persuading on-the-fence voters in critical swing states.
The Lincoln Project was a fun scam pack by a small group of Republicans who were otherwise banished to the political wilderness in this election cycle. They had worked for Republicans too long to ingratiate themselves to Democratic candidates. They seem to sincerely dislike Trump and didn’t want to work for him or his enablers. They realized they could make plenty of money from Democrats to make mocking ads of Trump without a real concern about whether it would change minds or influence the election.
And, in the next election cycle, they can play their “success” in this election however it will work best for them. If the Democrats liked what they did, they can say they proved their abilities and bona fides, and work for Democrats. If there is a wave of moderate Republicans who seek office in the next round (which would have seemed likely if we’d had a blue wave), they could assert that they were only opposed to Trumpism but they are just the people to get more reasonable Republicans elected. If neither of those works out (and the idea that moderate Republicans will take over the party seems unlikely), the Lincoln Project founders can just continue to run their scam PAC and do as little work as possible.
For $82M I believe we got a lot of entertainments value. Some days during the last 9 months my greatest joy came from watching and sharing their ads. They deserve an Emmy. Bravo!
Thank you for that detailed response. I am curious how this compares to other firms doing this same sort of work.
I enjoyed the ads myself and I think I saw a new one every day.
One could quibble with how they went about it but to seriously think that LP was a secret pro-Trump group is up there with with fraud CTs. Their ads were too good and hard hitting.
Right. And the complaint about the DC ad runs is a bit silly - it was specifically done so that Trump would see those ads (I thought we all knew that by now).
Does anyone know anyone who was convinced to dump Trump by them to at least abstain in the election?
No, but it most likely raised the awareness level of his crimes and hypocrisy to a multitude of people who otherwise may not have bothered to vote. A small part of the 80 million of them that turned out.
That seems likely to me, too. The ads contributed to several perceptions:
- that opposition to Trump was made up of a far-wider group than simply “radical leftists”
- that people who opposed Trump didn’t do so out of awe and fear of his magnificence, but rather out of contempt for him
- that the cool kids despised Trump–so joining the cool kids in voting against him would be, you know, cool
There’s really no reasonable way to claim that that kind of messaging had no value.
So Wilson and Conway and Schmidt aren’t Mother Theresa—so they made a buck off their own wits. As long as they weren’t deceptive about any of it, I can live with it.
If they start trying to sell Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton as candidates who would be good for democracy (instead of the reality, that they are candidates who would be very, very good for authoritarianism), then I will denounce the Lincoln Project members as manipulative exploiters.
But from what I can see now, they behaved honorably as entrepreneurs who sincerely believed Trump was a disaster for the nation.
Honestly, we’re guessing a bit about exactly how much they made but I’ll concede that there are scam PACs out there that keep 95% of the money for organizers and spend only 5% on their ostensible mission. Lincoln Project is nowhere near the worst. I do think the money that went to them probably would have done more good going to Democratic candidates, state party organizations, or the Democratic National Committee.
I certainly never said they were a secret pro-Trump group and I don’t think they are. I just think that having fun while trolling Trump and making money was more important to them than helping Biden win the election.
Do you think they got Trump’s vote?
Running those ads in DC got them some unpaid “earned” media coverage. Perhaps that coverage got into the view of some fence-sitters but more likely, it was seen by Democrats who were willing to open their wallets. The Lincoln Project was running ads heavily in other completely blue states as well and not running a lot of ads in swing states. This doesn’t seem like a real effort to change minds; it seems like a good way to harvest contributions from the choir.
Whatever, I gave generously to Lincoln Project and I would never ever give to Left causes. Whatever the motivated arguments of National Review, conclusion that Lincoln Project siphoned money from the Left is dubious, I rather doubt a Leftist donor profile was giving to them. Centrist yes, Leftist is a ridiculous idea, given the Leftists are and were so oriented to demonising anything Republican.
Certainly, I found in my circles Lincoln Project provided a lifeline for pushing back or rejecting the idea one had to be pro Trump.
Yes, I personally saw among my fellow Republican colleagues (or maybe becoming ex Republicans) who are anti Trump, disapproving of his vulgarity and corruption we valued Lincoln Project as an expression of our resistance to the Trumpist takeover and opportunism. Showing that yes you can be Republican identified and anti Trump.
RyanAdam, thanks for that information; certainly it’s a counter to arguments that the Lincoln Project was solely funded by left-leaning people. It would appear to be a good counter, too, to the claim that a main effect of TLP was to drain funds from Democratic candidates (though admittedly one instance isn’t proof of a trend).
It’s not just one instance, Biden massively over performed the rest of the Dem field. I’d say that’s a pretty big hint that plenty of Republicans were swayed to vote against Trump.
That Trump got 75 million votes casts doubt on that.
I’m not sure why.
More Republicans came out to vote for Trump in 2020 than came out to vote for anyone anytime.
Anyone, anytime? I guess you mean other than Biden. Or you just mean Republicans? So Biden out performed the best Republican ever by 4% is another way if saying it.
Yeah. Any Republican before. Trump owns the Republican fealty. He owns them like he has fucking dirt on them, it’s sick.
That doesn’t negate DigitalC’s point:
In other words: all those votes for Biden that had straight-Republican-ticket votes down-ballot, are an indication that many Republicans did, in fact, vote for Biden (or against Trump).