Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig's anti-PAC, Mayday PAC, has certainly seen its share of roller coaster thrills and chills in its five short months of life so far. Born with great promise (raising an eye-popping $5 million in mere weeks from thousands of small online donors plus a handful of mega-donors...almost all liberals and Democrats) it immediately proceeded to slip on a banana peel by endorsing two right-wing nutjobs (Jim Rubens [R; NH-Sen] and Walter Jones [R; NC-03]) plus one Democrat (Staci Appel [D; IA-03]) whom, for reasons of its own, it has not subsequently seen fit to spend any money supporting.
The endorsement of ten term incumbent and shoo-in Walter Jones (best known as the inventor of 'Freedom Fries') never made any sense to anyone except, apparently, Lessig. Like a family's crazy uncle, the Jones endorsement is hardly ever discussed in public. Conversely, the endorsement of Rubens in his primary bid against Scott Brown triggered a very public firestorm of controversy, given the candidate's tea party positions on immigration, women's issues, gun rights, and much more. Making a bad situation worse, Mayday was caught inexplicably contributing $100K to a New Hampshire anarchist libertarian PAC, Stark360, intended to finance the latter's GOTV efforts for Rubens but (some have suggested) possibly misappropriated.
Hard evidence that major donors have finally had their fill of Mayday's mis-management and Republican brown-nosing first emerged in the form of admissions from Mayday insiders that some $5 million in long-promised matching donations were being withheld, perhaps indefinitely. Since then, Mayday has been eerily quiet, spending mere pennies (or, in Staci Appel's case, still nothing at all) even as the races it supports come down to the wire.
From the outside, this recent time-out has certainly looked like a period of crisis management and soul-searching for the PAC. But events of the past week signal that the time-out is now over and the PAC is re-booting: last week we learned that Mayday is quietly spending on long-shot Paul Clements (D; MI-06) against incumbent Fred Upton (R), and just this morning Mayday announced a new and surprising endorsee: Rick Weiland (D; SD-Sen), running against scandal-plagued Republican ex-governor, Mike Rounds.
Below the fold I outline what these and other recent signals may tell us about Mayday's lessons learned, new directions going forward, and upcoming management changes.
Last week I broke the story of Mayday's first stealth spending in support of Paul Clements in Michigan in his bid to unseat incumbent and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Fred Upton. Although the sums expended have been tiny so far (just $30,000 as of last week according to FEC records, plus an additional $19,000 so far this week), numerous bits of evidence suggest that this development heralds big changes.
First and foremost, there's the curious matter (which I have not previously discussed) of the recipient of some of these funds: the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), founded in 2009 by MoveOn.org veterans Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, which MSNBC’s Ed Schultz has characterized as “the top progressive group in the country.” This is a particularly interesting development because PCCC is also one of Mayday's largest donors - nearly $200K to date. Second, there's the curious matter of how Mayday characterizes this spend's purpose in its FEC submissions, using the utterly opaque term "Grassroots and Communication Services." Finally, there's the timing of this development, coming as it does just weeks before the election. If Mayday has proven anything in its short history, it is that the organization isn't capable of doing anything effective on the fly, aside from making bad decisions.
My recent discussions with inside sources at Mayday and PCCC provide a sensible explanation for all of these curiosities. Going forward, PCCC will serve as something sounding very much like Mayday's adult supervision, managing day-to-day campaign operations and taking a role in strategic decision-making (and thus, presumably, supplanting Mayday's founding board members and notorious Republican operatives Mark McKinnon and Kahlil Byrd in these roles). This is a much-needed move that liberal Mayday donors and other friends of campaign finance reform will, no doubt, greatly welcome, signaling as it does the end of Republican brown-nosing as Mayday's strategy, and heralding new management of the PAC's spending by skilled political professionals with excellent progressive credentials. Lessig will, no doubt, remain the PAC's visionary, and Mayday will remain the brand, but PCCC will be running the show on the ground. It looks like a match made in heaven: Lessig/Mayday excel at inspiring The Kids and rich digerati alike to open their wallets, while PCCC's Green and Taylor actually know how to campaign for progressives. Look for Mayday's official endorsement of Clements very soon to seal the deal, followed by a blitz of heavy spending to support his bid against his heavily favored and and very well funded Republican opponent, Upton.
Today's Mayday endorsement of Rick Weiland in South Dakota likewise reinforces the new message from the tea leaves. Old Mayday would, no doubt, have considered it essential to 'balance' its support of Democrat Clements with an endorsement for yet another RWNJ Republican. New Mayday, in contrast, is now two-for-two with back-to-back endorsements of progressive Democrats. According to On The Issues, Weiland supports women's reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, 'green' construction codes, expanding Obamacare, a path to citizenship for immigrants, lowering taxes on the poor and raising them on the wealthy, and universal background checks for firearms purchases, while opposing government bailouts for too-big-to-fail corporations, Keystone XL, U.S. military intervention in Syria, and 'free trade' not balanced by human rights considerations.
One thing, apparently, hasn't changed in New Mayday: it's strategy of intervening in races where a win for its endorsee would be "surprising." Most observers so far haven't given either Clements or Weiland much of a chance (in an apparent concession to Republicans the Democratic National Committee has so far failed to actively support Weiland's bid in South Dakota, and in Michigan no pollster has yet even bothered to gauge the Clements/Upton race, on the assumption that a Republican win is a forgone conclusion). By my count, Mayday has something like $4 to $5 million left in its coffers. That kind of money, spent very wisely by PCCC in a smart blitz in these two races, might just change things (Lessig's email to supporters this morning mentions "our first ad on TV," signaling the intent to spend serious money on Weiland). Wins for Mayday endorsees in either or both of these races would go a long way toward demonstrating what the PAC initially set out to prove: that candidate support for campaign finance reform, backed up by liberals' donations, can change everything. That result could make it a lot easier for even Mayday's harshest critics (such as myself) to forget its early mis-steps and embrace its efforts.
Good luck, Mayday. And, hey: don't forget Staci Appel in Iowa.
UPDATE: Thu Oct 09, 2014 at 6:48 AM PT: As predicted above, Mayday PAC has just announced its endorsement of Paul Clements in MI-06, versus Fred Upton.