Another in a so-far unbroken series of Advantage: Republican weeks for Mayday PAC and its "Buy Republicans First" strategy.
The honeymoon came to an abrupt and thoroughly disappointing end for Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig's Mayday PAC (to end all SuperPACs) this week, beginning in needless controversy, going on from there to a crushing defeat at the polls, and wrapping up with just a soupçon of scandal. I'll briefly review those tough breaks and surprising flubs below the fold. But first, this week's numbers.
In the run-up to Mayday's big event, the New Hampshire Republican primary featuring welterweight Mayday PAC endorsee Jim Rubens going toe-to-toe with with heavyweight Scott Brown, Mayday spent big this past week, betting a hefty $431K on the signature bout: $316K in support of Rubens and $115K attacking Brown. That brought the butcher's bill for Mayday's 'Buy Republicans First' adventure in New Hampshire alone, dating back to August 8th, to $1.23 million (with an estimated additional $400K to be reported in next week's edition). SPOILER ALERT: Rubens lost to Brown by a landslide on September 9th - 50% to 23% - amid record-low turnout (just 19% of eligible voters).
Also this week, Mayday made its first investment in incumbent Democratic congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter's re-election bid in NH-01: $119K.
For the second week in a row, Mayday spent nothing further on ten-term incumbent Republican Walter Jones (NC-03) after its token $83K ad buy on August 26th. Don't expect to see much (if any) more Mayday loot wasted on this dead-cert race in a deep red district.
From inception through Sept. 6th, Mayday's independent ad spending totals $1.59 million, divided as follows:
Pro-Republicans: $1,316,565
Pro-Democrats: $269,092
Advantage*: Republicans 66% (down from 71% Advantage Republicans last week)
*Advantage is calculated as (ER - ED) / ET where ER = expenditures favoring Republicans, ED = expenditures favoring Democrats, and ET = total expenditures.
Join me below the fold for a quick synopsis of the emerging scandal that enveloped Mayday this past week.
Daddy always said "Fly with the crows, get shot with the crows," and this week Mayday perhaps began to internalize that homey aphorism's wisdom.
The week began with a surprising report, from progressive New Hampshire blog miscellany: Blue: back in late August Mayday had quietly bankrolled gun-nut anarchist Stark360 PAC to the tune of $103K. The report set off a needless (for Mayday, anyway) firestorm of controversy in this state where moderate and liberal residents have been fighting off the invasion of out-of-state libertarians bent on taking over their government and (some say) seceding from the Union.
In response to the brewing controversy Lessig explained, without apology:
There’s been a bunch of frustration and anger about reports that Mayday.US is “supporting” Stark360 in New Hampshire. Stark360 is a New Hampshire based libertarian superPAC. It supports candidates at the state level who don’t support campaign finance reform. Supporters of Mayday.US are RIGHTLY asking the question why we would be “supporting” an organization that doesn’t support campaign finance reform. The question is correct. The premise is not. We are not supporting the organization at all. We are supporting joint activities designed to benefit the common ground we have found — support for Jim Rubens in the Republican primary — and only that common ground.
As I subsequently
reported, this curious development's optics weren't good at all for Mayday. Little-known Stark360 had been founded (by the leader of New Hampshire's libertarian invasion, Aaron Day) on the same date on which Mayday had first endorsed Jim Rubens, and the little Libertarian PAC waited until Mayday's check was in hand before actually endorsing Rubens itself. Careful observers could certainly be forgiven for wondering whether Stark360 might be nothing more than Day's purpose-built vehicle for lightening tourist Mayday's wallet.
Just yesterday this strange story took an even more bizarre turn for the worse, when I reported on new FEC filings documenting that Stark360 had passed along $20,000 to an obscure corporation, ARD Ventures, for "GOTV activities for Federal and state candidates" including Jim Rubens. According to BusinessWeek's corporate database, ARD is "a private company that provides buyout financing to distressed technology companies," which certainly doesn't sound much like a GOTV operation. We are forced to take BusinessWeek's word here because ARD itself isn't talking: it's web site has been down since 2005.
Going from curiouser to curiouser, BusinessWeek's database also reports that ARD's CEO is none other than Aaron Day...the founder and chairman of Stark360 PAC. Thus we are treated to some really curious optics: Mayday paying Stark360 to conduct GOTV activities for Jim Rubens, then Stark360 turning around and paying an unrelated company (with no obvious qualifications) to do that work - and a company, mind you, which...purely coincidentally, you understand...just happens to be controlled by Stark360's chairman - thus looking uncomfortably like a transfer of Mayday's liberal donors' money indirectly to libertarian Aaron Day's personal pocket by way of what looks a lot like a shell corporation.
Mayday has so far been uncharacteristically silent regarding this latest development since it broke yesterday morning (Lessig is typically quick...some would say too quick...to blog on any topic regarding his baby). Look to hear much, much more about this story in the near future, however. Also look for Mayday's already dwindling ongoing receipts from donors to dry up to nothing, since there are few things that scare away donors faster than whiffs of scandal and hints of possible misappropriation of funds.
UPDATE 5:00 PM PT: Just when you think the Mayday PAC / Stark360 PAC / ARD Ventures story can't get any weirder, it does. Over at miscellany: Blue, William Tucker now reports that ARD Ventures LLC was formally dissolved in 2011...implying that Mayday's $20K in "crazy money" really may have gone straight into Aaron Day's pocketses.