Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
A prominent conservative attorney and activist is going after Democratic rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it’s turning into a fundraising boon—for both of them.
Dan Backer is the founder and president of the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation, and in that capacity he filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics last week alleging that AOC, as the freshman New York congresswoman is known, violated House rules by securing an official email address for her boyfriend.
It’s one of multiple legal complaints filed against AOC in the last few weeks. But Backer went a step further. He’s famously—or infamously, depending on who you ask—an attorney for dozens of conservative political groups. So on the same day that Coolidge-Reagan filed its ethics complaint, Backer submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission to create a new one.
Backer’s Stop the AOC PAC, as the hybrid PAC is called, immediately began fundraising off the ethics complaint filed by Coolidge-Reagan, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, as well as an FEC complaint the group lodged against AOC last month.
In his fundraising appeal, Backer didn’t distinguish between the two groups; he used the first-person. “In the past week, I’ve filed TWO complaints against The AOC,” Backer bragged in his fundraising email. “BUT—these investigations can take years… We can’t take that long, and we can’t take the risk. So we’re taking the fight directly to AOC… and BEATING HER AT THE BALLOT BOX.” The email linked to a donation page for the PAC asking for contributions of up to $5,000.
Backer told PAY DIRT that the group has “started testing some digital, and fine-tuning a ground game plan as well, couple other programs,” and “ran polling in her district the last couple days, should help us understand where to target our efforts.”
Not to be outdone, AOC herself has also capitalized on Backer’s efforts in an attempt to shore up her own financial support. A few days after Stop the AOC’s fundraising email went out, her campaign blasted out its own ask. “Will you contribute $3 to our campaign so we can drown out their hate-fueled attacks with support for our progressive policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal?” the email pleaded.
As for his own fundraising campaign, Backer says it’s early yet. “The group launched a week ago. These things take time. It took 3.5 years for us to Stop Hillary,” he wrote in an email, referring to another one of his political groups, Stop Hillary PAC. “We only have a year and change this time, but still takes a bit to get going at speed.”
Regardless of the effort’s outcome, there will undoubtedly be plenty of cash raised along the way.
Get the data:
