Is MAGA Infiltrating Your Democratic Party?

Question: Are Republican operatives sneaking into your local Democratic headquarters in fake mustaches to fool you into voting for a Republican candidate?

Answer: No, they are not. They’re doing something much more nefarious.

In May, Pennsylvania voters began to see ads from a group called Lead Left PAC. Sounds progressive, right? Its name certainly looked blue.

The ads were an attack against the Democratic candidate Bob Brooks. Brooks is a retired firefighter, president of Pennsylvania’s largest firefighters union. He supports Medicare for All, stronger unions, a higher minimum wage and overturning Citizens United. Everything good progressive candidates love, right?

Even Bernie Sanders endorsed him. Along with the Working Families Party, Justice Democrats and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Yet Lead Left PAC spent $1.4 million running attack ads, mailers and digital campaigns that misrepresented Bob Brooks’ record. They accused him of funding an election denier and anti-abortion extremist while they promoted another Democrat, Lamont McClure.

As it turned out, Lead Left PAC was not remotely progressive. It received more than $3 million from Conservative Americans PAC, which was itself funded by the Republican nonprofit American Prosperity Alliance. The people paying for those Democratic primary advertisements were Republicans.1

Sneaky bastards.

And it wasn’t until after the primary election in Pennsylvania that the Republican funding behind the “Democratic” attack campaign became public. Fortunately, Brooks won anyway. Their faux-Democratic messaging and $1.4 million failed to keep him off the November ballot.

But what if it had worked? And how many other primary elections has this maneuver been used in?

The truth is, we just don’t know.
What we do know is that this wasn’t an isolated incident.

These fake-mustachioed PACs are funneling money into races to help nominate candidates Republicans think they can beat or that they simply prefer to stronger Democratic contenders.

They spam the county or state with messaging that they think Democrats will like, and pour money into advertising for their patsies. Often, the underlying Republican funding doesn’t become public until after the primary has ended because of federal disclosure schedules.

Their playbook is obvious, once you see it:

1. Manufacture Democratic-looking organizations

2. Promote the weakest primary candidate

3. Run candidates under false colors

4. Capture neglected local party machinery (you know, those local seats nobody ever runs for)

5. Create counterfeit grassroots outrage—seize on genuine Democratic disagreements, then intensify them

6. Feed damaging material to Democratic factions

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While primaries offer the best opportunity to influence which Democrat reaches November, during the general election, the objective becomes weakening or defeating that nominee altogether.

Here is how they’ll do it:

1. By creating false scandals or selectively edited material released too late to investigate (hm…where have we already seen this happen?)

2. Using online campaigns that urge progressives and centrist Democrats not to vote in November if their favorite wasn’t selected (No precious third-party votes or “abstaining on principle.” Just stop. The primaries are where you vote your conscience; the general election is where you save democracy.)

3. Creating fake grassroots outrage claiming the nominee betrayed the party

4. Funding a surge of Republican and independent, anti-Democratic advertising and social media posts (has TikTok and Insta really been stressing you out lately?)

5. Bringing in operatives to disrupt the local Democratic organizations, canvass neighborhoods, intimidate at voter registration, or take over election administration

6. Funding Democratic-looking accounts that spread the claim that the elections are rigged and voting is therefore pointless (see #2 above)

This next stage is going to hit hard, and we need to be on high alert. Let’s call it the Divide and Conquer stage. It’s going to be all about Democratic-looking groups and accounts attacking nominees, manufacturing scandals, encouraging third-party protest votes and convincing disillusioned Democrats to stay home.

Now is the time to take off your tinfoil hats and put on your critical thinking caps. We don’t have the privilege of not voting, protest voting or claiming that the election is rigged so voting is meaningless.

We need all hands on deck, doing the right thing.

Another two years of unfettered Trumpism will tear this ship apart.
Now is when we have a chance to steer into clearer waters.

Let’s use it.

—Lady Libertie

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