A liberal dark money group announced it will spend $500,000 in support of North Carolina congressional candidate Dan McCready (D.), despite McCready's past denunciations of dark money. McCready also received dark money support during his initial 2018 bid for the North Carolina seat.
McCready is running in a special election against Republican state senator Dan Bishop, and with less than a month to go, the race is extremely close. Now a Democratic dark money PAC is pouring money into the race trying to flip the long-held Republican seat, according to Politico's Morning Score.
Last fall, McCready denounced dark money in a tweet, writing "A win for democracy. Dark money has no place in our politics."
He linked to a Washington Post story about the Supreme Court declining to hear a case relating to non-profits disclosing their donor information. In the case, a lower court judge threw out a Federal Election Commission regulation protecting nonprofit groups from revealing their donor information. The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case effectively upheld the decision, requiring more transparency from non-profits.
A win for democracy. Dark money has no place in our politics. https://t.co/dAWX4u9ESb
— Dan McCready (@McCreadyForNC) September 20, 2018
However, the dark money group supporting McCready and other Democratic candidates, House Majority Forward, is filed as a 501(c)(4) and does not have to disclose a list of its donors and aspects of its spending, according to a report from Politico. It plans on spending $10 million on issue advertising and raising $20 million in 2019.
It plans to spend $500,000 in support of McCready over the week of Aug. 20 to 26.
In 2018, another dark money group, Patriot Majority USA, spent almost $1 million in support of McCready.
Despite Democratic promises to combat the influence of dark money in politics, a study found that liberal dark money groups outspent conservative dark money groups in 2018. These groups contributed approximately $150 million, and liberal groups accounted for 54 percent of that spending.