Covering Your Favorite Dark Money Donor

Top Story: Covering Your Local Oligarch

Money is power….And someone in your state is likely using it with impunity.

Meet your local oligarch.

If you’re in North Carolina: Hello, Art Pope.

Wisconsin: Diane Hendricks.

Michigan: Betsy DeVos.  

Illinois: Richard Uihlein.

You get the point.

Understanding who your local oligarchs are, how they wield power, and whether they are wielding power over the plans, program, leaders, and/or candidates you cover is crucial to really understanding how your state works…and who is working it.  

This is challenging at first; but it’s also fun. Largely, because the people using big bucks to try and sway government their way rarely want the public to know that’s what they’re doing.  

Why? Because it’s antithetical to the aims of a working democracy that serves citizens, not just CEO’s.  

Tips on Outing Your Local Oligarch

Identify them.

Find out who the big monied donors are in your state.

Hint: The names that show up on hospital buildings, local museums, and college campuses are a good start.

Take nothing at face value. Millionaires and billionaires who want to secretly sway government their way, at the expense of the common good, fund non-profit organizations that do the persuasion work for them.

Generally, these orgs:  

a) Appear as if they have popped up organically.

b) Have innocuous-sounding names designed to hide their true goals.

c) Have middle-class Americans at the helm, which often confuses the public into thinking these groups look out for the little guy.

Correct. Correct. Correct.

To make sure you are letting your readers know this  when reporting on these non-profit orgs, always clarify:  

a) Who actually founded the organization in question.

b) What the actual goals of the organization are.

c) How those goals may substantially differ from what the name of the organization would suggest.

c) Why those goal may actually serve the interests of the people funding it, rather than the interests of the average American.

Know the causes for their pet causes.

Educate yourself on how Dark Money donors can benefit from the goals of the nonprofits they fund.  

Hint: When foundations funded by gas and oil families oppose local rail projects, environmental safety measures, or solar incentives, that’s not altruism. It’s self-interest.  

Hint: If a fat cat donor runs a chain of for-profit charters and insists that he is an avid “school choice” advocate, it’s key to tell readers, “school choice” legislation = more of his schools = more money for him. Coincidence? No.

Don't underestimate the power of greed.

Just because money isn’t your main driver, don’t forget that it drives a lot of very ambitious people.  

Don’t overestimate what your readers know.

You live this every day. Your readers don’t.

Also In The News

• Mother Jones unpacks the Bradley Impact Fund: what it says it does vs. its real goals.

• The housing crisis: is your state finally paying attention?

• The Far Right has a solution to its unpopular politics: more babies.  

• Kristi Noem thought she had a good shot as Trump VP pick— until she told the world, she shot Cricket.

  

We’re Watching

Dark Money

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See You Next Week!

Our Staff

Executive Editor Kyle Spencer

Managing Editor Christen Gall

Our Board of Advisors

Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability

David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy

Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations

Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.

Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

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