Democrats Use Dark Money to Pay Influencers $10,000 to Prop Up Harris-Walz Campaign

Democrats Use Dark Money to Pay Influencers $10,000 to Prop Up Harris-Walz Campaign

Democrats have funneled dark money up to $10,000 to social media influencers to promote the Harris-Walz campaign.

One of the organizations used is connected to another group that has been known as one of the darkest money groups because it relies on anonymous donors.

Awa Sanneh made her mark by providing beauty tips on TikTok. That changed when she shared a video of her at the White House. From CBS News:

Awa Sanneh made a name for herself dispensing beauty tips on TikTok. When the 23-year-old posted a video of her White House bathroom break, her half-million followers took notice.

“I was just shocked. I was like, did you guys see that marble?” Sanneh told CBS News.

Sanneh was one of a few dozen social media influencers who were invited to the White House to watch the State of the Union address and meet President Biden.

“He said to us, like, the collective presence in this room has more viewership on Gen Z than all of traditional media combined,” she said.

She first heard from Democratic Super PACs, and then the Biden administration, after posting a video following the fall of Roe v. Wade that went viral.

“They started inviting me to their White House briefings on abortion rights, reproductive rights,” Sanneh said.

Rob Flaherty, the digital strategist for the Harris-Walz campaign, told CBS News they’re working with the influencers.

Flaherty is correct that they’d be “missing a huge way that voters are getting information about the world.”

The campaign provides the influencers with “talking points, resources, base language,” and even graphics.

The campaign doesn’t pay the influencers.

The influencers receive money from Democratic organizations:

In May, Future Forward — the super PAC supporting Harris — hosted panels like Gaming The Algorithm and How Advocacy Can Benefit Your Business. A spokesperson for the PAC did not respond to a request for comment.

Sanneh said she was hired last month by Protect Our Care, a progressive advocacy group that relies on anonymous donors. She made a video warning about Trump’s second term agenda that she says the group helped her script.

She said she takes their talking points and puts them in her own voice, saying she always discloses when she’s being paid.

While Sanneh would not say how much she’s being paid, she did note, “A video just for a creator in my size, an average can go from $3,000 to $10,000 and upwards.”

Protect Our Care is part of the group Sixteen Thirty Fund, described as a “darker-than-dark money” organization.

Even left-leaning publications have criticized Sixteen Thirteen Fund as a dark money organization. Arabella Advisors, a D.C.-based philanthropy consulting firm, administers it.

The publications lash out at Arabella Advisors for relying on anonymous donors:

In April 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s “system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors,” as “dark money,” calling the network “a leading vehicle for it on the Left.” In May 2021, the New York Times identified Sixteen Thirty Fund as one of the “leading dark money spenders on the Left” for quietly supporting Democrats with more than $63 million in super PAC donations that hurt Republicans in the 2020 election, as well for “help[ing] create and fund dozens of groups, including some that worked to block Mr. Trump’s nominees and push progressive appointments by Mr. Biden.”

The Atlantic, a left-leaning magazine, has called the Sixteen Thirty Fund “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money” which funneled “roughly $61 million of effectively untraceable money to progressive causes,” making it the “second-largest super-PAC donor in 2020.” Of Arabella Advisors, the Atlantic noted that the “mothership” company runs a “massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of.” It added: “Democrats have quietly pulled ahead of Republicans in untraceable political spending. One group helped make it happen.”

Left-leaning Politico has called the Sixteen Thirty Fund a “massive ‘dark money’ network” responsible for “boost[ing] Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections, a “liberal dark-money behemoth,” a “secretly funded nonprofit,” and “one of the Left’s financial hubs” responsible for “attacking Republican senators” in 2019.

Sam Wooley, the incoming Chair of Disinformation Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, warned that too much could backfire:

Sam Woolley, the incoming Chair of Disinformation Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, says using influencers is “a bid by campaigns to create authenticity at a small scale.”

But he also noted that if people notice “multiple influencers spreading the same exact message, you can start to realize like, ‘hmm, some kind of coordination is going on.'”

Sanneh will attend the DNC. I wrote about how the Democrats opened press credentials to social media influencers.

The Democrats told Sanneh and other influencers “that if we wanted to put on our own show that they would give us all the resources to do that.”

Of course, Sanneh is happy that the party rolled out the red carpet for her and other influencers.

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