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August 22, 2024
Meta No Likey
Meta, the owner of Facebook, confirmed last week in its quarterly security report that a secretive organization called Patriots Run Project used dozens of accounts on the social media site to recruit “real conservative” candidates to run against the “uniparty” in races for federal office.
In the parlance of social media, Patriots Run Project engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” according to the report. The accounts appeared to be created in Bangladesh, Meta said.
As Capitolized previously reported, one of the candidates recruited by the project was Dennis Hayes, a Townsend Libertarian running for U.S. House in Montana’s western district. Hayes told Capitolized the Patriots Run Project first contacted him online, but later connected him to an unidentified man who met Hayes outside a Helena bank and deposited enough money in an account to cover his candidate filing fees.
Meta reported removing 96 Facebook accounts related to Patriots Run Project, along with 16 pages and 12 groups, plus three Instagram accounts. Meta reported that Patriots Run Project has accounts on the social media site X as well, though X has never confirmed or disclosed that information. The Meta accounts attracted 1,700 followers, including 1,200 who joined fake groups.
The fake people associated with the accounts used proxies to appear as if they were living in states where candidate-recruitment campaigns occurred. They combined PRP-related posts with posts about local sports and events, restaurant check-ins and political memes copied from the internet.
In English, the people behind PRP posted about U.S. elections and primaries, criticizing the positions of “Republican and Democrat elites” concerning “God,” “guns” and “illegal immigrants,” Meta reported.
Meta didn’t address questions from Capitolized about whether Facebook accounts bearing the names of PRP-recruited candidates were used to disseminate political memes as well.
The nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue first disclosed the Patriots Run Project activity. A Meta spokesperson told Capitolized the accounts were discovered by Meta and removed before ISD’s report in June.
“As you’ll see in the report, we found this activity as a result of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior and removed it before it was able to build an audience among authentic communities on our apps,” said Meta spokesperson Margarita Franklin.
—Tom Lutey
New Write-in Candidate
Livingston’s Reilly Neill launched a write-in campaign for Montana’s eastern U.S. House District on Aug. 14. The district, created as a result of state population increases reflected in the 2020 census, has seen candidates elbow their way into the race after the filing deadline both this year and in 2022, the district’s inaugural year.
Neill, a former Democratic state legislator, said on her campaign Facebook page that she doesn’t think the Democratic Party’s candidate is running in earnest. That candidate is John Driscoll.
“When a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in Montana feels funding a campaign in our state is meaningless, it disenfranchises voters and undermines the democratic process,” Neill posted.
“Voters deserve a choice on the ballot, someone fighting for them. They deserve a Democrat on the ballot elevating important issues and supporting a robust democracy.”
Gary Buchanan qualified for the 2022 ballot as an independent after a spring signature campaign. Buchanan presented himself as an alternative to Democrat Penny Ronning and incumbent Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale. He garnered endorsements from high-profile Democrats like former candidate for governor Dorothy Bradley and Republicans including former Gov. Marc Racicot.
—Tom Lutey
Bang for the Buck
Helena Democrat John Driscoll won the four-way June primary for the eastern district U.S. House race. He’s vowed to keep his campaign financing below $5,000 — the threshold at which federal candidates must disclose spending and donations.
Driscoll’s minimalist approach to campaign financing should be familiar to voters. Driscoll represented Democrats in the 2008 race for Montana’s U.S. House seat after defeating Jim Hunt in the primary. A former state legislator and public service commissioner, Driscoll made it known that he wouldn’t be soliciting donations and would spend very little. That year, Driscoll received 32.4% of the vote to Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg’s 64.2%.
Other Democratic candidates for Congress who spent more money fared only marginally better than Driscoll.
- Steve Kelly spent $17,000 in 2002 and won 33% of the vote.
- Tracy Velazquez in 2004 spent $128,000 and also won 33% of the vote in losing, like the others, to Rehberg.
- Monica Lindeen in 2006 spent $512,000 challenging Rehberg and won 39% of the vote in the same year that Democrat Jon Tester defeated Republican incumbent Conrad Burns in a tight U.S. Senate race. Tester spent $5.6 million in that race.
- Dennis McDonald in 2010 spent $333,000 for his 33.8% of the vote.
The 20-year high-water mark in spending and votes belongs to Kathleen Williams, who spent $4.1 million and received 46.2% of the vote against then-incumbent U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte. One Republican campaign veteran commented that Williams’s polished TV ads, a montage of the Democrat hunting birds, tipping pints and talking about common ground while decked out denim and flannel, were the envy of Republicans.
Though Driscoll hasn’t hit the federal threshold for reporting finances, he did disclose his spending to reporters before the primary, when he said his only expense other than a $1,700 filing fee and gasoline for travel was a “$20 Democrat hat.”
—Tom Lutey
Bills for the Judicial Bench
State Senate Republicans edged closer this week to bills countering what lawmakers allege is bias and unprofessional conduct by the Montana Supreme Court and district courts, where several laws passed by the Legislature in 2021 and 2023 concerning a range of subjects have been ruled unconstitutional. Similar outcomes have occurred in U.S. District Court, as well.
One of the proposed new laws gaining traction would require courts to yield to the Legislature’s judgment on whether laws produced by the Legislature are constitutional.
“It seems that when different Legislatures have gone before the courts, whether District Court or Supreme Court, it seems that they do not give us legislative deference, and I believe that maybe we should do a bill draft to require the courts to give the other two branches of government, both the governor’s office and Legislature, legislative deference,” said Sen. Barry Usher of Laurel. “Because, again, it just seems like when there is a court battle, it’s always the state defending us, and the state is the one that has to prove we were right to begin with, and it shouldn’t be that we have to defend and say why. … It should be those persons who want to sue us to prove why we were wrong.”
The committee made headlines this week for proposing to empower itself to subpoena witnesses, require testimony under oath and refer any witness committing perjury to local prosecutors for charges. Those proposals were made by Senate President Jason Ellsworth, a Hamilton Republican.
The committee had attempted to impose an oath on District Judge Mike Menahan in July, but the judge declined to comply, explaining that in his decade-plus experience with the Legislature, including four years as a Democratic state representative for Helena, he’d never seen anyone compelled to do so.
—Tom Lutey
PAC Spending
Outside spending by political action committees continues to pour into Montana’s U.S. Senate race. The tally through Aug. 21 was $36.8 million, an increase of more than a third since July.
There has been no outside spending on Montana’s U.S. House races since the June primary, per federal election data. One veteran election consultant told Capitolized that any outside spending in the congressional races will be eclipsed by advertisements targeting Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy.
—Tom Lutey
On Background
- More than $27 million has been spent on political advertising in Montana’s U.S. Senate race through July by political action committees working independently of the candidates and without spending limits. Who’s behind that money?
- MTFP reported in May on the Legislature’s strategy to establish “more oversight of the judiciary.”