This story is excerpted from Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the reporters and editors of Montana Free Press. Want to see Capitolized in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.
After Capitolized reported in June about the recruitment of Libertarian Congressional candidate Dennis Hayes by a secretive online group, Helena resident Paul Golter came forward with a similar recruitment story. Like Hayes, who is now a candidate for U.S. House in Montana’s western district, Golter had been contacted on Facebook Messenger by Patriots Run Project.
“Hi Paul – Would you consider running for office as a conservative Independent?” read the PRP pitch. “We need people like you to stand up with Trump and run against the Uniparty Establishment. We are willing to roll up our sleeves to help. Is this something you would consider?”
Golter was interested, but only if he could help end medical malpractice and government corruption. The COVID-19 vaccine was a major concern for the Helena man, so much so that he had disapproved of Donald Trump, as president, backing “Operation Warp Speed,” the plan that accelerated the development of COVID vaccines. Montana Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines was the plan’s bill sponsor in the Senate.
Patriots Run Project would later be found to be a secretive group operating at least 96 different Facebook accounts and 12 different social groups as it recruited third-party candidates for federal elections. Facebook owner Meta would later report that PRP was acquiring accounts from Bangladesh. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a cyber watchdog, identified 14 states in which PRP, unincorporated and unregistered as a political group, and with no people identified as part of its membership, was recruiting candidates.
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This week, the Associated Press identified more Patriots recruits, including Joe Wiederien of Des Moines, Iowa, now an independent candidate for the U.S. House. In Iowa, where Wiederien needed at least 1,726 signatures to get on the ballot, Patriots Run Project provided them, AP reported.
Similarly in Montana, the group covered Hayes’ $1,740 filing fee, meeting him at a Helena bank to deposit the funds.
The Associated Press found that PRP recruits in some states had paperwork signed by consultants and treasurers used by Democratic campaigns, and Republicans have suggested that PRP is a plot to siphon votes from GOP congressional candidates, though Democrats insist otherwise. The GOP wants the Federal Elections Commission to investigate.
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