OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer wants to remain in his position beyond Tuesday’s midterms, so he’s going all out to keep the chamber in Democratic hands.
A group aligned with the New York Dem has spent $50 million in secretive donations in order to preserve the Democratic majority, according to Fox News Digital.
What’s ironic about that is Schumer has long been an advocate for banning so-called “dark money” in politics, the outlet added.
Fox News Digital noted further:
Majority Forward, a dark money nonprofit that hides its funders, on Oct. 12 funneled a $20 million contribution to the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC (SMP) to elect and maintain Democrats in Congress’s upper chamber, Federal Election Commission records reveal.
The donation is SMP’s largest this election cycle and follows the roughly $27 million Majority Forward already passed to SMP, according to its records. Majority Forward is SMP’s most significant funder for the midterm elections with $47 million now poured into the committee heading into the home stretch to Election Day.
“Liberals decry dark money, unless it’s their own,” Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland told the outlet. “The fact that this Schumer-backed group funneled $20 million to help Schumer keep his gavel, just weeks after his diatribe on the evils of money in politics, is the height of hypocrisy.”
The two groups are closely aligned. J.B. Poersch, an ally of the Senate majority leader, is the president of both Majority Forward and SMP. Both organizations share an office and employees in Washington, D.C., while Majority Forward recently added hundreds of thousands of dollars for IT security, insurance, and salaries, filings reviewed by Fox News Digital indicate.
Schumer has decried dark money in recent months even as groups aligned with him engage in the practice. In September, he called dark money a “cancer” and noted further: “Americans deserve to know who’s spending billions to sway our democracy.”
I’m announcing that the Senate will vote this week on the DISCLOSE Act.
This bill would fight the cancer of dark money in our elections and require dark money groups to report campaign contributions.
Americans deserve to know who's spending billions to sway our democracy.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 19, 2022
“I’m announcing that the Senate will vote this week on the DISCLOSE Act. This bill would fight the cancer of dark money in our elections and require dark money groups to report campaign contributions. Americans deserve to know who’s spending billions to sway our democracy,” he tweeted on Sept. 19.
“Schumer has championed the For the People Act, which contains provisions to make political nonprofits disclose donors who give more than $10,000,” Fox News Digital reported. “The bill also calls for nonprofits to file disclosure reports to the Federal Election Commission when they inject more than $10,000 into election-related activities — much like Majority Forward, which chooses to obscure its financial backers.
“Additionally, Schumer, outspoken dark money critic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other Democratic politicians previously called on the Judicial Crisis Network, a right-leaning organization, to release a list of donors who provided the group with more than $10,000,” the outlet continued.
Still, the donations may not help the situation much, as Democrats appear poised to lose the House and possibly the Senate, according to recent polling. On Friday, former President Donald Trump, mindful of the surveys, predicted a GOP-controlled Congress post-midterms.
“I think that we have a good chance at the Senate,” Trump told the “Chris Stigall Show,” adding, “Good chance, we had no chance three months ago. Now we have a chance of getting 51, 52 seats in the Senate. And I think the House is going to do pretty well, I think we’re going to be up by maybe a substantial number.”
The Senate is currently deadlocked at 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote for Democrats.
Trump-backed Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz is leading Democratic opponent John Fetterman in a new survey following last week’s highly-watched debate. And the closely-watched U.S. Senate race in Arizona just kicked up a notch after the Libertarian candidate in the race dropped out and endorsed his Republican opponent.
“I’ve said from the very beginning that the reason I’m running for Senate is to promote and get us in the direction of freedom and peace and civility,” Marc Victor said in a YouTube video announcing his endorsement of Masters.
Victor said at one point in his video, “[Masters] really is — in his heart and in his mind — he’s in favor of doing everything he can to get us very sternly, very smartly in the direction of ‘live and let live.’ And that seems like a good tradeoff to me.”
