America Rising

America Rising is a United States political action committee (PAC) that produces opposition research on Democratic Party members.[1] It has been called the "unofficial research arm of the Republican Party" by the Wall Street Journal.[2]

Organization

America Rising was founded in March 2013 by Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign manager, Matt Rhoades.[3] Political strategist Tim Miller left the Republican National Committee (RNC) to join the clearinghouse. As of January 2014, between the PAC and the LLC run by fellow opposition research veteran Joe Pounder, the organization employed 47 people, full or part-time.[4]

CNN reported that America Rising would be split into two entities: a super PAC that aimed to spread negative stories about congressional Democratic incumbents and candidates through digital channels and earned media, and an LLC that would house a video library to be shared with GOP candidates, the RNC and other right-leaning groups. To avoid making illegal in-kind corporate contributions, the LLC would likely need to charge candidates for access to the library.[4] Pounder and Miller estimated it would have a budget of between $10 and $15 million for the 2013-2014 election cycle.[5]

Raj Shah, appointed to be White House Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Communications for Research in the Trump Administration in 2017, was also a co-founder of the PAC. He had been deputy research director at the RNC in 2012 and, from there, ultimately became the head of opposition research at the committee for the 2016 campaign. After 2012, he focused specifically on developing deep anti-Hillary Clinton playbooks for America Rising and the RNC.[6]

America Rising shares its office space and multiple current and former executives with Definers Public Affairs, an opposition research firm, and NTK Network, a digital news aggregator.[7]

2014 Senate races

In the 2014 Iowa senate race, America Rising released a split screen video of Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley being readied for a televised appearance alongside a similar video of former U.S. Senator John Edwards.[8] America Rising also released a video of Braley saying of Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, "you might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee."[9]

In 2014 Dan Sullivan's campaign used the identical opposition research files, as did an outside group aligned with it, during his race against Democrat Mark Begich, the incumbent Senator from Alaska. Their source was America Rising, which has a corporate political research arm that purveys its materials directly to campaigns, but also sells to outside groups like Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS).[10]

"Everyone is paying for the same research, information, and then they can use it at their own discretion. Nobody's discussing how they want to deploy that information," said Tim Miller, then America Rising's executive director. The Sullivan campaign, the Republican group Crossroads GPS, and American Crossroads (a super PAC which had spent more than a million dollars on campaign ads attacking Begich or promoting Sullivan) had all used the same political consulting firm, Black Rock Group.[10] Operatives Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove co-founded the two latter organizations.[11] One of the partners at Black Rock, Michael Dubke, is a strategist for Sullivan's campaign; another, Carl Forti, is the political director for American Crossroads.[10]

Miller and Dubke both contend their firms' arrangements do not violate the law because they each employ different workers on opposite sides of a firewall between the campaigns and the outside groups. Dubke said he works on some projects alongside Forti, but they don't interact on Alaska issues and Forti works out of a separate office for American Crossroads. A spokesman for the Sullivan campaign, Mike Anderson, failed to respond to a request to address how it ensures its vendors avoid violating coordination rules. He wrote: "There are very clear guidelines, and our campaign staff, consultants and vendors strictly adhere to them." The Federal Election Commission (FEC) avoids policing the relationships between outside groups and candidates, failing to bring enforcement, according to Larry Noble, the former general counsel for the FEC from 1987 to 2000. Nobel says the FEC's three Democrats and three Republicans frequently deadlock as they vote on whether or not to initiate investigations.[10] Ann Ravel, the vice chair of the FEC authored a 2014 New York Times op-ed about the stalemates entitled, "How Not to Enforce Campaign Laws."[12]

Trump administration

In 2017, while Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was under the direction of Scott Pruitt, a Virginia based lawyer working for America Rising filed a number of FOIA requests seeking copies of emails written by various EPA employees which "mentioned either Mr. Pruitt or President Trump, or any communication with Democrats in Congress that might have been critical of the agency." In each case, the requests would come just days after an employee had expressed concerns about the direction of the agency or had made public statements which were critical of Pruitt, raising freedom of speech concerns among EPA employees. This came after the EPA had signed a $120,000 contract with Definers Public Affairs, a consulting firm affiliated with America Rising and founded by Pounder, for "media monitoring".[7]

America Rising Squared, a non-profit division of America Rising, oversaw the targeting of environmental advocates such as Bill McKibben and Tom Steyer by deploying "trackers" to videotape them. Brian Rogers, executive director of America Rising Squared, said that the firm had focused on McKibben and Steyer because they "aggressively target conservative thought leaders." Styer described it as "classic propaganda from an authoritarian regime".[7]

Doxing accusations

In 2018, Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic congressional candidate who had previously filed a mandatory "SF-86" form, which is required for certain high-level security positions and included sensitive personal information, accused the group of using the information publicly as a campaign strategy by Republicans.[13][14][15]

Spanberger had previously worked as a postal inspector for the USPS before joining the CIA in 2002. In July 2018, America Rising filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) "for access to certain records contained in the official civilian personnel file of former federal employee Abigail Spanberger. Specifically, this request seeks records reflecting Ms. Spanberger’s employment dates, annual salaries, title, and position description." NARA forwarded the request to the USPS, who responded with Spanberger's complete and unredacted official personnel folder, which included her SF-86. The file was sent to America Rising, who in turn gave it to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main Republican congressional campaign Super PAC.[13][16]

In December 2018, the USPS Inspector General concluded that, although a USPS human resources administrative assistant had improperly executed the FOIA request, and that "the release of those files to third parties without authorization violated both federal law and USPS policy", the report "officially cleared" America Rising of "any wrongdoing", as they had submitted the request through the proper channels.[16]

References

  1. ↑ Moody, Chris (February 20, 2015). "Political dirt digger joins Jeb Bush PAC". CNN. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
  2. ↑ O’Connor, Patrick (May 1, 2016). "Political Operatives Find Demand for Their Skills in Business World". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  3. ↑ Weigel, David, "The Republican PAC that’s filming every single thing that key Democratic candidates do or say", Slate Magazine, January 13, 2014. Retrieved 11 October 2014.
  4. 1 2 Blumenthal, Paul, "America Rising GOP Research Super PAC Launches With Romney Campaign Manager At Helm", The Huffington Post, March 21, 2013. With link to Hamby, Peter, "Romney campaign chief to lead new GOP research group", CNN, March 21st, 2013. Retrieved October 11, 2013.
  5. ↑ Ward, Jon, "Destroying The Opposition Is A Business For the Right, A Cause For The Left", The Huffington Post, January 25, 2014. Retrieved 11 October 2014.
  6. ↑ Krasselt, Kaitlyn, "Norwalk’s Raj Shah forged his own political path", The Hour (Norwalk, CT), January 16, 2017. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  7. 1 2 3 Lipton, Eric; Friedman, Lisa; Vogel, Kenneth P. (December 17, 2017). "E.P.A. Employees Spoke Out. Then Came Scrutiny of Their Email". The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2017.
  8. ↑ Goddard, Taegan, "I feel pretty" Archived 2014-10-15 at the Wayback Machine, Political Wire, August 21, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  9. ↑ Sullivan, Sean. "Why Bruce Braley's 'farmer from Iowa' remark hit a nerve back home". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 10, 2016. Retrieved April 11, 2023.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Despite similar messages, Senate campaigns say there's no coordination with outside groups, Anchorage Daily News, Nathaniel Herz, September 28, 2016. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  11. ↑ American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS, FactCheck.org, Brooks Jackson, September 18, 2011. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  12. ↑ How Not to Enforce Campaign Laws, The New York Times, Ann M. Ravel, April 2, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  13. 1 2 Burgess, Christopher (August 29, 2018). "What Was a Congressional Candidate's SF-86 Doing in the Hands of Her Political Opponents?". ClearanceJobs.
  14. ↑ Tackett, Michael (August 28, 2018). "C.I.A. Officer-Turned-Candidate Says PAC Obtained Her Security Application". The New York Times.
  15. ↑ Ackerman, Spencer (August 29, 2018). "CIA Analyst Turned Candidate Fears She'll Get Doxxed Next". Daily Beast.
  16. 1 2 "USPS IG clears conservative group of wrongdoing in Spanberger file release". Roll Call. January 4, 2019. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
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