Does Super PAC, End Citizens United, Stand Against ‘Dark-Money’ – or Are They a Fundraising Scam?
By Liam Sturgess, Investigative Reporter, The Kennedy Beacon
End Citizens United (ECU) is the latest Democratic Party-aligned political action committee (PAC) trying to block ballot access for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But while ECU claims to combat “dark money” in politics, a look at its structure and allegiances reveals that it benefits from the very financial loopholes it ostensibly opposes.
In a June 13, 2024, press release, the group alleges that Kennedy is merely “exploiting campaign finance laws” in order to tip the election away from Joe Biden and toward Donald Trump, rather than genuinely offering voters an alternative to the two beleaguered incumbents.
NBC News identified End Citizens United in March as being part of the “constellation of outside groups” coordinating with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to prevent third-party and independent candidates from making the ballot in the 2024 presidential election, led by the faux-centrist nonprofit Third Way.
End Citizens United was founded in 2015 by Greg Berlin, Jake Lipsett, and Charles Starnes, who worked together at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). A distinctly Democrat effort, ECU vowed to “funnel tens of millions of dollars to Democratic candidates” in the 2016 election cycle, including Hillary Clinton, whom the group endorsed in July 2016.
As reported by NBC News, ECU’s stated long-term goal is to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 2010 Supreme Court decision which “gave rise to super PACs and unleashed a tidal wave of dark money into politics.”
Ironically, top Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias has been identified by The Hill as “the father of the super PAC” for his role in that SCOTUS decision. Moreover, federal filings reveal that ECU is a current client of Elias Law Group, which is also representing the DNC, the DCCC, and the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee, along with senior Democratic Party leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Adam Schiff, and Chuck Schumer, among others. Notably, Elias Law Group is collaborating with Third Way in its efforts to block Kennedy’s access to the ballot in multiple states.
ECU is made up of two corporate entities. The main organization is a PAC, which has the ability to fundraise and spend for the benefit of more than one candidate. Its sister organization, the End Citizens United Action Fund, is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit – defined by the Campaign Legal Center as a “dark money group.” This further irony is not lost on its ostensible allies. In an April 2016 article, HuffPost quotes multiple Democratic activists expressing suspicion for the new group, which appeared to come out of nowhere and swiftly undermine the anti-dark-money effort. Jim Hightower, described by The American Prospect as a long-time progressive activist, went so far as to label ECU “a fraud,” while a blogger on the Daily Kos cautioned that it may be a “fundraising scam.”
ECU raised $11 million in 2015, its first year of operations, most of which appears to be from small donations. But a review of data on OpenSecrets reveals substantial funding from familiar names in Democratic Party donor circles. The largest individual contribution that first year came from the Foundation for National Progress (FNP), the nonprofit publisher of Mother Jones. As previously highlighted by The Kennedy Beacon, Mother Jones and the FNP are themselves funded by dark money sourced to donors like the MacArthur banking family, the Ford Foundation, and Democratic megadonor George Soros – who was also an early End Citizens United donor, as reported in 2016 by Politico.
Another early donor is Nancy Nordhoff, founding co-director of Philanthropy Northwest, a network of corporations and grantmaking organizations whose membership at the time of ECU’s founding included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Boeing, and Microsoft, as well as big banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.
Suspicions that ECU may be more of a cash grab than a genuine anti-dark-money effort are not unfounded. Shortly prior to founding ECU, Berlin, Lipsett, and Starnes launched a for-profit digital strategy firm called Mothership Strategies. As reported by the Capital Research Center, the firm’s biggest organizational client was End Citizens United, which moved just shy of $3.4 million to Mothership in 2016, and another $2.7 million during the 2018 midterms. ECU has thus served as a remarkably profitable venture for its founders.
Financial interests aside, ECU’s aggressive turn against Kennedy is unsurprising given the political baggage carried by its team of “veteran Democratic operatives” – more specifically, operatives who currently or previously worked for either the DNC or Third Way. Lanae Erickson, a member of ECU’s board, is senior vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way. Board members Karen Finney and Simone L. Ward previously worked at the DNC as communications director and women’s outreach director, respectively. Legislative affairs director Rushad Thomas previously worked at Third Way as a press advisor.
End Citizens United is trying to derail legitimate presidential candidates such as Kennedy, despite this effort falling far outside its stated mandate. This can reasonably be attributed to the above-described financial and personal ties to a specific wing of the Democratic Party – a wing currently fighting for its survival amid calls from within for Biden to drop out.
In considering the legitimacy of End Citizens United’s position on which candidates should be on the ballot in the 2024 election and which should not, the American public may take note of its apparent hypocrisy in supporting the president’s reelection campaign, which, as noted by Sludge, is funded by the same dark money that Biden has repeatedly denounced for eroding public trust.
Liam Sturgess is an investigative reporter for The Kennedy Beacon. He is also a writer for the Canadian Covid Care Alliance and founder of White Rose Intelligence. He was the founding co-host and producer of the Rounding the Earth podcast, and publishes a Substack series called Microjourneys.