Democratic donors fork over thousands to launch right-wing spoiler candidates

A collection of liberal activists and donors from across the country suddenly sent tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing, third-party candidates who could act as spoilers and help Democrats win pivotal races in the battle for control of the House and Senate.

Ballots in swing-district races in Montana, Iowa and Virginia will include candidates recruited on Facebook by a shady, now-defunct group that relied on money from Democrats to pay for filing fees and ballot access signatures.

In Wisconsin, some of the same Democrats have donated thousands of dollars to an “America First” conservative candidate who could serve as a spoiler in a highly competitive race that has the potential to determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Nearly $20,000 has been dumped into putting Thomas Bowman, 71, on the ballot in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District race.

Patriots Run Project recruited Mr. Bowman this year after surveilling his Facebook posts opposing illegal immigration and COVID-19 vaccines.

Representatives from the group persuaded Mr. Bowman to run as a “constitutional conservative” in the closely divided district, where Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat, is running for a second term. Ms. Craig, 52, is favored in the race but faces a competitive challenge from Republican Joe Teirab, 36. Putting Mr. Bowman on the ballot could keep the seat safe for Democrats by drawing votes from conservative Republicans who might otherwise vote for Mr. Teirab.

Much, and potentially all, of the $19,800 donated to Mr. Bowman’s campaign came from Democrats. Mr. Bowman said all the money was spent gathering the 1,000 signatures he needed to get onto the ballot. He doesn’t know the donors and is not sure how the money was collected, he told The Washington Times.

Mr. Bowman has never run for office and lives about 10 miles outside the 2nd District.

The disabled veteran is recovering from a kidney transplant and has not received additional help for his campaign from the Patriots Run Project. He has not heard from the group in months. The Times’ calls to Patriot Run Project organizers’ phones were not returned or the numbers had been disconnected. The website is no longer active.

“I just need to buy a domain, a website and get all that jazz built, but I don’t have any resources. I’m living off Social Security, basically,” Mr. Bowman said.

Democratic donors who funded the collection of signatures for Mr. Bowman’s candidacy include Elizabeth Steinglass of the District of Columbia, a poet and author who has contributed large sums of money to the Democratic Party and individual candidates, including $41,300 to the House Democrats’ fundraising arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and $21,560 to the Senate Democrats’ fundraising arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Ms. Steinglass gave Mr. Bowman the maximum donation allowed, $3,300, even though he is a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump and is running to the right of the Republican candidate in the 2nd District race. She did not respond to an inquiry from The Times.

Other donors include Massachusetts-based publisher Josh Groves, who gave the maximum, $3,300, to Mr. Bowman’s campaign two months after donating to ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main fundraising website. He did not respond to an inquiry.

Retiree Lynn Brody of New York City gave $3,300 to Mr. Bowman on June 3. A few weeks later, she donated $3,300 to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.

None of Mr. Bowman’s campaign donors lives in Minnesota. A donor named Joe Fox, based in Charlottesville and Alexandria, Virginia, gave Mr. Bowman $3,200. He also donated to the Senate campaign of Jon Tester, Montana Democrat.

“That’s a lot of money to max out to an unknown candidate, particularly one that is not a Democrat,” said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, a conservative watchdog group.

Americans for Public Trust filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, arguing that Patriots Run Project is violating campaign finance law by failing to file federal disclosure reports.

Some of Mr. Bowman’s donors have posted pro-Democratic messages on social media or have contributed to Democrats. Despite the obscurity of Mr. Bowman’s candidacy, he received the maximum $3,300 donation from gaming entrepreneur and investor Rick Thompson, co-founder and managing director at Signia Venture Partners. Mr. Thompson lives in Jackson, Wyoming.

His social media posts suggest he backs Democrats. In February, he reposted a Democratic website, stepasidejoe.org, calling for President Biden to quit the race so that a stronger party candidate could run. “For the love of God. Joe Biden stand down!” Mr. Thompson posted on Feb. 12.

Mr. Teirab, the Republican candidate in Minnesota’s 2nd District, called the Patriots Run Project recruitment “blatant election interference” and pinned it squarely on the Democratic Party and his Democratic opponent, Ms. Craig.

Democratic Party officials said they have nothing to do with the recruitment. Ms. Craig’s campaign spokeswoman also said they had nothing to do with Mr. Bowman’s candidacy.

“The first we heard of Thomas Bowman’s candidacy was when he filed with the FEC in April. The campaign has no knowledge of how he got on the ballot,” spokeswoman Katie Kelsh said.

Several of Mr. Bowman’s donors, including Mr. Thompson, gave the maximum $3,300 to another conservative spoiler candidate, Thomas Leager, who is running as a pro-Trump, pro-Second Amendment independent in Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race.

Polling shows Mr. Leager could influence the outcome of a close race.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, is leading Republican challenger Eric Hovde by just 3 percentage points, and Mr. Leager received 2% of likely voters in a Marquette Law School poll released this month.

Mr. Leager’s social media posts criticize Mr. Hovde as a “fraud” who has worked with “Trump-hating media” and said the Republican Party “always compromises on conservative positions.”

It is unclear whether the Patriots Run Project recruited Mr. Leager, who did not return a phone call inquiring about his campaign. His campaign donations mirror those of Mr. Bowman.

Some donors to Mr. Bowman’s campaign gave more than $13,000 to Mr. Leager’s, including Mr. Fox, Mr. Thompson and Ms. Steinglass’ husband, David, another hefty Democratic patron. Among the significant donations Mr. Steinglass gave in recent months was a $25,000 check to the House Majority PAC, dedicated exclusively to electing Democrats to Congress.

In total, Mr. Leager’s campaign banked $23,550, all of which was spent on collecting the more than 4,000 signatures needed to get him onto the ballot.

On his website, Mr. Leager indicates that he was recruited to enter the race as an “America First” candidate.

“I was approached by my community to run for U.S. Senate, a duty I accepted despite the challenges,” Mr. Leager wrote.

“America First means closed borders, protecting American markets and workers, restoring the American Dream, defending 2A, protecting children from radical gender theory, shrinking the federal government, and holding it accountable for weaponizing against citizens,” Mr. Leager wrote. “I also aim to end mandatory spending, bring troops home, and support President Donald J. Trump in Making America Great Again.”

Democratic donors likely helped get two other spoiler candidates onto ballots in crucial House races in Montana and Virginia.

The Associated Press found the ballot signature collection efforts for those candidates were partly funded by Carolyn Cohen, a Nyack, New York, philanthropist and registered Democrat who backs liberal causes. She could not be reached for comment.

Nevada-based Common Sense America helped gather signatures to qualify candidates for the ballot in three races. The company is associated with the Democratic consulting firm Sole Strategies. Neither company responded to an inquiry from The Times.

House Republicans control the majority with only a handful of votes, and the outcome in November is considered too close to predict. It could hinge on Virginia’s 2nd District.

Patriots Run Project recruited Robert Reid Jr. through Facebook to run as an independent in the 2nd District, where Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, a Republican, is seeking a second term. She defeated Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in 2022 by 10,000 votes.

Mr. Reid, 78, told The Times that a professional firm was “paid a lot of money” to collect the 1,000 signatures needed to get him onto the ballot. He estimated that the effort cost “much more than $10,000,” but FEC data shows no campaign contributions or expenditures.

Patriots Run Project has ended communication with Mr. Reid, and he is left struggling to put together a campaign amid complaints from his Republican friends that he has been duped onto the ballot to help the Democrats. Mr. Reid said he hasn’t been actively campaigning much for the seat.

“I feel that now I’m not sure whether I should be on the ballot,” Mr. Reid said. “I want the people to have a choice. That’s the main reason I’ve stayed in it. I would have backed out, but it’s too late. My name is on the ballot. The ballots have been mailed out.”

Patriots Run Project recruited Dennis Hayes to run as the Libertarian candidate in Montana’s 1st Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke is running for another term. Mr. Zinke’s Democrat opponent is Monica Tranel, whom he defeated by 3 percentage points in 2022.

Mr. Hayes said he was recruited by Patriots Run Project through Facebook after they saw his posts about government corruption. They asked whether he would run as the Libertarian Party candidate.

“I really didn’t know because I don’t know exactly what a Libertarian is,” Mr. Hayes said. “When I looked it up, it said, ‘They believe in small governments and believe in the Constitution.’ And I thought, ‘Well, that’s right up my alley.’”

Mr. Hayes, 70, said he told Patriots Run Project that he was living on Social Security and did not have the money to pay the filing fee. Someone showed up at his house, picked up one of his bank deposit slips and deposited the $1,740 candidate filing fee into his bank account.

“There was a guy that lives in Helena. He came down to Townsend to give me a check, but I told him that I’m leaving in the morning on vacation, and I really don’t have time. So I gave him a deposit slip, and he went to the bank and deposited it.”

No donations show up under Mr. Hayes’ campaign in FEC data.

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Patriots Run Project had operated as a network on 26 domains, 10 websites, 15 pages on Facebook and 13 linked Facebook groups seeking candidates who would mirror the Trump agenda on gun rights, border security, immigration and election fraud. The institute determined that the group was manipulating Facebook users, and it chastised parent company Meta for not moving more quickly to take down the pages, which were removed in June.

Patriots Run Project is linked only to a post office box in the District and is not a registered business entity, tax-exempt organization or political action committee.

ISD said the group’s online behavior “suggests that the network was violating Meta’s coordinated inauthentic behavior policies by deceiving users and Meta about the ‘identity, purpose, or origin of the entity that they represent.’ They were all likely managed by the same person or group of people, and whoever was responsible for setting them up took steps to mask their identity.”