West Virginia Policy and Campaign Finance Research Podcast

If you want to know how power works in West Virginia politics, don’t just watch the speeches. Watch the paperwork. The slogans are local, the candidates insist they are local, and the mailers are aimed at local loyalties, but a surprising amount of the machinery behind West Virginia’s 2026 Republican primaries leads somewhere else entirely: to Beverly, Massachusetts, and to a familiar circle of consultants, media buyers, and compliance men whose names keep surfacing wherever the money gets serious.Even the names tell a story. West Virginia’s official state tree is the sugar maple, its official state animal is the black bear, its official state colors are old gold and blue, and it entered the Union as the 35th state. So when PACs and committees show up with names like Sugar Maple PAC, Black Bear PAC, Blue and Gold PAC, and 35th Inc., it is hard not to see the branding strategy: wrap the money in the state’s symbols and hope voters mistake symbolism for homegrown authenticity.I can’t wait to see which symbolic object of West Virginia they name the next new PAC after.Everybody is talking about Sugar Maple PAC’s spending, and they should be. The reports show a surge of money for digital and print advertising, including six-figure payments to vendors like Acquire Digital LLC and Matchstick Media, along with contributions from Jeff Yass, Richard UiHlein, and Thomas Klingenstein. That is the loud part of the story. The quieter part is the infrastructure behind it: the consultants, compliance firms, media shops, and nonprofit board members who keep turning up across the same political ecosystem.Everybody is counting Sugar Maple’s money. Fewer people are counting the men who keep showing up to route it, report it, buy the ads, and sit on the nonprofit boards.Blue and Gold PAC helps make that point plain. In the West Virginia campaign finance filings, Blue and Gold PAC appears not only as a donor to Republican legislative candidates, but also as a committee that paid Red Curve Solutions and made a payment to Team Morrisey. The same filings show candidates receiving contributions from Blue and Gold PAC using a Beverly, Massachusetts address tied to Red Curve Solutions. So the story is not simply that outside money exists. The story is that the same political-services infrastructure shows up on both sides of the ledger — taking payments as a vendor and sending contributions as part of the pipeline.Once you look past the PAC names and into the people behind the entities, the pattern gets clearer. IRS 990 tax filings indicate that American Prosperity Group has included Scott Will, D.J. Eckert, Trevor Vessels, and Charles Gantt as board members, while West Virginia Prosperity Group has included Scott Will, Charlie Bailey, Rob Cornelius, and Charles Gantt. Those overlaps matter because Will and Bailey are tied to SW2 Political, Eckert and Vessels are tied to Matchstick Media, and Gantt is tied to Bulldog Compliance.That is not a random collection of names. It is a small professional class of Republican political operatives appearing across strategy, advertising, compliance, and nonprofit-style governance. If somebody set out to build an apparatus that could raise money, route money, spend money, buy ads, file reports, and keep the whole operation looking tidy on paper, it might look an awful lot like this.None of that, by itself, proves some grand illegal conspiracy. It does not need to. The point is simpler: voters are being sold a story about grassroots West Virginia politics while the plumbing looks highly professionalized, increasingly national, and populated by the same repeat players.Bulldog Compliance and Red Curve Solutions sit near the heart of that plumbing. Bulldog markets compliance, bookkeeping, and reporting services for campaigns and committees, and it operates within Red Curve Solutions, a larger Republican political finance operation. In practical terms, that means treasurer work, disclosure reports, reconciliations, and the kind of paperwork handling that helps political money move without tripping over its own shoelaces.That is why the compliance story matters. The public is trained to notice the ad, not the accountant; the television spot, not the treasurer; the loud independent expenditure, not the person who helps make it look orderly on paper. But if you want to understand who is really shaping a political operation, you had better pay attention to the people who keep the money moving as much as the people who keep the cameras rolling.Federal records help explain why. In Federal Election Commission (FEC) Matter Under Review (MUR) 8002, the Commission sent formal notice in 2022 to an entity using Bulldog Compliance’s Beverly address in connection with a campaign-finance complaint, including instructions to preserve records. That does not prove every allegation in that matter, but it does puncture the fairy tale that polished compliance firms somehow sit above scrutiny.And MUR 8002 is hardly the only time these names have surfaced in federal campaign-finance files. Charles Gantt appears as treasurer in MUR 7994 involving Make America Great Again, Again! Inc., and in MUR 8002 involving 34N22, Inc. Bradley Crate appears even more frequently in FEC matters tied to Trump-aligned committees and Red Curve’s world, including MUR 7094 involving Make America Great Again PAC, MUR 7339 involving Trump Victory, MUR 7540 involving Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., MUR 8139 involving Never Surrender Inc., and MUR 8251 and 8260, which directly named Red Curve Solutions, LLC and Bradley T. Crate in connection with reporting and contribution allegations involving Trump-affiliated committees.An MUR is not a conviction, and not every one ends the same way. Some are dismissed, some end in settlement, and some simply record that the FEC thought a matter serious enough to open a file and notify the respondents. But by now the larger point is hard to miss: Bradley Crate, Charles Gantt, Red Curve, and the Bulldog compliance orbit are not occasional names in the federal record. They are recurring figures in the treasurer-and-compliance machinery behind major Republican political committees.MUR 7886 makes that point even more forcefully because it involved the pharmaceutical industry and because Black Bear PAC was part of the factual record. The respondent was Astellas Pharma U.S., Inc., a major drug company operating in a heavily regulated business and holding a Federal Supply Schedule contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The FEC found reason to believe Astellas violated the federal contractor contribution ban by making a $50,000 contribution to Senate Leadership Fund and two separate $5,000 contributions to Black Bear PAC in 2019 and 2020.That Black Bear detail matters here. FEC records identify Black Bear PAC, Inc. as a super PAC using Bulldog Compliance’s Beverly address with Charles Gantt as treasurer, which places a Gantt/Bulldog-linked committee directly inside the MUR 7886 fact pattern. In the conciliation materials, Astellas agreed to seek disgorgement of the $10,000 in Black Bear PAC contributions to the U.S. Treasury if the contributions were returned.So MUR 7886 is not just a generic example about compliance. It shows that a major pharmaceutical company with lawyers, contracts, compliance personnel, and every institutional reason to know the rules still wound up in an enforcement matter that included contributions to a PAC tied to Charles Gantt and Bulldog’s Beverly address. In other words, all the polish in the world — all the compliance language, all the expensive stationery, all the institutional sophistication — does not guarantee clean political conduct when the facts run the wrong way.The federal pattern also reaches back into Patrick Morrisey’s own 2018 Senate run. OpenSecrets reports that 35th Inc., a single-candidate super PAC supporting Morrisey, received $15,000 from Global Energy Producers in 2018. And MUR 7196 sits inside the broader FEC scrutiny of the Global Energy Producers / Lev Parnas / Igor Fruman network, where the Commission addressed allegations involving foreign-national money and related solicitation activity. That does not mean every recipient was charged the same way or knew the same facts. It does mean a PAC supporting Morrisey was operating in the same donor ecosystem that later drew serious federal attention.Then there is the media side. Sugar Maple’s spending has understandably drawn attention to who is buying and placing the ads, but the American Prosperity Group overlap points toward Matchstick-linked figures too. Public reporting has already tied D.J. Eckert to Morrisey-aligned outside spending, while Trevor Vessels is publicly identified as a founding partner at Matchstick Media Strategies. So again, the point is not just that one PAC spent a lot of money. It is that the same names keep surfacing across different stages of the process — strategy, media, governance, compliance.The SW2 Political overlap adds another piece to the picture, and it matters even more once you look at the résumés. During his tenure as West Virginia attorney general, Patrick Morrisey rose to chair the Republican Attorneys General Association, the national group that helps Republican AGs raise money and coordinate legal and political strategy. Scott Will, who now shows up both at SW2 Political and on the Prosperity Group side of the fence, previously served in RAGA leadership before moving into the consulting world. Charlie Bailey, another SW2 figure linked to West Virginia Prosperity Group, comes out of that same broader Republican political orbit.In other words, the network now linking SW2, the Prosperity entities, and West Virginia races did not spring up overnight. It looks like an outgrowth of the same national Republican attorney-general world Morrisey helped lead. Taken together with the Matchstick and Bulldog overlaps, that makes the whole arrangement look less like a loose alliance of friendly conservatives and more like an interlocking political-services network with different men handling different parts of the same enterprise.If Governor Patrick Morrisey wants “fresh faces” in the Legislature, that is his right as a politician. But when the money around those races runs through Beverly, Massachusetts addresses, compliance firms tied to Charles Gantt, strategists tied to SW2, ad-buying figures tied to Matchstick, and boards populated by the same small set of operatives, voters are entitled to ask how fresh the operation really is. Fresh faces are one thing. Old wiring is another.That is where the story stops being gossip and starts becoming public interest. A voter can shrug at outside spending and say that is just how politics works now. But no voter should be asked to pretend that this is merely a spontaneous uprising of local neighbors passing the hat around for a few worthy candidates.The records point to something much more structured than that. Blue and Gold PAC sends money to candidates and to Team Morrisey while paying Red Curve. Sugar Maple PAC pours extraordinary sums into advertising. American Prosperity Group and West Virginia Prosperity Group include overlapping figures tied to SW2 Political, Matchstick Media, and Bulldog Compliance. The picture that emerges is not of one noisy PAC, but of a managed ecosystem — one capable of raising, routing, spending, and justifying money through a tight circle of professionals.That is why the compliance story is the part the public and media should not skip over. If you only watch the ads, you miss the apparatus. If you only count Sugar Maple’s checks, you miss the men who keep appearing behind them. And if you miss the apparatus, you miss how power is actually being organized in West Virginia right now.So yes, by all means, keep talking about Sugar Maple PAC. The spending is enormous, and it deserves scrutiny. But stop there and you miss the more durable truth: the real story is not just who paid for the noise. It is who built the system that makes the noise possible, who sits on the boards, who places the media, who handles the compliance, and why the same names keep turning up whenever you follow the paper trail long enough.That is not cynicism. That is just reading the receipts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

My father once told me something that stopped me cold.He said the coal miners of West Virginia were treated like property. That they were bought and sold, worked until they broke, and discarded when they had nothing left to give. And then he said something harder: that nobody cares about their suffering the way they care about others’.It was a controversial comparison—miners to slaves—and I bristled at it. But sitting with his words over the years, I’ve come to understand something important. He wasn’t making a historical argument. He was articulating a feeling—a sense of erasure that runs bone-deep in Appalachian communities. The feeling that your family’s pain doesn’t count. That it doesn’t make the history books. That nobody’s coming to tell your story.This essay is my attempt to tell it.The Disconnect Isn’t About Policy. It’s About Pain.If you want to understand the socio-political landscape of West Virginia, you have to stop thinking about policy and start thinking about wounds.The white coal miner’s perception of being treated as property isn’t historically equivalent to chattel slavery—but the feeling of being used up, discarded, and forgotten is real. And that feeling has been deliberately exploited.Here’s the dark irony: the coal companies themselves benefit from this resentment. By fostering competition between different groups over whose suffering matters more, they divert attention from their own practices. While miners argue about recognition, nobody’s looking at the company books. Nobody’s asking why the people who did the dying stayed poor while the people who owned the mines built dynasties.It’s psychological warfare dressed up as culture war.This Isn’t Ancient HistoryThere’s a comforting myth that the worst abuses of coal mining are relics of a distant past—grainy photographs of child laborers, stories from the 1920s.My grandfather, Jiggs McKnight, worked the mines from the 1950s to the late 1980s.That’s not the distant past. That’s within living memory. That’s the man who bounced me on his knee.The family moved between Fayette, Wyoming, and Jackson counties, chasing work. That instability—the constant uprooting, the chase for the next seam of coal—defined generations. You went where the work was. You took what they gave you. You kept your mouth shut about the rest.In 1984, Jiggs survived a mine collapse.Physically, he recovered. Psychologically, he carried it until the day he died. And he made one thing clear to his son, my father Bill: Don’t go into the mines.That’s the real inheritance. Not pride in coal country. Fear of it.The “Friends of Coal” FantasyYou’ve seen the bumper stickers. Friends of Coal.Coal Keeps the Lights On. There’s a whole mythology built around the brotherhood of miners, the dignity of the work, the pride of Appalachian identity.And look—there is something real there. The solidarity of men who trust each other with their lives underground. The skill and courage the work demands. I’m not here to mock that.But for families like mine, the reality was different. It was fear when the men went down. It was injuries that never fully healed. It was lungs that gave out decades later. It was widows left with a folded flag and a settlement check that wouldn’t cover the funeral.The “Friends of Coal” narrative is a story the industry tells about itself. It’s not the story the miners’ families lived.Defending Your AbuserMy grandmother Carrie lived in Skelton Coal Camp in Raleigh County.She defended the coal company until her dying day. They provided the house. They provided the store. They provided the doctor. How could she speak against them?I used to find this baffling. Now I understand it as survival.If Carrie admitted that the company was exploiting her family—that the company store was a debt trap, that the housing kept them dependent, that the whole system was designed to extract maximum labor for minimum cost—then she’d have to admit something unbearable: that she had no control. That her whole life had been lived inside a cage she couldn’t see.It’s easier to believe your captor is your benefactor. Psychologists call it Stockholm Syndrome. Prisoners call it institutionalization. In coal country, we just called it life.The Generational TollMy great-great-grandfather died of typhoid.That might sound like ancient history too—but typhoid doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It comes from contaminated water. From poor sanitation. From the conditions the coal camps provided for their workers and their families.The company didn’t pull the trigger. They just built the conditions where disease could thrive, and then expressed condolences when it did.Generation after generation, the pattern repeated. Men died underground or died slowly above it, their lungs full of dust. Women were left to raise children alone, to stretch nothing into something, to mourn without support.What did the widows get? A folded flag, if they were lucky. A settlement that wouldn’t last the year. And the expectation that they’d be grateful.The Insult of the Hall of FameWest Virginia University has a Coal Hall of Fame.Take a guess who’s in it.It’s not the miners. It’s not the men who went down into the dark and didn’t come back. It’s not the widows who held families together with nothing.It’s the coal barons. The owners. The executives. The men who got rich while other men got buried.This is institutional memory laid bare. This is who we’ve decided to honor. And every time someone romanticizes the “coal rush”—every time there’s a cute game or a nostalgic exhibit—it lands differently for families who lived the reality.You want to honor coal miners? Tell the truth about what happened to them.What Was Really StolenThe coal companies took a lot from West Virginia. They took the wealth buried in the mountains and shipped it out of state. They took the health of generations of workers. They took fathers and husbands and sons.But they also took something harder to name: they took the narrative.They convinced families like Carrie’s that the company was their protector. They convinced miners that their enemy was other workers—other races, other regions—anyone but the men signing their paychecks. They convinced a whole culture that exploitation was tradition, that suffering was heritage, that questioning any of it was betrayal.And then they built a Hall of Fame for themselves.Breaking the CycleI don’t know how to fix West Virginia’s economy. I don’t have a policy platform or a five-point plan.But I know this: healing starts with honesty.It starts with refusing to romanticize abuse. It starts with naming what happened—not as ancient history, but as recent trauma that still echoes in families today. It starts with recognizing that the resentment so many feel isn’t irrational; it’s the predictable result of being exploited and then erased.My father’s anger wasn’t crazy. It was the inheritance of generations of men who were used up and thrown away. The tragedy is that his anger was pointed at the wrong targets—at other suffering people instead of at the systems that created the suffering.The coal companies won when they got us fighting each other. They win every time we compete over whose pain matters more.The only way to break the cycle is to see it clearly. To tell the truth about who did what to whom. To stop defending our abusers and start defending each other.That’s the inheritance I want to leave.If this piece resonated with you, I’d be grateful if you’d share it. These stories don’t get told enough This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

I am currently working on a new piece titled, “How PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) Lobbyist Organization, Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation, and AbbVie Inc., destroyed West Virginians’ access to affordable healthcare and medication.”As part of this project, I have been reviewing legislative committee meeting videos regarding the distribution of prescription medication to safety net providers, such as rural hospitals and pharmacies. Given my recent findings, I have decided to republish this article from January 2026.There’s something about a decade in the legislative trenches that changes how you see things. I got my degree in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Charleston, but the real education started when I became a legislative liaison for the Kanawha County Commission in 2008. For ten years—through 2018—I watched how government actually works, not the textbook version, but the version with lobbyists, campaign money, and backroom deals that shape bills long before the public even hears about them.That’s where I learned to tell the difference between real legislative movement and political theater. And honestly? Once you see the machinery from up close, you can’t unsee it.The honest truth is that I’ve spent years working outside partisan bubbles, watching from the sidelines, and becoming deeply skeptical of both parties’ claims. What I saw taught me that the system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed. It’s designed to protect entrenched interests, not to empower new voices or respond to grassroots movements. That matters. That’s the whole ballgame.People sometimes ask me what you learn in that role. It’s not glamorous work. You’re monitoring legislation, analyzing bills, serving as the bridge between local government and the state legislature. You have to stay ahead of policy changes, understand what they mean for your county, and communicate those impacts clearly to both the people running government and the people living in your community.But here’s what it teaches you: priorities have to be rooted in both practical reality and long-term vision.I learned to distinguish between bills that would actually affect people’s lives and those that were mostly about political messaging. Some bills sound good. They test well. They get people talking. But when you trace through what would actually happen when they became law—who would implement them, what resources would be needed, what unintended consequences might follow—suddenly that good-sounding bill looks a lot different.I became obsessed with transparency, accountability, and community engagement. I saw how easily decisions made behind closed doors could reshape everything from school funding to healthcare access. The further you zoom out from individual bills, the more you realize that the real power lies in understanding how broader trends in policy, money, and power will ripple through your community.That shifts your whole approach. You stop reacting to bills one at a time. You start anticipating. You build coalitions. You educate the public about how government actually works. And you learn—really learn—that lasting change doesn’t come from grand gestures or partisan victories. It comes from persistent, strategic work that nobody’s watching, done by people committed to process over personality.Before that job, I thought about policy in a more theoretical way. Broad ideas, big principles. But when you’re actually responsible for how legislation lands in people’s lives, everything becomes concrete. Policy isn’t about what sounds good. It’s about what actually improves people’s lives on the ground.I started asking different questions. Not just: “What does this bill say?” But: What will actually happen? Who benefits? Who gets hurt? What does it cost in real terms? And what resources do we actually have to make this work?I learned to prioritize issues with direct, measurable effects on constituents—healthcare access, education funding, economic opportunity—over symbolic or partisan wins. That’s not to say symbols don’t matter. They do.But symbols don’t fix broken things. Work fixes broken things.This experience also made me strategic in ways I wasn’t before. I learned to anticipate implementation challenges before a bill even passed. I learned to see which policies were driven by evidence and community input, and which ones were driven by expediency and political calculation. The distinction matters because one kind of policy actually lasts.Here’s what I’m certain about: loyalty must be to institutions, not individuals.Politicians are temporary. They serve their terms, they make their deals, and they leave. Some are great. Some are terrible. But they all eventually walk out the door.The institutions they inhabit—the legislature, the courts, the electoral process—those are what endure. They’re the scaffolding of our democracy. They’re the only things standing between organized society and chaos. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s just true.My entire career has been loyalty to those institutions. I believe in the process, even when it’s messy. I believe in the rules, even when they’re inconvenient. Because I know what happens when you start bending institutions to serve people: you break the only thing that protects us all.The opportunistic—the consultants, the fixers, the partisan warriors—they’re different. Their loyalty istransactional. They attach themselves to politicians like barnacles to a ship, riding the wave of power as long as it lasts. They don’t care if the hull is rotting, as long as they get to the destination. And here’s the scary part: they will burn down an institution to save a candidate, because to them, the candidate is the point.But that’s backwards. The candidate is not the point. The candidate is temporary.The point is the system that allows us to govern ourselves without violence. The point is the rule of law. The point is the promise that no matter who’s in charge today, the structure will be there tomorrow. That institutions are stronger than any single person.I don’t see politics as red versus blue. I see it as a complex ecosystem where power, money, and influence intersect. Understanding that machinery—how bills get written, how elections get administered, how money flows through campaigns—isn’t about making you cynical. It’s about making you strategic.The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed. My hope is that by understanding that design, we can start to unrig it.That’s what I’m thinking about when I write. I’m thinking about my children. I want them to see the system for what it really is—not to feel hopeless about it, but to know how to navigate it, how to push it, and how to protect the institutions that matter when people who don’t understand them try to break them for power.That’s what “thinking out loud” means to me. It’s rigorous analysis grounded in real experience. It’s healthy skepticism of both parties. And it’s an unshakeable belief that understanding how power works is the first step toward wielding it responsibly.Subscribe for free to receive new posts Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

If you live in Kanawha County and haven’t checked your mail lately, consider yourself lucky. The rest of us are wading knee-deep through a fresh load of glossy, red-and-black horse manure. The target of all this high-dollar hyperventilation? State Senator Dr. Tom Takubo.Now, don’t go thinking this is some organic, homegrown outrage from your neighbors down the road. What you’re looking at is the field program of a national libertarian network using our primaries to whip any Republican who refuses to wear their particular brand of tinfoil hat. If you’re experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu looking at these mailers, you aren’t crazy. We’ve seen this exact dog-and-pony show before.Let’s rewind the tape to the 2024 primary and look under the hood of this operation.Who Is Make Liberty Win?If you squint at the fine print on these mailers, you’ll see they’re paid for by Make Liberty Win. It sounds like something you’d buy at a roadside fireworks stand, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t a local grassroots club.Make Liberty Win is a federal super PAC acting as the campaign arm of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), a libertarian outfit headquartered down in Austin, Texas. YAL operates as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit—which in Washington-speak means they don’t have to tell you whose money they’re spending. They just shovel it into Make Liberty Win, which then drops millions into state-level primaries across the country.Their own branding calls them “the only no‑compromise conservative force on the campaign trail” out to “seize control of state legislatures.” In plain English, honey: they exist to purge any Republican caught trying to actually govern, replacing them with a cadre of ideologically vetted “liberty” loyalists who care more about culture wars than fixing potholes.The West Virginia “Liberty” BenchThese folks aren’t just lobbing bombs over the border; they’ve set up camp. Young Americans for Liberty has been quietly buying up real estate in the West Virginia Legislature for years. Mountain State Spotlight reported they dropped roughly $46,000 a few cycles back to boost delegates like Chris Pritt and Todd Kirby—the same folks who love picking fights over vaccine mandates while ignoring the actual business of the state.Their model is slicker than a greased pig: recruit college kids, train them as field staff, and parachute them into our districts to run independent expenditure campaigns.Lord, we aren’t even guessing about this connection anymore. Just look at Delegate Chris Anders. When Anders ran for his seat in 2024, he didn’t even try to hide it—his official state ethics disclosure listed his actual, honest-to-God employer as Young Americans for Liberty. This isn’t just a PAC endorsing folks; this is a national outfit putting their own paid employees on the West Virginia state payroll to run their agenda.The Craig Blair Experiment (2024)The 2024 primary against Senate President Craig Blair was their test run to see just how much West Virginians would swallow. Every piece of mail flooded into the Eastern Panhandle followed the exact same cynical formula:1. Character Assassination as Brand: Blair wasn’t just a guy they disagreed with; he was “Slimy Craig.” One card literally photoshopped him sitting on stacks of cash in front of a ruined street. Another accused him of pushing “environmental extremism” because he supported economic development for Form Energy.2. Trans Panic and Nazi Imagery: The nastiest mailers went after Blair on HB 2007. One piece claimed he “voted to trans our children,” complete with a lurid stock photo of a gloved hand and a medical mask. Another explicitly compared treating transgender youth to “chemical castration methods used by Nazi Germany.” Bless their twisted little hearts, they really went there.3. Socialism and Medicaid: A separate mailer blasted Blair for voting to expand Medicaid (HB 2266). The visual? Blair photoshopped into a blood‑spattered doctor’s coat in an abandoned hospital, demanding voters “say no to socialism.”4. One Return Address: Every single one of these postcards traced back to the exact same mailbox: “Make Liberty Win, 204 8th St Ste 201, PMB 74615, Marlinton, WV.” And, let me remind you PMB stands for Private Mail Box. Might as well be a P.O. Box.It was a full‑scale, scorched-earth campaign to redefine a conservative Senate President as a corrupt, pro‑trans, pro‑socialist traitor. And heaven help us, it worked.Running the Same Play on Tom Takubo (2026)Fast‑forward to today, and these boys haven’t even bothered to write a new script. Lay the mailers side by side. They just hit ‘find and replace’ on their keyboards.1. Same Villain, Different Name: Where Blair was “Slimy Craig,” Takubo is “Sellout Tom Takubo.” They even tried out the nickname “Tom ‘Trans the Tots’ Takubo,” which is so downright nasty it’d make a sailor blush. The mailers ask, “Do you know who owns your state senator? Follow the money!”2. Puberty Blockers as the New Form Energy: With Blair, they fused green energy and gender identity. With Takubo, it’s puberty blockers. The visual language is identical: stark black backgrounds, distressed fonts, and blood-red warnings to “defend the defenseless.”3. HOSPAC as the New Boogeyman: Instead of Form Energy, the West Virginia Hospital Association (HOSPAC) is the villain du jour. Make Liberty Win takes a real medical policy dispute—the balance between a legislature’s bans and a doctor’s discretion—and uses it to accuse a practicing physician of selling out kids to special interests.4. Sports and Gender: Another Takubo postcard attacks him on HB 3293, framing a complex vote as a refusal to protect “young women in harm’s way.” It’s the exact same architecture: erase the details of the actual bill, frame the incumbent as a literal danger to children, and dare him to defend himself two weeks before an election.5. Same Address, Same Operation: Look at the disclosure block. “204 8th St Ste 201, Marlinton, WV.” It’s a different PMB number, but it’s the exact same storefront running the exact same grift.Now, there are plenty of honest, tough arguments to have about Medicaid, hospital lobbyists, and how we handle transgender health care. Those are debates we ought to be having in committee rooms and town halls, where West Virginians can look their representatives in the eye.But what Make Liberty Win is doing is something else entirely. They are importing a national, dark-money-funded holy war into our Republican primaries.When a handful of out-of-state groups can buy up our mailboxes and redefine long‑serving, pragmatic Republicans as “Nazi‑style chemical castrators” or “sellouts,” the message to every other lawmaker in Charleston is crystal clear: Cross us, and we will destroy you. If a bunch of libertarian activists down in Texas, funded by millionaires we never get to see, can dictate who represents Kanawha County, then “local control” is just a bumper sticker. If the only politicians who feel safe are the ones taking marching orders from YAL, our government is going to get a whole lot meaner, a whole lot more extreme, and a whole lot more useless.Early voting starts April 29th, and Election Day is Tuesday, May 12th. They bought themselves a state senate seat with this snake oil back in 2024. Let’s not be foolish enough to let them buy another one in 2026.Thanks for reading West Virginia Policy and Campaign Finance Research! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

This week, Huff Consolidated Elementary and Middle School in Wyoming County didn’t just make a nice showing in a national STEM contest. They won in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow program and also took home a Community Choice award for a home water filtration system they designed because their own taps can’t be trusted. Their project is a multi-layered, affordable filtration and monitoring setup meant for real families in Hanover and the surrounding hollers, not a hypothetical lab. It’s a science project on the rubric and an indictment on the adults in charge.These kids turned their classroom into an emergency engineering lab because Governor Patrick Morrisey and the Republican supermajority in Charleston have other priorities—and none of them are clean water in the coalfields.The CompetitionThe Award CeremonyStart with the Kids, then Follow the CowardsA team of 6th–8th graders at Huff Consolidated became one of just ten national finalists in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow competition and the only West Virginia school in that top tier. They then won Community Choice on the strength of a project their families could actually plug into their sinks.Their teacher, Brittany Baker, told West Virginia Public Broadcasting the idea came straight from what her students see every day: bright orange streams, discolored tap water, and neighbors who can’t afford to just “switch brands” of water.“We have a lot of acid mine drainage and alkali drainage, and we have an area that is a poverty-stricken area and that they just don’t have access to clean drinking water,” Baker said. “So this was not only a good opportunity to learn about environmental issues, but also to give back and help the community.”So: Brittany Baker’s students are building the thing the state of West Virginia, the West Virginia Water Development Authority, and a long line of governors could not be bothered to deliver.It’s inspiring as hell. It’s also a humiliation for every official whose nameplate has ever sat in front of a committee microphone and then voted “no.”They Don’t Care About UsEvery time I watch another press conference where Governor Patrick Morrisey brags about tax cuts while kids in Wyoming County haul jugs from tanker trucks, Michael Jackson’s They Don’t Care About Us starts to feel less like a song and more like state policy.Let’s name who’s in this cast:* Governor Patrick Morrisey, who had no trouble signing $230 million in annual tax cuts while the water in the southern coalfields runs black and orange.* House Republican leadership, who let coalfield water bills die quietly in House Energy rather than risk a recorded vote.* The 47 delegates who voted to kill Delegate Adam Vance’s last-ditch attempt to force a vote on clean water for his own constituents.Meanwhile, Brittany Baker’s students did what these grown men and women would not: they treated poisoned water like an emergency instead of an inconvenience.The Crisis Huff Kids are Patching OverWyoming County’s water mess didn’t fall from the sky. It’s tied to decades of coal extraction and neglect, including contamination associated with the former Pinnacle Mining Complex, where residents have reported discolored water, bacterial growth, and methane venting into their systems.Courts issued two preliminary injunctions in 2023 to force corrective action. Neither order has been fully enforced.In 2025, State Senator Brian Helton called a meeting in Charleston with more than 40 officials to talk Wyoming County water. The numbers presented there were staggering: over $209 million in state and federal money allocated or spent on water projects in the county over the last thirty years.And yet, here we are—still telling families to boil water, add filters, or just cross their fingers and drink it. More than $209 million later, the 6th graders at Huff have the most coherent plan on the table.This March, after an oil-related incident near R.D. Bailey Dam, the state Department of Health told downstream water systems to add activated carbon “as a precaution” while they waited for lab results. That’s bureaucrat for “we don’t know how bad this is, good luck.”What Patrick Morrisey and Friends did InsteadAt the start of the 2026 session, lawmakers talked up an idea to set aside $250 million from the Rainy Day Fund for coalfield drinking water—the so‑called Coalfield Clean Water push championed by clergy, residents, and groups like From Below.Then reality set in:* The $250 million vision shrank to a $20 million concept, then got carved down into competing $10 million bills from Delegate. David Green (McDowell) and Delegate. Adam Vance (Wyoming).* Both bills were quietly killed in the House Energy Committee, where leadership could keep the blood off the floor votes.* On the 50th day of session, “crossover day,” Vance tried one last move—he successfully discharged his bill from House Energy to the floor by a 52–41 vote and asked the House to suspend the three-readings rule so it could pass in time.* That emergency motion failed 46–47. One vote short. Forty‑seven delegates looked at burning skin and brown water in southern West Virginia and said: let’s not rush.Over in the Governor’s wing, Patrick Morrisey was busy signing two bills that together deliver more than $230 million a year in tax cuts, heavily tilted toward higher earners, and congratulating himself on “fiscally responsible policies.”As Rev. Caitlin Ware, who’s been hauling jars of dirty water to the Capitol, told Mountain State Spotlight:“I find it fascinating that we are debating tax cuts when our water screams anything but tax cuts. I mean, black tap water does not exactly scream ‘cut my taxes,’ you know?”Black tap water in McDowell and Wyoming.Orange streams near Pinnacle.A Community Choice award for kids designing filtration systems.But sure, tell me again how the real emergency is cutting another 5% off the income tax.Ending a Potential Life, on PurposeThere’s a line I saw the other day that sums this up better than any legislative talking point:“Y’all love to say abortion ends a potential life... So does refusing to fund healthcare, education, housing, and gun safety. But I don’t see y’all foaming at the mouth about that.”Let’s go ahead and carve clean drinking water right into that sentence.The same politicians who parade around the Capitol talking about “protecting life” are perfectly comfortable letting real children in Wyoming, McDowell, Boone, Logan, Mingo, Lincoln, Mercer, Fayette, and Raleigh grow up on contaminated water and crumbling pipes. They will fight like hell to subsidize private Christian schools with public dollars, to deregulate data centers that gulp down millions of gallons, and to shave a few bucks off the tax bill of someone in Morgantown or Martinsburg.But when it comes to guaranteeing that a kid in Hanover can turn on the tap without risking a rash or a stomach bug? Suddenly, it’s all “process concerns” and “we need more study.”Refusing to fund basic, life-sustaining infrastructure kills potential just as surely as any choice made in a doctor’s office. It just does it slowly, quietly, under the polite cover of committee schedules and budget spreadsheets.Where the Courage Actually LivesIf you want to see courage and moral clarity in West Virginia right now, don’t look at the signing ceremony where Patrick Morrisey pats himself on the back for aligning with the Trump tax cuts.Go to Huff Consolidated Elementary and Middle School, where Brittany Baker’s students took the bright orange creeks and black tap water the adults have normalized and turned them into a national‑award‑winning plan to protect their neighbors.Michael Jackson had it right: they don’t care about us.The kids at Huff do. And that’s the story.Thanks for reading West Virginia Policy and Campaign Finance Research! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.SourcesHuff Consolidated & Samsung Solve for Tomorrow* WVDE – official release on Huff win and Community Choice:https://wvde.us/articles/wyoming-county-students-win-100000-prize-samsung-solve-tomorrow-national-competition* WOAY – contest winners (top three + Community Choice, >$100K prize):https://woay.com/solve-for-tomorrow-contest-winners/?amp* MetroNews – Huff students rank among top three nationally:https://wvmetronews.com/2026/04/14/huff-students-rank-among-top-three-in-samsung-solve-for-tomorrow-challenge/* WVNews – “Wyoming County students win $110K in Samsung competition”:https://www.wvnews.com/news/wvnews/wyoming-county-students-win-110k-in-samsung-solve-for-tomorrow-national-competition/article_1* Samsung Solve for Tomorrow program page:https://www.samsung.com/us/solvefortomorrow/* Samsung press release with National Finalists (includes Huff description):https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-announces-10-finalist-classrooms-advancing-national-solve-for-tomorrow-stem-competition* WVDE Facebook post celebrating Huff’s national achievement and Community Choice:https://www.facebook.com/wveducation/photos/celebrating-national-achievement-join-us-in-congratulating-the-student-team-from/1354973663163497/Wyoming County water crisis and context* Mountain State Spotlight – coal toxins and Pinnacle contamination:https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2024/03/25/wyoming-county-coal-mines-cause-polluted-water/* WOAY – court orders and “official silence”:https://woay.com/official-silence-and-ignored-court-orders-wyoming-county-water-crisis/* WOAY – $209M in water project spending over 30 years:https://woay.com/state-senators-lead-first-major-meeting-on-wyoming-county-water-crisis/* WVOW – DOH advisory on mineral oil / R.D. Bailey:https://www.wvowradio.com/post/west-virginia-department-of-health-issues-update-on-wyoming-county-oil-spillCoalfield clean water legislation & politics* WV Highlands Conservancy – Coalfield Clean Water Act explainer:https://www.wvhighlands.org/article/decades-without-clean-water-how-the-coalfield-clean-water-act-aims-to-address-southern-west-virginias-water-crisis/* WV Environmental Council – coalfield communities demand action:https://wvecouncil.org/coalfield-communities-demand-action-and-funding-for-clean-water-this-legislative-session/* Appalachian Voices – clean water rally and HB 5525 (Southern WV Clean Water Fund Act):https://appvoices.org/2026/02/16/wv-clean-water-rally/* Mountain State Spotlight – “Lawmakers sideline funds for clean drinking water”:https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2026/03/04/southern-wv-water/Budget, tax cuts, and priorities* Governor’s Office – $230M tax cut announcement:https://governor.wv.gov/article/governor-morrisey-signs-230-million-worth-tax-cuts* WV Tax Division – 2026 income tax rate cut details:https://tax.wv.gov/Individuals/Pages/PersonalIncomeTaxReductionBill.aspx* Mountain State Spotlight – 2026–27 budget and tax cut impacts:https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2026/03/16/west-virginia-2026-budget/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Thanks for reading West Virginia Policy and Campaign Finance Research! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.If you spend enough time looking at West Virginia campaign finance reports, a pattern starts to emerge.Actually, scratch that.It doesn’t emerge. It smacks you in the face.What we are watching is not organic political energy. It is not some spontaneous uprising of concerned parents, taxpayers, patriots, reformers, or whatever label they are workshopping this week. It is a carefully financed, professionally packaged, donor-driven illusion of grassroots momentum.They are astroturfing the whole damn state.And yes, Sugar Maple PAC is part of that story. But it is not the story. It is one example—one particularly useful example—of how this machine works.According to recent campaign finance reporting, Sugar Maple PAC pulled in $565,000, including money tied to Koch-network education advocacy entities like Yes Every Kid. And if your first instinct is to laugh bitterly at the phrase “Yes Every Kid,” trust me, you are not alone.Do you know what I say to that?Every kid my ass.Because when these outfits say “every kid,” what they usually mean is every kid useful to a larger ideological project: privatize public systems, weaken public institutions, centralize donor influence, and wrap it all in language that sounds like it came from your church bulletin and your PTA Facebook page at the same time.Sugar Maple PAC Is a Clue, Not an ExceptionLet me be clear about one thing: Geoff Foster is not some imported operative parachuting in from D.C.He’s a local. He served in the West Virginia House of Delegates. He was a co-founder of the original Freedom Caucus in West Virginia. He knows the terrain, the players, the pressure points, and the language that activates the right faction at the right time.That matters.Because astroturf is most effective when it is fronted by people who can plausibly pass as homegrown. The trick is not to make it look foreign. The trick is to make out-of-state money move through local validators. That is how you build an operation that feels native while serving a national agenda.That is what people miss when they think astroturf only means outsiders. No—some of the best astroturf operators are locals. They know how to translate billionaire priorities into Appalachian dialect. They know how to make a donor project sound like a neighborhood concern.Sugar Maple PAC matters not just because of the money, but because it shows the model in miniature:* local faces,* national money,* ideological branding,* issue framing designed to look organic,* and enough campaign infrastructure to shape a narrative before most voters even know a fight has started.That is not grassroots.That is political sod laid down by consultants.The Con Is Bigger Than One PACIf this were just about Sugar Maple, it would be bad enough.But it isn’t.The broader problem in West Virginia is that more and more of our politics is being mediated through an ecosystem of PACs, nonprofits, advocacy shops, caucus networks, consultant pipelines, and “citizen” groups that all magically seem to care about the exact same issues, at the exact same time, with the exact same talking points.That is not coincidence. That is choreography.One group starts “educating” the public.Another starts running digital ads.Another launches a pressure campaign.Another suddenly has op-eds.Another starts scorecarding lawmakers.Another PAC begins spending in key races.And the whole thing is presented to the public as if a groundswell just rose up from the hollers and handed everybody matching messaging memos.Please.What we are really seeing is a vertically integrated influence operation.One arm softens the ground.Another arm pressures legislators.Another arm punishes dissenters.Another arm rewards loyalists.And somewhere in the background, the donors smile and call it civic engagement.The Language Is Always the TellThe giveaways are almost always linguistic.They call it:* “parent choice”* “education freedom”* “taxpayer protection”* “election integrity”* “government efficiency”* “constitutional accountability”These phrases are engineered to sound self-evidently good. Who’s against integrity? Who’s against freedom? Who’s against parents? That’s the beauty of astroturf messaging: it makes opposition sound unreasonable before the debate even starts.But once you peel the label off, the contents are often the same:* weaken public education,* privatize public goods,* shield donor influence,* discipline lawmakers who won’t play ball,* and sell national ideological experiments as if they were local necessities.In West Virginia, this works especially well because people here genuinely do care about community, family, faith, and fairness. Astroturf succeeds by hijacking authentic values and redirecting them toward donor-approved outcomes.It borrows the emotional language of the people while serving the financial interests of the network.This Is What Manufactured Consensus Looks LikeOne of the most dangerous effects of astroturf is that it creates the illusion of consensus.If enough groups repeat the same line, if enough mail pieces hit enough homes, if enough social media graphics circulate, if enough lawmakers start parroting the same phrasing, voters begin to assume there must be some broad-based movement behind it.But broad-based and well-funded are not the same thing.Loud and popular are not the same thing.Coordinated and organic are definitely not the same thing.Astroturf’s whole purpose is to collapse those distinctions.It tells the public: Don’t look behind the curtain. This is just what the people want.Except sometimes “the people” turn out to be a donor network, a consultant class, three LLCs, two nonprofits, and a PAC with a folksy name.West Virginia Has Become a Testing GroundThat is the part that should make everybody mad, regardless of party.West Virginia has become an easy place to test these models because we are small, politically lopsided, undercovered, and cheap compared to bigger states. It does not take an enormous amount of money to shape the conversation here. A few hundred thousand dollars, deployed strategically, can create the impression of a movement, especially when local media ecosystems are thin and watchdog capacity is limited.That makes us vulnerable.Not because West Virginians are gullible, but because the infrastructure of manipulation is sophisticated and relentless.And when people are already exhausted, already cynical, already trying to survive, astroturf has an easier time taking root. People do not always have the luxury of tracing every mailer, every PAC, every nonprofit, every vendor payment, every coordination-adjacent relationship.That is exactly what the machine counts on.Follow the Money, Then Follow the MessageIf you want to understand modern West Virginia politics, do not start with the slogans.Start with the money.Then follow the message.Who funded the PAC?Who are the officers?What consultants are involved?What vendors keep showing up?What issue set suddenly became urgent?Which lawmakers benefit?Which groups appear at the same time?Who gets praised?Who gets primaried?Who gets drowned in mail?That is where the real map is.Because the point of astroturf is not simply to win one race or pass one bill. The point is to create an environment where donor priorities feel inevitable, resistance feels isolated, and manufactured agendas feel locally born.That is how a state gets politically landscaped by people who never have to live with the consequences.Sugar Maple Is One Blade of Fake GrassSo yes, Sugar Maple PAC deserves scrutiny. Absolutely.But if we stop there, we miss the bigger picture.Sugar Maple is not the disease. It is one blade of fake grass in a whole artificial lawn.The real story is the networked nature of influence in West Virginia politics—the way national ideological money moves through local operatives, familiar messengers, friendly branding, and supposedly independent groups to manufacture consent and simulate public demand.That is the story.And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.The same names keep surfacing.The same funders keep investing.The same messages keep echoing.The same policy goals keep appearing in new packaging.They are not building a movement.They are building a set.And too often, West Virginians are expected to play the extras in a script we did not write.My Advice? Get Nosy.Read the reports.Search the PAC names.Track the officers.Compare the messaging.Look at who pays whom.Pay attention when a “local” issue suddenly arrives with national branding, polished graphics, and a donor-funded tailwind.Because if we do not call this what it is, then fake grassroots becomes the closest thing we have to a public square.And West Virginia deserves better than being ruled by a synthetic chorus of “concerned citizens” whose concern always seems to line up perfectly with somebody else’s checkbook.They are astroturfing the hell out of this state.The least we can do is stop pretending it’s grass.Here is a head start. Get NosyGo to: * https://apps.sos.wv.gov/business/corporations/* https://cfrs.wvsos.gov/public/gettoknow?tab=candidate&subTab=candidateProfile* FEC.gov* https://forms.irs.gov/app/pod/basicSearch/search* https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/search-for-tax-exempt-organizationsMore on Sugar Maple PAC This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Dear kids (and yes, I’m looking at my own younger siblings first),I love our politics talks. I love them because you’re honest in a way most grown-ups aren’t allowed to be in public without someone calling them “negative.” And your most consistent point is also your most devastating one: You’re tired of the same politicians running the show.Not “tired” like bored. Tired like what is the point of learning all these names if the ending never changes? Tired like why does West Virginia’s future always come packaged inside somebody else’s past?Lately that feeling has an extra edge, because the rumor mill is doing what rumor mills do: floating the idea that Jim Justice might want back in the Governor’s Mansion again.Whether that rumor turns into reality or not, the real issue is bigger than one man. It’s the pattern. The loop. The political recycling bin where the same familiar brands get re-labeled and re-sold until voters stop believing “new” is even possible.And I don’t blame you for being disgusted by it.The Part Adults Keep Skipping: You Don’t Lack Passion—You Lack CapitalHere’s the sentence nobody in Charleston wants to say out loud because it makes the whole system sound as ugly as it is: Young West Virginians don’t lack ideas. You lack political capital.Political capital isn’t “vibes.” It’s not a good TikTok. It’s not being right on the internet.Political capital is:* the donor list someone hands you because they’ve been in the game for 25 years* the consultant who answers your call because you’re “viable”* the county power-broker who quietly tells people, “This one’s ours”* the ability to misspeak and survive it because your last name already has a firewallThe old guard has political capital stacked like cordwood. A newcomer has to build it in public, while being told they’re “not ready,” “too emotional,” “too young,” or my personal favorite: “should wait their turn.”Waiting your turn is how you get trapped in the loop.Why This Hits Young People Harder in West VirginiaIn West Virginia, young people have grown up inside a culture where voting can feel symbolic at best and pointless at worst. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported young voters often feel disconnected, shut out, or unsure they know enough to participate. That’s not a personal flaw. That’s what it looks like when a system doesn’t invest in your power and then blames you for not having any.And when a state has low participation and a shrinking pool of engaged young people, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: less youth turnout → fewer politicians court youth issues → more youth disillusionment → even less turnout.That’s the trap.“Same Politicians” Is Not a Coincidence. It’s a Business ModelWhen an established figure decides to run, they don’t start at zero. They flip a switch. The fundraising networks wake up. The friendly groups appear. The mailers land. The “concerned citizens” pages suddenly have graphic designers. The endorsements line up like dominoes.That’s political capital behaving like gravity: it pulls everything toward what already exists.If you’re 22, working shifts, and trying to keep your head above water, you’re not losing because your ideas are bad. You’re losing because the other side starts the race five miles ahead with a car and a full tank.So What Do We Do—Besides Scream into the Void?I’m not going to end this with “just vote,” like voting is a personality trait instead of a tool.Voting matters. But political capital is built in the boring places long before Election Day:* Show up locally, consistently.City council. County commission. School board. Party executive committees. Candidate forums. The rooms where five people decide something that affects 50,000.* Build micro-networks, not savior fantasies.Ten friends who each bring ten more is power. A group chat that turns into rides to the polls is power. A standing plan to attend meetings together is power.* Follow the money. Say the quiet part out loud.If you want a role in politics but you don’t want to become a politician (yet), become the person who can read a campaign finance report and explain it in plain English. Become the person who notices when a “grassroots” effort is actually astroturf. Political capital grows when truth travels faster than propaganda.* Stop waiting for permission to be qualified.A lot of young people don’t feel “well-qualified” to participate. But here’s the secret: half the people currently making decisions aren’t qualified either—they’re just connected.To the Recycled-Politics Crowd, Including Big Jim (If the Shoe Fits)West Virginia is not a toy you pick back up when Washington is inconvenient. West Virginia is not a consolation prize. It’s home to people trying to build actual lives.If you want our votes—earn them with specifics, accountability, and receipts. Don’t assume we’ll clap because we recognize your name.To My Younger Siblings—and Everyone Their AgeYour exhaustion is not laziness. It’s awareness.But if you let exhaustion turn into disappearance, the loop wins. The recycling bin stays full. And the same people keep trading seats like musical chairs.Political capital isn’t inherited by you. Fine. Then we build it.Not someday. Now.With love and a stubborn Appalachian refusal to be written off,Carrie ClendeningThanks for reading West Virginia Policy and Campaign Finance Research! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.References* Justice announces plan to complete term as W.Va. governor before filling U.S. Senate seat. WCHS-TV. 2024-12-25. https://wchstv.com/news/local/justice-announces-plans-to-complete-term-as-wva-governor-before-filling-us-senate-seat* Credible political sources are floating that Big Jim may run for WV Governor in 2028. Facebook (Mineral County News). 2026-03-30. https://www.facebook.com/groups/mineralcountynews/posts/10173982730670587/* Voting: The Kids Are Not All Right. West Virginia Public Broadcasting. 2024-06-03. https://wvpublic.org/voting-the-kids-are-not-all-right/* West Virginia has very low voter turnout. NBC News. 2024-08-31. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/west-virginia-low-voter-turnout-rcna167866* Youth Voter Turnout: Annenberg Expert Unpacks the Issue. University of Pennsylvania Annenberg. 2025-11-16. https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/youth-voter-turnout-annenberg-expert-unpacks-issue* Jim Justice Wins West Virginia Senate Race. People. 2024-11-05. https://people.com/west-virginia-senate-seat-flips-republican-jim-justice-replacing-joe-manchin-8719231* Fed up and stepping in: Five first-time candidates take on state politics. Mountain State Spotlight. 2025-06-23. https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2025/06/23/first-time-candidates-2026/* Young, Gifted, and Black in Policy. Black By God. 2025-04-13. https://blackbygod.org/articles/uncategorized/young-gifted-and-black-in-policy-something-to-celebrate-in-west-virginia/* West Virginia has one of the country’s worst voter turnout records. Yahoo News. 2024-08-31. https://www.yahoo.com/news/west-virginia-one-countrys-worst-120000507.html* WV Democratic Party Announces Historic Slate of Candidates for 2026. West Virginia Democrats. 2025-11-25. https://www.wvdemocrats.com/news/historic-slate-2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Dear 19-year-old Carrie,I’m writing to you from twenty-two years in the future, from a life you can’t yet imagine. You’re sitting in Dr. DiClerico’s American Presidency class right now, probably taking notes while Katherine Smith mutters something about Scooby-Doo being a better presidential candidate than George W. Bush. You’re serious about politics in a way that makes you feel grown-up and purposeful. You believe in things. You’re about to drive all the way from Morgantown back to Fayetteville to cast a vote for George W. Bush, and you feel like that drive means something.I need to tell you: it doesn’t. Not in the way you think.But before you close this letter, hear me out.The drive itself isn’t the problem. The problem is what you’re carrying with you when you make it. You’re carrying your father’s politics like a birthright, likesomething that came with your name. You haven’t really examined it yet—you’ve inherited it, the way you might inherit your mother’s eyes or your father’s stubbornness. That feels like conviction, but it’s not. It’s momentum. And you won’t know the difference until life cracks you open.That crack is coming. It’s going to be messy and painful and nothing like what you expect.You’re going to become a single mom. You’re going to have two abortions. And in those moments—especially in those moments—you’re going to remember sitting in that classroom while politicians and protesters fought over stem cells like they were abstract ideas, like they were theirs to fight over. You’ll realize that the people who talk about “babies” the loudest have never had to make the actual decision about what a pregnancy means when you’re alone, terrified, and broke. You’ll understand that the political rhetoric you inherited doesn’t map onto your real life. It can’t. Because your real life is too specific, too painful, too yours to fit neatly into a party platform.That’s when everything changes.You’ll leave the Republican Party, not because you’ll suddenly become a Democrat, but because you’ll stop believing that any party has your actual interests in mind. You’ll register with no party affiliation for a while because your job demands it. Then in 2022, West Virginia will pass an abortion ban, and you’ll be so angry and heartbroken that you’ll join the Democrats out of pure fury. And then you’ll watch the Democratic Party fumble and fail and disappoint you in ways that feel almost personal, and you’ll leave them too.Here’s what I need you to know: that journey isn’t a failure. It’s an education.By the time you’re in your forties, you won’t hate politics because you’re cynical. You’ll hate all the major political parties because you’ve actually looked at how they work. You’ll spend years following money through campaign finance databases. You’ll map networks of dark money and PACs and shell organizations. You’ll see how elections become vendors’ profit centers, how investment firms get rich off campaign funds, how the machinery is designed to serve itself, not people. You’ll learn that “everyone’s full of s**t” isn’t pessimism—it’s pattern recognition.And you’ll also learn something harder: that disillusionment, real disillusionment, is the only honest starting point for actual engagement.So here’s my advice to you, the advice I wish someone had given me at nineteen: Be your own person. Trust your gut more than you trust a party label. Don’t drive across the state because you think you’re supposed to. Drive across the state because you’ve decided that’s what matters. Look deeply into who a candidate actually is—not what they promise, but who they are when nobody’s watching, where their money comes from, who they owe favors to. Vote for the person, not the party. And pay attention to local elections. That’s where power actually lives. That’s where your vote actually matters.The Electoral College will make your 2004 drive feel like a waste of time. The twenty-year war will make you regret voting for Bush. But the real regret—the one that will sit with you—is that you didn’t yet know how to think for yourself. You’ll spend two decades learning. You’ll lose your innocence. You’ll gain your independence. It’s a fair trade, though you won’t think so at the time.One more thing: your mother never registered to vote. Your father handed you his politics like a gift. You’re going to spend your adult life finding a third way—not opting out like your mother, but not blindly accepting inherited beliefs like you almost did. You’re going to become someone who pays fierce attention to how power works, who won’t take anyone’s word for it, who trusts her own judgment.That person is worth becoming.Drive home if you want to. Vote if you want to. But do it because you’ve decided to, not because you think you’re supposed to. That’s the whole lesson, really. Everything else flows from there.You’ve got this.Love,40-year-old Carrie This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

The legal distinction between primary and general elections has a robust constitutional basis: political parties possess First Amendment freedom of association rights to control their nomination processes, while general elections carry universal voting protections under the 14th and 15th Amendments. This two-tier framework—affirmed by the Supreme Court across multiple landmark decisions—means that primaries serve as party exercises in self-governance, while general elections function as constitutionally protected public mechanisms for democratic participation open to all citizens. For West Virginia civic engagement, this means the state’s closed primary system (where the Republican Party now restricts participation to registered members) operates within constitutional bounds, while all registered voters retain their fundamental right to participate in November’s general elections regardless of party affiliation.The Supreme Court’s Clear Protection For Party Nomination RightsThe constitutional foundation for party control over primaries rests on First Amendment freedom of association. In California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000), the Supreme Court struck down California’s blanket primary in a 7-2 decision, holding that forcing parties to include non-members in their nomination process imposed the heaviest possible burden on associational freedom.Justice Scalia’s majority opinion established that “in no area is the political association’s right to exclude more important than in the process of selecting its nominee.” The Court reasoned that candidate selection “often determines the party’s positions on significant public policy issues, and it is the nominee who is the party’s ambassador charged with winning the general electorate over to its views.” The First Amendment, Scalia wrote, “reserves a special place, and accords a special protection, for that process.” (Full opinion text via Cornell Law Institute)The decision built upon Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut(1986), where the Court held that states cannot prevent parties from opening their primaries to independents when parties wish to do so. Justice Marshall’s majority opinion declared that “a State, or a court, may not constitutionally substitute its own judgment for that of the Party” regarding membership and nomination decisions. The party’s determination of “the boundaries of its own association, and of the structure which best allows it to pursue its political goals, is protected by the Constitution.” (Full opinion text via Cornell Law Institute)Additional cases reinforced this doctrine:* Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee (1989)unanimously struck down California laws prohibiting party endorsements in primaries and regulating party governance structures (Oyez case summary)* Democratic Party v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette (1981) held states cannot compel national parties to seat delegates chosen through processes violating party rules (Full opinion text via Cornell Law Institute)* Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (1997) established that not all election regulations impose severe burdens—fusion bans were upheld as minimally intrusive (Oyez case summary)The consistent principle: parties function as private associations exercising constitutional rights when selecting their nominees.Constitutional Protections Make General Elections Fundamentally DifferentWhile parties control nominations, the Constitution establishes general elections as the mechanism through which citizens exercise sovereignty. The 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause treats voting as a fundamental right subject to heightened constitutional protection.Reynolds v. Sims (1964) established the foundational principle: “Undeniably the Constitution of the United States protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote, in state as well as in federal elections.” Chief Justice Warren declared that “the right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.” (Oyez case summary)Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) reinforced this by striking down poll taxes: “The right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.” The Court held that once the franchise is granted, “lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause.” (Oyez case summary)The 15th Amendment and Voting Rights Act of 1965 provide additional structural protections. Section 2 of the VRA prohibits any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure” that results in denial or abridgment of voting rights—applying to “political processes leading to nomination or election.”Critically, Smith v. Allwright (1944) established that constitutional protections extend to primaries when they become integral to the electoral process. The Court held that “the United States is a constitutional democracy” whose “organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any state.” This protection, however, addresses racial discrimination—not party membership requirements in nomination processes. (Oyez case summary)Legal Scholarship Articulates A Two-Tier Constitutional SystemConstitutional scholars have developed a comprehensive framework distinguishing primaries from general elections based on differing constitutional foundations.The “party function” versus “public function” dichotomy emerged from the white primary cases. In Terry v. Adams (1953), the Court applied a “functional standard” recognizing that when private organizations effectively control electoral outcomes, their actions become state action subject to constitutional scrutiny. Legal scholar Ronald Rotunda explained this as recognizing that “all integral steps in an election for public office are public functions and therefore state action subject to some judicial scrutiny.” (Encyclopedia.com: Political Parties in Constitutional Law; see also Rotunda, “Constitutional and Statutory Restrictions on Political Parties in the Wake of Cousins v. Wigoda,” 53 Tex. L. Rev. 935 (1975))The Jones decision reconciled these principles by clarifying that white primary cases “held not that party affairs are public affairs, free of First Amendment protections... but only that, when a State prescribes an election process that gives a special role to political parties, the parties’ discriminatory action becomes state action under the Fifteenth Amendment.” (California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567 (2000))Academic literature, including analyses in the Michigan Law Review, Houston Law Review, and Columbia Law Review, identifies this constitutional structure:TIER 1 (Primaries): Protected by First Amendment freedom of association. Parties may determine membership requirements, choose nomination procedures, and exclude non-members—subject to Fifteenth Amendment prohibitions on racial discrimination.TIER 2 (General Elections): Protected as public functions under the 14th and 15th Amendments. States must ensure universal suffrage, prohibit discrimination, and provide equal access to all eligible voters.The National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan organization chartered by Congress, summarizes: parties were historically considered “private organizations” that could “determine for themselves eligibility and membership requirements,” while general elections must be open because “primaries are an integral component of general elections and the democratic process.”West Virginia’s Closed Primary System Operates Within This FrameworkWest Virginia uses a party-controlled primary system codified in W. Va. Code § 3-2-31(a), which permits “political parties, through the official action of their state executive committees, to determine whether unaffiliated voters or voters of other parties shall be allowed to vote that party’s primary election ballot.” (Ballotpedia: Primary Elections in West Virginia)Current party rules (effective 2026):* Republican Party: Closed—only registered Republicans may participate* Democratic Party: Semi-closed—allows unaffiliated voters* Libertarian, Mountain, and Constitutional Parties: Open to unaffiliated votersThis represents constitutional exercise of party associational rights under the Jones and Tashjian framework. The key voter deadline is 21 days before the primary for registration or party affiliation changes (W. Va. Code § 3-2-6).Article IV of the West Virginia Constitution governs elections, with Section 1 establishing that “citizens of the state shall be entitled to vote at all elections held within the counties in which they respectively reside.” (Full text of the West Virginia Constitution) No West Virginia state or federal court has successfully challenged the constitutionality of party-controlled primary participation rules.Legislative activity reflects ongoing debate. SB 564 (2025) would make all primaries closed statewide by removing party discretion over unaffiliated voter participation. (LegiScan: WV SB564) The Republican Executive Committee’s January 2026 decision to close primaries affected approximately 300,000+ unaffiliated West Virginia voters who previously participated in Republican primaries.The Founders Designed Elections Without Any Role For PartiesThe Constitution contains no provision for political parties—a deliberate design choice. The Founders considered partisan factions dangerous to republican government.Article I, Section 2 established what the National Constitution Centercalls “revolutionary” for 1787: direct election of House members “by the People of the several States.” James Madison argued this was “essential to every plan of free government” because without it, “the people would be lost sight of altogether.” (National Constitution Center: Interpretation of Article I, Section 2)Federalist No. 52 declared that “frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.” (Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Federalist No. 52)Federalist No. 57 specified that electors should be “the great body of the people of the United States”—”not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than the ignorant.” (Library of Congress: Federalist Papers Text)The Founders actively warned against parties:* George Washington (Farewell Address, 1796): Political parties “serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party” (Mount Vernon Digital Library)* John Adams (Letter to Jonathan Jackson, 1780): “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties... This is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution” (Founders Online, National Archives)* Alexander Hamilton: Called parties “the most fatal disease” of popular governments (HISTORY)Primary elections did not exist until over 100 years after ratification. They emerged during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) as reforms to combat party boss corruption.Wisconsin implemented the first statewide primary system in 1906. (Wisconsin Historical Society; EBSCO Research Starters) The purpose was to “steer control away from political machines” and “return power to the voters in the nomination process”—but within party structures, not as replacements for general elections.AA Constitutionally Grounded Civic MessageThe phrase “May is for the Parties, November is for the People” accurately captures a constitutional distinction affirmed by Supreme Court jurisprudence across seven decades. Political parties possess robust First Amendment rights to define their membership and control their nomination processes—rights that West Virginia’s statutory framework respects by allowing each party to determine primary participation rules.General elections, by constitutional design and judicial interpretation, serve as the protected mechanism through which all citizens exercise democratic sovereignty. The 14th and 15th Amendments, reinforced by the Voting Rights Act, ensure that no voter can be excluded from the November ballot based on party affiliation.For West Virginia’s approximately 300,000 unaffiliated voters, this framework carries practical implications: while the Republican Party’s 2026 decision to close its primaries is constitutionally permissible, every registered voter retains their fundamental right to participate in general elections where the ultimate choice of representatives occurs. The civic engagement message—educating voters about registration deadlines, party affiliation requirements, and the distinction between party nomination processes and constitutionally protected general elections—rests on solid legal ground.U.S. Supreme Court Cases* California Democratic Party v. Jones* Tashjian v. Republican Party of CT* Eu v. SF County Democratic Central Committee * Democratic Party v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follett* Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party * Reynolds v. Sims * Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections * Smith v. Allwright* Terry v. Adams West Virginia Law * W. Va. Code § 3-2-31(a)* W. Va. Code § 3-2-6 * SB 564 (2025) * Article IV, WV Constitution Founders and Historical Sources* Washington’s Farewell Address* John Adams letter — Founders Online, National Archives* Federalist No. 52* Federalist No. 57Thanks for reading West Virginia Policy and Campaign Finance Research! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

On March 19, 2026, David McIntosh — president of the Club for Growth — signed a Statement of Organization registering the “School Freedom Fund” as a West Virginia Independent Expenditure/Electioneering Communications Committee. The WV Secretary of State accepted the registration on March 23, 2026, assigning it CFRS registrant ID 1040003960.The filing is clinical in that way bureaucratic weapons always are. Committee Chairperson: David McIntosh. Treasurer: Adam Rozansky — who has served as Club for Growth’s CFO since 2007. Address: 2001 L Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036, which is Club for Growth’s national headquarters. Contact email: [email protected]. Committee type: Independent Expenditure / Electioneering Communications Committee. Scope: Statewide, Legislative or Multi-County Districts.Read that scope line again: Legislative or Multi-County Districts. This isn’t a committee organized to weigh in on a governor’s race or a statewide ballot initiative. It is specifically structured to intervene in the races of individual state legislators. House delegates. State senators. The people who vote on line items in the Hope Scholarship budget.No financial activity has been filed on CFRS yet. That’s the point. They registered the weapon. They haven’t fired it. Yet.And what a weapon it is.$42.5 MILLION AND COUNTING: THE SCHOOL FREEDOM FUND’S FEDERAL WAR CHESTSchool Freedom Fund isn’t new. It’s been operating at the federal level as Super PAC C00794396 for three election cycles now, methodically building infrastructure and spending power. The numbers are staggering:2021-2022 cycle: $17.8 million raised, $17.6 million spent, $10.5 million in independent expenditures.2023-2024 cycle: $14.7 million raised, $14.8 million spent.Current cycle: $10 million raised, $483,153 spent, $399,268 in independent expenditures — and we are barely into the cycle.Lifetime total: approximately $42.5 million raised across three cycles. For context, the entire annual budget of some West Virginia counties is less than what this single PAC has raised in a slow quarter. The combined campaign spending of every WV state legislative race in a typical cycle doesn’t approach what School Freedom Fund can deploy from its current account balance alone.ONE MAN’S MONEY: THE JEFF YASS PIPELINEWhere does the money come from? Overwhelmingly, from one man: Jeff Yass, the billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, operating out of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania — roughly 350 miles and an entire world away from a one-room schoolhouse in Pocahontas County.In the 2021-2022 cycle, Yass gave $15,000,000 to School Freedom Fund. That was 91.7 percent of the PAC’s total receipts. The remaining donors were essentially rounding errors: Virginia James (Retired) at $1,007,210, Thomas Klingenstein (Cohen Klingenstein LLC) at $250,000, Brett Hendrickson (Nokomis Capital) at $50,000, and Roger Hertog (Hertog Foundation) at $25,000.In the 2023-2024 cycle, Yass contributed another $11,000,000 — 76.2 percent of total receipts. Richard Uihlein (of Uline shipping supplies) added $2,000,000. Bernard Marcus (Home Depot co-founder) kicked in $1,000,000. Smaller amounts from others filled in the edges.Do the math: Jeff Yass has personally pumped at least $26 million into this single entity. School Freedom Fund is not a “PAC” in any meaningful sense of the term. It is not a coalition. It is not a grassroots movement. It is, for all practical purposes, one billionaire’s personal political weapon aimed at state legislators who displease him on school vouchers. The other donors provide a thin veneer of pluralism. The checkbook belongs to Yass.THE PROVEN PLAYBOOK: PRIMARY THEM INTO OBLIVIONThis is not theoretical. This is not speculative. Club for Growth has already told you, on the record, exactly what they intend to do with this money. They have demonstrated it in state after state. And they are proud of the results.David McIntosh, in a statement reported by WPLN/AP: “Make no mistake — if you call yourself a Republican and oppose school freedom, you should expect to lose your next primary.”That’s not a campaign slogan. That’s a threat, delivered with the specificity of a man who has the budget to back it up. And they have the receipts to prove they mean every word.Texas, 2024: Club for Growth spent $8.8 million targeting 14 Republican primary races, and claimed credit for removing 10 GOP incumbents who opposed vouchers. Ten sitting Republican legislators. Gone. Replaced. In a single election cycle. Their crime was not corruption or scandal — it was voting the wrong way on school choice.Tennessee, 2024: School Freedom Fund invested $3.6 million across five state legislative races and won four seats. An 80 percent win rate when you’re spending roughly $720,000 per race in state-level contests that typically cost a fraction of that.West Virginia, 2022 (federal): School Freedom Fund spent $125,455 AGAINST WV Rep. David McKinley and $125,455 FOR Alex Mooney in the WV-02 Republican primary. In that cycle, 59.8 percent of the PAC’s total spending was against Republican candidates. Read that number again: the majority of this supposedly Republican PAC’s money was spent destroying Republicans. They’ve already operated in West Virginia. They already know the terrain.The pattern is unmistakable. Identify a Republican who deviates from the school choice orthodoxy. Bury them in attack ads they never saw coming, funded at levels that dwarf anything their opponent could raise organically. Replace them with someone more compliant. Move on to the next state.West Virginia is next.THE BLACK BEAR IN THE ROOM: MORRISEY’S ATTACK PAC IS ALREADY LOADEDIf School Freedom Fund is the ideological enforcer, Black Bear PAC (FEC: C00708644) is the loyalty enforcer. It served as the primary independent expenditure vehicle for Governor Patrick Morrisey’s 2024 campaign — and Club for Growth built it.Club for Growth Action was the single largest contributor to Black Bear PAC — $2.1 million in a single reporting period alone, according to WV MetroNews. Together, Club for Growth Action and Black Bear PAC “combined to invest $13.1 million” in Morrisey’s 2024 gubernatorial primary, per Club for Growth’s own press release. In the 2024 cycle overall, Black Bear PAC raised $10.5 million and spent $11.9 million.The gubernatorial race is over. Morrisey won. So what’s Black Bear doing now? It currently holds $2,058,796 cash on hand, doing essentially nothing except paying operational overhead. But here’s the thing — Black Bear PAC is also registered on CFRS as an Active Independent Expenditure Committee (registrant ID 1040002474, registered 04/10/2024), and it filed 47 Independent Expenditure Reports in May 2024 alone. The infrastructure is warmed up. The registration is active. The money is sitting.Two PACs. One to enforce ideological compliance on school choice. Another to enforce loyalty to the governor. Both pre-registered in West Virginia. Both funded. Both waiting.FOLLOW THE VENDORS: $66.7 MILLION THROUGH ONE AD-BUYING FIRMIf you want to understand how these nominally independent entities operate as a single coordinated machine, stop following the money and start following the vendors. That’s where the architecture reveals itself.Medium Buying, a media purchasing firm in Columbus, Ohio, received $77.7 million in payments during the 2024 cycle. Here are their top four clients by spend:1. Win It Back PAC (Club for Growth’s c4 dark money arm): $29.7 million2. Club for Growth Action: $19.65 million3. School Freedom Fund: $10.09 million4. Black Bear PAC: $7.24 millionRead that list again. Three of Medium Buying’s top four clients are Club for Growth entities. Black Bear PAC is the fourth. That is $66.7 million flowing through one ad-buying firm from what is functionally one operation. When School Freedom Fund and Black Bear PAC run attack ads against a WV delegate next cycle, there is a very real possibility that the same person at the same desk in Columbus, Ohio, is buying the airtime for both of them.The shared infrastructure extends deeper. SW2 Political — run by Scott Will, former Executive Director of the Republican Attorneys General Association from 2015 to 2019 — is Black Bear PAC’s strategy firm, receiving $128,959 in 2024 and continuing at $5,000 per month. Will serves as Black Bear PAC’s “Senior Advisor” and public spokesperson. Bulldog Compliance, located at 138 Conant Street, Suite 401, Beverly, MA 01915, serves as the compliance hub for Black Bear PAC, Team Morrisey JFC, and other entities in the network. And Adam Rozansky — the treasurer of School Freedom Fund — is simultaneously treasurer of Club for Growth PAC, Club for Growth Action, and the Club for Growth Foundation. One man signs the checks for all of them.Perhaps most telling of all: Black Bear PAC paid $39,000 back to Club for Growth Action in 2024. The money doesn’t just flow one direction. It circulates. This is a closed loop with shared vendors, shared officers, shared compliance, and bidirectional cash transfers — operating under the legal fiction of independence.THE TWO-PRONGED OPERATION: A PINCER MOVEMENT ON YOUR STATE LEGISLATUREHere’s the structure, stripped to its bones:Prong One — School Freedom Fund: The school choice ideological enforcer. Funded almost entirely by Jeff Yass’s personal fortune. Mission: destroy any Republican who votes to restrict, cap, or add accountability to school voucher programs. Freshly registered in West Virginia with a statewide, legislative-district scope. Ten million dollars loaded at the federal level. Zero financial activity filed in WV — meaning the money hasn’t moved yet, but the vehicle is parked and running.Prong Two — Black Bear PAC: The Morrisey loyalty enforcer. Funded through Team Morrisey JFC and WV industry money, with Club for Growth Action as its anchor investor at $2.1 million. Mission: punish anyone who crosses the governor. Two million dollars sitting in reserve. Already registered on CFRS as an active independent expenditure committee. Already filed 47 independent expenditure reports. Already has vendor relationships with Medium Buying for ad placement.The result: a pincer operation where any West Virginia Republican legislator who dares question the Hope Scholarship faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in primary attack ads from two directions simultaneously. Both funded by out-of-state money. Both routed through the same media buying firm. Both coordinated through overlapping staff and vendors — but technically, legally, operating as “independent” committees.A typical West Virginia state legislative race costs $50,000 to $150,000 total. School Freedom Fund has $10 million. Black Bear PAC has $2 million. That’s not a campaign. That’s carpet bombing a lemonade stand.WHY NOW: THE HOPE SCHOLARSHIP AND THE LEGISLATORS WHO DARED ASK QUESTIONSThe timing is not subtle. West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship ESA program is expanding to universal eligibility for the 2026-2027 school year at an estimated cost of $230 million. Governor Morrisey highlighted $276 million in Hope Scholarship funding as a signature accomplishment of the 2026 legislative session.But some legislators had the audacity to do their jobs. The House Finance Committee introduced a bill in February 2026 proposing to cap the scholarship amount, narrow allowable expenses, and add standardized testing requirements — the sort of basic fiscal guardrails you’d expect around a $230 million public expenditure. Nothing radical. Basic oversight. The kind of due diligence taxpayers assume their representatives are performing.The reaction from the school choice lobby was immediate and telling. Americans for Prosperity-WV called the bill an attempt to “kick families out of school choice.” The Cardinal Institute expressed “serious concern.” The language was coordinated. The message was clear: any attempt at oversight is an attack on freedom.Now look at the Club for Growth Foundation’s state economic scorecard for West Virginia. House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss scored 20 out of 100. House Education Chairman Joe Statler scored 16 out of 100. These are the legislators who introduced the Hope Scholarship restrictions. In Club for Growth’s grading system, scores like that aren’t just failing grades — they’re targeting coordinates.The chronology is damning. On March 19, 2026 — the exact same day David McIntosh signed the West Virginia filing — Club for Growth released a national report on “the importance of educational freedom”. That is not a coincidence. That is a coordinated campaign launch, with the WV registration as its opening move.Even WV Senate School Choice Committee Chair Patricia Rucker seemed to be getting ahead of the narrative, publishing an op-ed arguing that “there is no evidence that a Republican lawmaker has lost a primary election because of a pro-school-choice vote”. Senator Rucker: with all due respect, ask the ten former Texas incumbents who cleaned out their desks last year whether they agree with that assessment.WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS FOR WEST VIRGINIALet me be precise about what’s happening, because the sanitized version — “national groups engage in state politics” — misses the point so completely it might as well be misinformation.A Pennsylvania billionaire who has never cast a vote in West Virginia is about to spend more money attacking individual WV state legislators than those legislators will raise in their entire political careers combined. The vehicle is a Super PAC that has already ended the political careers of at least ten Republican incumbents in other states this cycle alone. The operational infrastructure — the media buyers, the compliance firms, the strategy consultants — is already in place, already contracted, and already paid for. The targeting criteria have been published on a public scorecard, with specific numerical scores assigned to each legislator. The threat has been stated on the record, by name, by the man who personally signed the West Virginia registration form.This is not democracy. This is not even particularly creative oligarchy. This is one man, with one PAC, with one demand — expand vouchers, no questions asked, no oversight tolerated, no fiscal guardrails permitted — backed by enough money to make any state legislator’s political survival contingent on total obedience to an agenda set 350 miles away.And if the ideological enforcement doesn’t work, there’s a loyalty enforcement backup parked right behind it, sharing the same ad-buying firm, the same compliance shop, and a direct financial pipeline back to the governor’s own political operation.SUNLIGHT, RECEIPTS, AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT ITEvery fact in this article comes from a public filing. Every dollar is documented. Every connection is traceable through FEC reports, CFRS records, and OpenSecrets data. That’s not because I’m a particularly talented researcher — it’s because the system, for all its fractures and loopholes, still requires disclosure. For now.That disclosure is the only thing standing between West Virginia voters and total information asymmetry. These PACs will spend millions telling voters that Delegate So-and-So is “against school choice” or “failing our children.” They will not mention Jeff Yass. They will not mention that the money originated in Pennsylvania. They will not mention that the same media firm buying the attack ads also buys ads for the governor’s loyalty enforcement operation. The voter sees a concerned-looking ad about local schools. The voter does not see the $26 million billionaire pulling the strings.What you can do:1. Share this article. Every voter in a competitive WV legislative district should know that School Freedom Fund and Black Bear PAC exist, who funds them, what they’ve done in Texas and Tennessee, and what they’re about to do here.2. Watch the CFRS filings. When School Freedom Fund files its first financial report with the WV Secretary of State, you will be able to see exactly how much money has moved into the state. Bookmark that page. Check it every month. Screenshot it when it updates, because filings have a way of being amended after the fact.3. Ask your legislators directly: “Are you aware that a $15 million Super PAC funded almost entirely by a Pennsylvania billionaire has registered to run independent expenditures in West Virginia legislative races? How does that affect your willingness to vote on Hope Scholarship oversight?” Make them answer on the record.4. Demand transparency in political advertising. West Virginia has no law requiring PAC-funded political ads to disclose their top donors on-screen. Fourteen states already require this. West Virginia should be the fifteenth. Call your legislator and ask them to sponsor stand-by-your-ad legislation — then watch whether School Freedom Fund targets them for it.5. Follow the vendors, not just the money. Medium Buying’s client list tells you more about the structure of this operation than any single FEC filing. SW2 Political. Bulldog Compliance. These are the operational sinews of the network. When attack ads start running, FOIA the media buys. Check the vendor payments. Trace the compliance filings. The paper trail is there if you bother to look.The filing on March 19, 2026, was a declaration of war. Club for Growth is telling West Virginia’s Republican legislators — in writing, with a signature, filed with the Secretary of State — that they will vote the way Jeff Yass wants on school vouchers, or their political careers will be systematically destroyed using the same playbook that took out ten Texas incumbents last year.They have the money. They have the infrastructure. They have the track record. They have the vendor contracts. They have the targeting data. They have the explicit, on-the-record threat from their own president.The only thing they don’t have is the ability to operate in the dark — if you refuse to let them.Keep the lights on.Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

On March 19, 2026, David McIntosh — president of the Club for Growth — signed a Statement of Organization registering the “School Freedom Fund” as a West Virginia Independent Expenditure/Electioneering Communications Committee. The WV Secretary of State accepted the registration on March 23, 2026, assigning it CFRS registrant ID 1040003960.The filing is clinical in that way bureaucratic weapons always are. Committee Chairperson: David McIntosh. Treasurer: Adam Rozansky — who has served as Club for Growth’s CFO since 2007. Address: 2001 L Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036, which is Club for Growth’s national headquarters. Contact email: [email protected]. Committee type: Independent Expenditure / Electioneering Communications Committee. Scope: Statewide, Legislative or Multi-County Districts.Read that scope line again: Legislative or Multi-County Districts. This isn’t a committee organized to weigh in on a governor’s race or a statewide ballot initiative. It is specifically structured to intervene in the races of individual state legislators. House delegates. State senators. The people who vote on line items in the Hope Scholarship budget.No financial activity has been filed on CFRS yet. That’s the point. They registered the weapon. They haven’t fired it. Yet.And what a weapon it is.$42.5 MILLION AND COUNTING: THE SCHOOL FREEDOM FUND’S FEDERAL WAR CHESTSchool Freedom Fund isn’t new. It’s been operating at the federal level as Super PAC C00794396 for three election cycles now, methodically building infrastructure and spending power. The numbers are staggering:2021-2022 cycle: $17.8 million raised, $17.6 million spent, $10.5 million in independent expenditures.2023-2024 cycle: $14.7 million raised, $14.8 million spent.Current cycle: $10 million raised, $483,153 spent, $399,268 in independent expenditures — and we are barely into the cycle.Lifetime total: approximately $42.5 million raised across three cycles. For context, the entire annual budget of some West Virginia counties is less than what this single PAC has raised in a slow quarter. The combined campaign spending of every WV state legislative race in a typical cycle doesn’t approach what School Freedom Fund can deploy from its current account balance alone.ONE MAN’S MONEY: THE JEFF YASS PIPELINEWhere does the money come from? Overwhelmingly, from one man: Jeff Yass, the billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, operating out of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania — roughly 350 miles and an entire world away from a one-room schoolhouse in Pocahontas County.In the 2021-2022 cycle, Yass gave $15,000,000 to School Freedom Fund. That was 91.7 percent of the PAC’s total receipts. The remaining donors were essentially rounding errors: Virginia James (Retired) at $1,007,210, Thomas Klingenstein (Cohen Klingenstein LLC) at $250,000, Brett Hendrickson (Nokomis Capital) at $50,000, and Roger Hertog (Hertog Foundation) at $25,000.In the 2023-2024 cycle, Yass contributed another $11,000,000 — 76.2 percent of total receipts. Richard Uihlein (of Uline shipping supplies) added $2,000,000. Bernard Marcus (Home Depot co-founder) kicked in $1,000,000. Smaller amounts from others filled in the edges.Do the math: Jeff Yass has personally pumped at least $26 million into this single entity. School Freedom Fund is not a “PAC” in any meaningful sense of the term. It is not a coalition. It is not a grassroots movement. It is, for all practical purposes, one billionaire’s personal political weapon aimed at state legislators who displease him on school vouchers. The other donors provide a thin veneer of pluralism. The checkbook belongs to Yass.THE PROVEN PLAYBOOK: PRIMARY THEM INTO OBLIVIONThis is not theoretical. This is not speculative. Club for Growth has already told you, on the record, exactly what they intend to do with this money. They have demonstrated it in state after state. And they are proud of the results.David McIntosh, in a statement reported by WPLN/AP: “Make no mistake — if you call yourself a Republican and oppose school freedom, you should expect to lose your next primary.”That’s not a campaign slogan. That’s a threat, delivered with the specificity of a man who has the budget to back it up. And they have the receipts to prove they mean every word.Texas, 2024: Club for Growth spent $8.8 million targeting 14 Republican primary races, and claimed credit for removing 10 GOP incumbents who opposed vouchers. Ten sitting Republican legislators. Gone. Replaced. In a single election cycle. Their crime was not corruption or scandal — it was voting the wrong way on school choice.Tennessee, 2024: School Freedom Fund invested $3.6 million across five state legislative races and won four seats. An 80 percent win rate when you’re spending roughly $720,000 per race in state-level contests that typically cost a fraction of that.West Virginia, 2022 (federal): School Freedom Fund spent $125,455 AGAINST WV Rep. David McKinley and $125,455 FOR Alex Mooney in the WV-02 Republican primary. In that cycle, 59.8 percent of the PAC’s total spending was against Republican candidates. Read that number again: the majority of this supposedly Republican PAC’s money was spent destroying Republicans. They’ve already operated in West Virginia. They already know the terrain.The pattern is unmistakable. Identify a Republican who deviates from the school choice orthodoxy. Bury them in attack ads they never saw coming, funded at levels that dwarf anything their opponent could raise organically. Replace them with someone more compliant. Move on to the next state.West Virginia is next.THE BLACK BEAR IN THE ROOM: MORRISEY’S ATTACK PAC IS ALREADY LOADEDIf School Freedom Fund is the ideological enforcer, Black Bear PAC (FEC: C00708644) is the loyalty enforcer. It served as the primary independent expenditure vehicle for Governor Patrick Morrisey’s 2024 campaign — and Club for Growth built it.Club for Growth Action was the single largest contributor to Black Bear PAC — $2.1 million in a single reporting period alone, according to WV MetroNews. Together, Club for Growth Action and Black Bear PAC “combined to invest $13.1 million” in Morrisey’s 2024 gubernatorial primary, per Club for Growth’s own press release. In the 2024 cycle overall, Black Bear PAC raised $10.5 million and spent $11.9 million.The gubernatorial race is over. Morrisey won. So what’s Black Bear doing now? It currently holds $2,058,796 cash on hand, doing essentially nothing except paying operational overhead. But here’s the thing — Black Bear PAC is also registered on CFRS as an Active Independent Expenditure Committee (registrant ID 1040002474, registered 04/10/2024), and it filed 47 Independent Expenditure Reports in May 2024 alone. The infrastructure is warmed up. The registration is active. The money is sitting.Two PACs. One to enforce ideological compliance on school choice. Another to enforce loyalty to the governor. Both pre-registered in West Virginia. Both funded. Both waiting.FOLLOW THE VENDORS: $66.7 MILLION THROUGH ONE AD-BUYING FIRMIf you want to understand how these nominally independent entities operate as a single coordinated machine, stop following the money and start following the vendors. That’s where the architecture reveals itself.Medium Buying, a media purchasing firm in Columbus, Ohio, received $77.7 million in payments during the 2024 cycle. Here are their top four clients by spend:1. Win It Back PAC (Club for Growth’s c4 dark money arm): $29.7 million2. Club for Growth Action: $19.65 million3. School Freedom Fund: $10.09 million4. Black Bear PAC: $7.24 millionRead that list again. Three of Medium Buying’s top four clients are Club for Growth entities. Black Bear PAC is the fourth. That is $66.7 million flowing through one ad-buying firm from what is functionally one operation. When School Freedom Fund and Black Bear PAC run attack ads against a WV delegate next cycle, there is a very real possibility that the same person at the same desk in Columbus, Ohio, is buying the airtime for both of them.The shared infrastructure extends deeper. SW2 Political — run by Scott Will, former Executive Director of the Republican Attorneys General Association from 2015 to 2019 — is Black Bear PAC’s strategy firm, receiving $128,959 in 2024 and continuing at $5,000 per month. Will serves as Black Bear PAC’s “Senior Advisor” and public spokesperson. Bulldog Compliance, located at 138 Conant Street, Suite 401, Beverly, MA 01915, serves as the compliance hub for Black Bear PAC, Team Morrisey JFC, and other entities in the network. And Adam Rozansky — the treasurer of School Freedom Fund — is simultaneously treasurer of Club for Growth PAC, Club for Growth Action, and the Club for Growth Foundation. One man signs the checks for all of them.Perhaps most telling of all: Black Bear PAC paid $39,000 back to Club for Growth Action in 2024. The money doesn’t just flow one direction. It circulates. This is a closed loop with shared vendors, shared officers, shared compliance, and bidirectional cash transfers — operating under the legal fiction of independence.THE TWO-PRONGED OPERATION: A PINCER MOVEMENT ON YOUR STATE LEGISLATUREHere’s the structure, stripped to its bones:Prong One — School Freedom Fund: The school choice ideological enforcer. Funded almost entirely by Jeff Yass’s personal fortune. Mission: destroy any Republican who votes to restrict, cap, or add accountability to school voucher programs. Freshly registered in West Virginia with a statewide, legislative-district scope. Ten million dollars loaded at the federal level. Zero financial activity filed in WV — meaning the money hasn’t moved yet, but the vehicle is parked and running.Prong Two — Black Bear PAC: The Morrisey loyalty enforcer. Funded through Team Morrisey JFC and WV industry money, with Club for Growth Action as its anchor investor at $2.1 million. Mission: punish anyone who crosses the governor. Two million dollars sitting in reserve. Already registered on CFRS as an active independent expenditure committee. Already filed 47 independent expenditure reports. Already has vendor relationships with Medium Buying for ad placement.The result: a pincer operation where any West Virginia Republican legislator who dares question the Hope Scholarship faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in primary attack ads from two directions simultaneously. Both funded by out-of-state money. Both routed through the same media buying firm. Both coordinated through overlapping staff and vendors — but technically, legally, operating as “independent” committees.A typical West Virginia state legislative race costs $50,000 to $150,000 total. School Freedom Fund has $10 million. Black Bear PAC has $2 million. That’s not a campaign. That’s carpet bombing a lemonade stand.WHY NOW: THE HOPE SCHOLARSHIP AND THE LEGISLATORS WHO DARED ASK QUESTIONSThe timing is not subtle. West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship ESA program is expanding to universal eligibility for the 2026-2027 school year at an estimated cost of $230 million. Governor Morrisey highlighted $276 million in Hope Scholarship funding as a signature accomplishment of the 2026 legislative session.But some legislators had the audacity to do their jobs. The House Finance Committee introduced a bill in February 2026 proposing to cap the scholarship amount, narrow allowable expenses, and add standardized testing requirements — the sort of basic fiscal guardrails you’d expect around a $230 million public expenditure. Nothing radical. Basic oversight. The kind of due diligence taxpayers assume their representatives are performing.The reaction from the school choice lobby was immediate and telling. Americans for Prosperity-WV called the bill an attempt to “kick families out of school choice.” The Cardinal Institute expressed “serious concern.” The language was coordinated. The message was clear: any attempt at oversight is an attack on freedom.Now look at the Club for Growth Foundation’s state economic scorecard for West Virginia. House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss scored 20 out of 100. House Education Chairman Joe Statler scored 16 out of 100. These are the legislators who introduced the Hope Scholarship restrictions. In Club for Growth’s grading system, scores like that aren’t just failing grades — they’re targeting coordinates.The chronology is damning. On March 19, 2026 — the exact same day David McIntosh signed the West Virginia filing — Club for Growth released a national report on “the importance of educational freedom”. That is not a coincidence. That is a coordinated campaign launch, with the WV registration as its opening move.Even WV Senate School Choice Committee Chair Patricia Rucker seemed to be getting ahead of the narrative, publishing an op-ed arguing that “there is no evidence that a Republican lawmaker has lost a primary election because of a pro-school-choice vote”. Senator Rucker: with all due respect, ask the ten former Texas incumbents who cleaned out their desks last year whether they agree with that assessment.WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS FOR WEST VIRGINIALet me be precise about what’s happening, because the sanitized version — “national groups engage in state politics” — misses the point so completely it might as well be misinformation.A Pennsylvania billionaire who has never cast a vote in West Virginia is about to spend more money attacking individual WV state legislators than those legislators will raise in their entire political careers combined. The vehicle is a Super PAC that has already ended the political careers of at least ten Republican incumbents in other states this cycle alone. The operational infrastructure — the media buyers, the compliance firms, the strategy consultants — is already in place, already contracted, and already paid for. The targeting criteria have been published on a public scorecard, with specific numerical scores assigned to each legislator. The threat has been stated on the record, by name, by the man who personally signed the West Virginia registration form.This is not democracy. This is not even particularly creative oligarchy. This is one man, with one PAC, with one demand — expand vouchers, no questions asked, no oversight tolerated, no fiscal guardrails permitted — backed by enough money to make any state legislator’s political survival contingent on total obedience to an agenda set 350 miles away.And if the ideological enforcement doesn’t work, there’s a loyalty enforcement backup parked right behind it, sharing the same ad-buying firm, the same compliance shop, and a direct financial pipeline back to the governor’s own political operation.SUNLIGHT, RECEIPTS, AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT ITEvery fact in this article comes from a public filing. Every dollar is documented. Every connection is traceable through FEC reports, CFRS records, and OpenSecrets data. That’s not because I’m a particularly talented researcher — it’s because the system, for all its fractures and loopholes, still requires disclosure. For now.That disclosure is the only thing standing between West Virginia voters and total information asymmetry. These PACs will spend millions telling voters that Delegate So-and-So is “against school choice” or “failing our children.” They will not mention Jeff Yass. They will not mention that the money originated in Pennsylvania. They will not mention that the same media firm buying the attack ads also buys ads for the governor’s loyalty enforcement operation. The voter sees a concerned-looking ad about local schools. The voter does not see the $26 million billionaire pulling the strings.What you can do:1. Share this article. Every voter in a competitive WV legislative district should know that School Freedom Fund and Black Bear PAC exist, who funds them, what they’ve done in Texas and Tennessee, and what they’re about to do here.2. Watch the CFRS filings. When School Freedom Fund files its first financial report with the WV Secretary of State, you will be able to see exactly how much money has moved into the state. Bookmark that page. Check it every month. Screenshot it when it updates, because filings have a way of being amended after the fact.3. Ask your legislators directly: “Are you aware that a $15 million Super PAC funded almost entirely by a Pennsylvania billionaire has registered to run independent expenditures in West Virginia legislative races? How does that affect your willingness to vote on Hope Scholarship oversight?” Make them answer on the record.4. Demand transparency in political advertising. West Virginia has no law requiring PAC-funded political ads to disclose their top donors on-screen. Fourteen states already require this. West Virginia should be the fifteenth. Call your legislator and ask them to sponsor stand-by-your-ad legislation — then watch whether School Freedom Fund targets them for it.5. Follow the vendors, not just the money. Medium Buying’s client list tells you more about the structure of this operation than any single FEC filing. SW2 Political. Bulldog Compliance. These are the operational sinews of the network. When attack ads start running, FOIA the media buys. Check the vendor payments. Trace the compliance filings. The paper trail is there if you bother to look.The filing on March 19, 2026, was a declaration of war. Club for Growth is telling West Virginia’s Republican legislators — in writing, with a signature, filed with the Secretary of State — that they will vote the way Jeff Yass wants on school vouchers, or their political careers will be systematically destroyed using the same playbook that took out ten Texas incumbents last year.They have the money. They have the infrastructure. They have the track record. They have the vendor contracts. They have the targeting data. They have the explicit, on-the-record threat from their own president.The only thing they don’t have is the ability to operate in the dark — if you refuse to let them.Keep the lights on.Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Here’s a secret about political power that nobody tells you at the canvassing kickoff:It’s not about ideas. It’s not about passion. It’s not about yard signs or door knocks or how many times you shared that one Facebook post.It’s about money.Money decides who runs. Money decides who wins. Money decides which “grassroots movement” is actually grassroots and which one is a billionaire in a flannel shirt pretending to care about your school board.And the beautiful, terrible, glorious thing about money in American politics is this:Most of it is public record.It’s sitting there. On websites. In databases. Free to access. Right now. While you’re reading this.The problem isn’t that the information is hidden. The problem is that it’s written in a language designed to make your eyes glaze over before you get to the part where Harold spent $14,000 on “consulting fees” paid to his nephew.This chapter is a translation guide.By the end of it, you’re going to be able to open an FEC filing, an IRS 990, or a PAC disclosure and actually understand what you’re looking at.And then you’re going to be furious.Good. Furious people with receipts are democracy’s immune system.Why You Should Care About Financial FilingsLet me put it bluntly.If you’ve ever:* Volunteered for an organization and wondered where the donation money goes* Watched a candidate promise “grassroots” funding while flying private* Heard someone say “we don’t have the budget for that” while their executive director makes six figures* Noticed a mysterious PAC running attack ads and wondered who’s writing the checks...then you already have reasons to care. You just didn’t have the tools.Now you do.The three documents that will tell you almost everything you need to know about any political organization in America are:* FEC Filings — Who gave money, who spent it, and on what* IRS Form 990 — The financial guts of any nonprofit or tax-exempt org* PAC Disclosures — Where the dark gets a little less darkWe’re going to take each one apart like a mechanic with a suspicious engine.FEC Filings: The Receipts Nobody ReadsFEC stands for Federal Election Commission. It’s the agency that makes campaigns and political committees report their finances. Every dollar in, every dollar out — at least in theory.These filings are free and searchable at FEC.gov.Here’s what most people see when they open an FEC filing: a spreadsheet that looks like it was designed by someone who hates joy. Columns of numbers. Abbreviations that mean nothing. Dates in formats that make no sense.Here’s what you’re going to see after this chapter: a story.Because every FEC filing IS a story. It’s the story of who’s bankrolling whom, who owes favors, and where the bodies are financially buried.What to look for first:* Schedule A (Itemized Receipts) — This is who gave money. Names, addresses, employers, amounts. If your neighbor donated $500 to a candidate, it’s here. If a corporation funneled $50,000 through a PAC, it’s here too.* Schedule B (Itemized Disbursements) — This is where the money went. “Consulting fees.” “Media buys.” “Event catering.” This is where you find Harold’s nephew.* Schedule C (Loans) — Who lent money to the campaign and on what terms. Loans are how rich candidates fund themselves and then “forgive” the debt later. It’s legal. It’s also b******t.* Schedule D (Debts and Obligations) — What the campaign owes and to whom. This is where campaigns go to die quietly.The five-minute version:* Go to FEC.gov* Search any candidate or committee name* Click on their most recent filing* Go straight to Schedule B (disbursements)* Sort by amount, largest first* Read who got paid and for what* Feel your blood pressure riseThat’s it. You just did opposition research. Harold is sweating.IRS Form 990: The Nonprofit X-RayIf FEC filings are for campaigns and PACs, the IRS 990 is for nonprofits.Every tax-exempt organization with gross receipts over $200,000 (or total assets over $500,000) has to file one. Annually. Publicly.And these forms are GOLD.You can find them for free at ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, GuideStar (now Candid), or just Googling “[org name] IRS 990.”A 990 will tell you:* Total revenue and expenses — How much money flows through the org each year* Executive compensation — What the leadership pays itself (this is the page that ruins friendships)* Program expenses vs. overhead — How much goes to the “mission” versus admin, fundraising, and “other”* Board members and key employees — Who’s actually running the show* Related organizations — Whether this org is connected to other entities you should know about* Grants and major donors — Where the big money comes fromWhere Harold lives on a 990:* Part VII — Compensation of officers, directors, and key employees. This is where you find out that the executive director of your “volunteer-powered” org makes $175,000 while you’re buying your own printer ink.* Part IX — Statement of functional expenses. This breaks spending into “program,” “management,” and “fundraising.” If fundraising costs more than the programs, congratulations — you’re funding a machine that exists to fund itself.* Schedule O — Supplemental information. This is where orgs explain things they’d rather not explain. Read it like a detective reads a suspect’s alibi: carefully, and with suspicion.The five-minute 990 drill:* Find the org’s most recent 990 on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer* Go straight to Part VII — who’s getting paid and how much* Then Part IX — where does the money actually go* Compare “program expenses” to “total expenses”* If programs are less than 65% of total spending, start asking why* Screenshot everythingYou’re now more informed than 95% of the people who donate to that org. Including, possibly, the board.PACs: A Field Guide to Legal CorruptionPAC stands for Political Action Committee. It’s a legal structure that lets groups of people pool money to support or oppose candidates.Simple enough, right?Ha.There are more varieties of PAC than there are flavors at a frozen yogurt place, and they’re all designed to make you give up trying to understand them.Here’s the cheat sheet:The critical thing to understand: these categories are not separate universes. They’re connected. Money flows between them like water through a pipe system designed by someone who doesn’t want you to see where the water ends up.A billionaire donates to a 501(c)(4). The 501(c)(4) donates to a Super PAC. The Super PAC runs ads “independently” supporting a candidate. The candidate says “I have no idea who’s behind those ads.”Everyone involved knows exactly who’s behind those ads.You can too. You just have to follow the pipes.The Hybrid PAC: Harold’s Favorite ToyIf you take one thing from this chapter, let it be this: learn what a hybrid PAC is.A hybrid PAC (also called a Carey Committee) is a single organization that operates two separate accounts:* A traditional PAC account — subject to contribution limits, donates directly to candidates* An independent expenditure account — functions like a Super PAC, no contribution limits, can spend unlimited money on “independent” adsSame organization. Same leadership. Same Harold. Two sets of rules.The traditional side gives $5,000 to a candidate and files clean, limited paperwork.The independent side spends $500,000 on attack ads against that candidate’s opponent and calls it “totally independent” even though the same person authorized both checks.Is it legal? Yes.Is it ethical? That depends on whether you think putting a mustache on a wolf makes it a different animal.If your local organization is structured as a hybrid PAC, pay very close attention to who controls both accounts, who decides how the independent expenditure money gets spent, and whether the same “consultants” keep showing up on both sides of the ledger.Red Flags in Financial FilingsYou don’t need to be an accountant to spot trouble. You need pattern recognition.Here are the red flags that should make you slow down and start screenshotting:In FEC Filings:* The same consulting firm shows up across multiple candidates and PACs (that’s a network, not a coincidence)* Large disbursements labeled “strategic consulting” with no further description* Payments to entities with vague names (”American Freedom Solutions LLC”) that don’t appear to have a website, office, or pulse* Late filings, amended filings, or filings that suddenly appear right before a deadlineIn IRS 990s:* Executive compensation that exceeds 25% of total program expenses* “Related organizations” that share board members, addresses, or staff* Program descriptions so vague they could mean anything (”advancing civic engagement through education and outreach”)* Rapidly growing revenue with flat or declining program spendingIn PAC Disclosures:* Donors who share employers, addresses, or last names clustered around the same dates (that’s bundling)* A sudden spike in contributions right before a filing deadline followed by immediate disbursements* “Independent expenditures” that perfectly mirror a candidate’s messaging and timingWhen you see these patterns, you’re not paranoid. You’re paying attention.How to Build Your Own Follow-the-Money ToolkitYou don’t need special access or a journalism degree. You need bookmarks and a system.Free tools:* FEC.gov — Search any federal candidate, PAC, or committee* OpenSecrets.org — Aggregated data, visualizations, donor lookups* ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — Every 990 filed by every tax-exempt org* FollowTheMoney.org — State-level campaign finance data* Your state’s Secretary of State website — State PAC filings, lobbyist registrations, org filings* GuideStar / Candid — Nonprofit financial profilesYour workflow:* Pick an org or candidate* Pull their most recent FEC filing AND their 990 (if applicable)* List the top 10 donors (Schedule A) and top 10 expenditures (Schedule B)* Cross-reference: do the same names show up in multiple places?* Google the consulting firms and vendors — do they have real websites? Real employees?* Document everything in a spreadsheet* Repeat for related orgsYou now have a research methodology. It’s the same one investigative journalists use. The only difference is they get paid for it and you’re doing it at midnight in your kitchen.For now.What Harold Doesn’t Want You to KnowHarold’s power depends on you never opening these documents.Every time he says “the finances are complicated,” what he means is: “I’d prefer you not look.”Every time an organization says “we’re transparent” but doesn’t link to their 990 on their website, what they mean is: “We’re transparent the way a locked filing cabinet is transparent — technically the information exists, but good luck getting to it.”Every time someone dismisses your questions about money as “divisive” or “not the right time,” what they mean is: it will never be the right time, because the right time for you is the wrong time for them.The money is where the truth lives.And the truth is public record.Harold just hopes you never learn how to read it.Too late.Next in the SeriesNow that you can follow the money, it’s time to follow YOUR money.In the next post — “Free Labor Economics 101” — we’re going to calculate exactly what your volunteer hours, skills, and emotional labor are worth in real dollars.You’re going to build a spreadsheet.You’re going to be angry.And then you’re going to be dangerous.If you’ve ever wondered where the donations actually go, subscribe for the next installment — “Free Labor Economics 101” — where we turn the lens on YOUR contributions and calculate what you’ve been giving away for free. Bring a calculator and something to punch. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com