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Bloomberg Finds More Bipartisan Giving to Super PACs, Cites Expert Blogger on SD 2014 Senate Race

Bloomberg BNA reports on more frequent instances of political donors backing both liberal and conservative super PACs. The article provides this table showing organizations that have given money to super PACs on both sides of the aisle during the last three election cycles:

Bipartisan super PAC givers

Notice the second-most balanced spender in 2014, Every Voice Action? That group poured money into South Dakota’s U.S. Senate race to attack Mike Rounds on the EB-5 scandal and Larry Pressler for votes on Medicare and Social Security and boost Democrat Rick Weiland’s chances of winning. Every Voice Action also gave Many True Conservatives most of the $116,000 that super PAC spent to promote ultra-conservative Independent Gordon Howie and draw votes away from Rounds. Every Voice Action tells Bloomberg BNA that, sure, they backed Every Voice Action to help Weiland.

Bloomberg BNA then turns to South Dakota expertise for analysis of the impact of that bipartisan spending:

Cory Allen Heidelberger, editor and publisher of the Dakota Free Press—a liberal news site that closely followed the 2014 campaign—told Bloomberg BNA he saw no evidence that funding an opposing candidate had an impact on the vote.

“Their effort appears to be a quixotic footnote rather than sensible investment of campaign dollars producing return on investment,” he said [Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones, “Super PAC Spending Becoming More Bipartisan,” Bloomberg BNA, 2016.07.11].

I appreciate that Every Voice Action’s had enough resources to invest in covering all possible bases. But given that Gordon Howie never organized a strong statewide network to capitalize on any positive press, Every Voice Action could have gotten more bang for its buck by giving the Weiland organization more direct support to get out the Democratic vote.