A few late updates: The Suxco Schell Bros donated $10K to the Delaware Senate Majority PAC. Also $20 K from JP Morgan Chase. Yes, the Dems. You know where that money went.
Chris Schell donated $1200 to Ted Lauzen, who didn’t exactly need the money. Lori Schell tossed in another $1200. Noted Democrat Eleuthere duPont donated $1100.
The Republican State Committee of Delaware took in $0.00 since the 30-day report.
No, I’m not gonna do a deep dive on every report. But I will highlight anything that I find noteworthy. I took a quick look at the reports last night, and I noticed that the Schell Brothers and their family are all over these reports. And we’re not just talking Suxco. Meaning, they’ve got shit they want done, and they’re willing to bribe, I mean, contribute to, legislators to help them do it.
Deep breath, cold-brew coffee at the ready, let’s go:
There is a Mondo Bizarro report from something called the ‘State And Local Election Alliance’. They purport to challenge ‘election deniers‘. I suspect they’re interested in far more than that. AI, maybe? Started with over $6 mill in the bank, raised another $2.4 mill. Pages and pages of contributors, none of them from Delaware. There is, however, a Delaware connection. The PAC spent over $498,000 on media services for The Other Michael Smith.
A third-party ‘First State Future’ PAC spent $81 K on direct mail and TV advertising supporting the Bad Guys and opposing the Good Guys. A lot of it on local TV. That’s $81K since the 30-day report.
Yet another Third Party PAC ‘Delaware LEAD’ spent about $11K on mail for Krista Griffith and Ed Mulvihill, bringing their total this year to $78K for the Forces Of Ee-vil.
The Delaware CAN Third Party Advertiser PAC spent about $49K on behalf of Nnamdi Chukwuocha, Ed Mulvihill, Krista Griffith, Kim Williams, Dan Cruce, Spiros Mantzavinos, and Nicole Poore.
The Schell Family has a PAC called ‘First State Service’, started with $225K, added another $100K, then transferred $200K to two LLC’s. One PAC, SKD Knickerbocker, ‘provides political consulting services to political candidates, campaigns, and issue advocacy groups. SKDK describes itself as a full-service public affairs practice that offers crisis communications, branding, marketing, media training, digital/social media advice, speech writing, and message development. The other, Tapp Networks LLC, is a pro-AI growth vehicle. You know, as in data centers. Let’s see if these two PACs pop up on any other reports. I’m betting ‘yes’.
The Delaware REALTORS PAC spent over $38K on behalf of Nnamdi Chukwuocha, Stephanie Bolden, Lumpy Carson, Dan Cruce, and Ray Seigfried. Gee, anyone see a pattern emerging here?
Looks like at least one Third Party PAC is helping progressive candidates. The Progressive Democrats Of Delaware Third-Party PAC has spent about $26K for mailers for Dr. Keonna Watson, Adriana Bohm, Michelle Booker, Lachelle Paul, and Tye Greer (yay!).
The Schell family is all over the 8-day report for Ayanna Khan-Flowers, who clearly is a plant for some sort of corporate interests. She’s running in the three-way D primary to succeed Kevin Hensley.
Lumpy Carson’s 8-day report befits someone completely in thrall to the Delaware Way. Every single donation he got was from a PAC, with the exception of one ‘Rickey Horsey’. Hmmm, could ‘Rickey Horsey’ be a synonym for, say, the Harness Breeders’ Association? Sorry, mere (br)idle speculation.
The Schell Family is also coming to the aid of noted Suxco politico Stephanie Bolden. I kid, I kid. What’s weird about that Bolden report isn’t how much she’s raised, but how little she’s spent. A retirement nest egg, perhaps?
You know who contributed $10 K to the House Democrats coffers? Kalshi, the ‘prediction market’ company. Hey, man, small price to pay for keeping that rip-off legal.
Here’s another hinky PAC to peruse. Justice For All. While I think it’s essentially a pass-through on behalf of AG Jennings’ campaign ($50 K donated by the Democratic Attorneys General Association), we’ve also got contributions from Colin Bonini and, yes, an additional $15K from Kalshi (see above). Over $170 K has been transferred to yet another media corporation, Canal Partners Media LLC. Betcha that name pops up on AG Jennings’ report.
John Carney’s PAC, Wilmington Strong, contributed the max to two candidates–Dan Cruce and Nnamdi Chukwuocha. You were perhaps expecting something different?
Josue Ortega raised $650 since the 30-day report–$600 of it from the Chemours Corporation.
Yep, the Schells pop up on Franklin Cooke’s 8-day report as well. Hey, he can be bought cheap.
OK, I think I’m up to date. More reports will surface throughout the day. I’ll be back.
No one seems to care about RD23, but Dan Seador just pulled in the most of any candidate by far since the 30 day – mostly from developers and real estate interests who gave him $99 donations to remain anonymous. Hilariously, they accidentally left all their individual names & addresses in the report anyway so we can see who they are. Lang Development Group, etc. Nearly no in-district donations. Rs really flooding the endzone on this one with three liberals splitting the lefty vote and no one paying attention.
First off, I just voted this afternoon in Newark. Please vote.
Now about the SLEA.
I commented earlier about how “fascinating and hilarious” it was that the S&L Election Alliance (SLEA) was going to pour so much into Mike Smiths race. I think I said, “God bless him if he has that pull, but also, does he really have the rizz for this?” And that they had supported Colleen’s race several years ago. That someone could put on their conspiracy caps. But I don’t think it’s Artificial Intelligence like El Som does.
Well, it just happened that a few days ago, on September 2nd, the founder of the PAC, Kim Rodgers was interviewed by Heather Cox Richardson. It’s on YouTube, go hear from the founders mouth. Though, to be honest, it’s not much of an interview even at an hour long. I thought it was a bad interview.
Now in the interview, she comes across as “Aww, shuck. I’m just trying to make a difference and defend democracy. People don’t know how important these local races are.” Which I believe is true. It’s what motivates her. When it comes to politics I can be a bit of a cynic. But what she doesn’t really talk about is she is a heavy hitter and operative in the National Democratic Party.”
Just read the description on the Richardson video.
“Kim Rogers is a veteran political operative who has spent more than twenty-five years working on campaigns from the State House to the White House. Born in rural Iowa into a military family, Kim has spent her career focused on the races and voters that others miss. She built the nation’s largest voter registration organization and has managed multimillion-dollar initiatives across dozens of states. From 2021 to 2023, she was the Executive Director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, where she raised more than $30 million to support democracy and defeat election deniers in every battleground race.
“In 2024, she founded the State + Local Election Alliance (SLEA) a nonpartisan organization focused on electing pro-democracy candidates to the state and local offices that determine how votes are counted, certified, and challenged.”
It’s only two previous candidates it has on it’s website showing support, when I last looked, were Chris Coons and Colleen Davis. Putting on the tin foil hat a bit, my conjecture is that either, Mike has great connections, Mike went to them and said, “We’re going to elect a Republican as Treasurer so help me,” or someone with real national pull in the Democratic Party asked for a favor, made the connection, and got them to help Mike. I’ll let the reader decide which one that is. Or if there’s a fourth option I’m missing.
Here’s a question for the SLEA. You state in your mission that you focus exclusively on races that impact elections, fight election denialism, and support democracy. From your own website, “We monitor more than 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide to identify the offices and officials with outsized influence over election administration.” To quote Kim Rodgers, “Like the people who are at the bottom of the ballot are your city council people, are your county supervisors, recorders, commissioners. They are who determine how your ballot is cast, counted, contested, and certified. Those are folks that matter.”
So why are you spending a half million of your donors money on a race which has no impact on elections whatsoever and doesn’t forward the mission you claim to support? Is that deceptive to your donors when you tell them you’re going to use their money to protect elections and then spend it on a primary race that has no impact on protecting elections?
Also, I just checked the SLEA website again. They may have spent half a mil on Mike, but still don’t have him listed as a candidate. Probably either because this is a primary or because they don’t run the tightest ship.
Your conjecture is at LEAST as good as mine…