Middle of the Road PAC spent nearly half million on a dozen Democratic legislative candidates
PAC also directed $850K to nonprofits helping Democratic candidates through "issue advocacy"
Updated Nov. 6.
The website for Gov. Laura Kelly’s Middle of the Road PAC makes a misleading claim:
Governor Laura Kelly launched the Middle of the Road PAC to elect moderate, middle-of-the-road leaders who are laser-focused on supporting policies to improve the lives of all Kansans. …
Governor Laura Kelly is committed to supporting middle-of-the-road leaders who work together, regardless of political party, to deliver for Kansans.
Based on the PAC campaign finance report filed Monday, and released Tuesday afternoon, the Middle of the Road PAC only supports Democratic candidates and Democratic party committees.
The “regardless of political party” statement is political gaslighting. The PAC only supports Democrats.
A Watchdog Lab article in August questioned the PAC’s name: Is largest Kansas PAC "Middle of the Road"?
Perhaps this misdirection is because less than 15% of the recent dollars contributed the Middle of the Road PAC are from Kansas donors!!
Express advocacy for democratic legislative candidates
Analysis of the campaign report shows the PAC supports express advocacy with independent expenditures for a dozen Kansas house and senate candidates.
“Express advocacy” ads contain “vote for” or “vote against” messages.
House candidates
The PAC spent nearly $258,000 with a single vendor for multiple mailings in support of seven house Democratic candidates.
Senate candidates
Middle of the Road spent another $220,000 in multiple expenditures with two vendors on five senate Democratic candidates.
PAC expenditures for “issue advocacy”
The two largest recipients of expenditures by Middle of the Road PAC are nonprofits.
Kansas Values Institute received a hefty half-million dollars, while the Bluestem Foundation for Economic Freedom received $350,000.
The 501(c)(4) nonprofit Bluestem Foundation for Economic Freedom sent flyers to voters in Douglas County using another nonprofit named Kansans for an Affordable Future. See details in tutorial below.
As a nonprofit Kansas Values Institute is using “issue advocacy” in Google ads to malign at least five state senate Republican candidates in Johnson County.
Similar ads are saturating a number of streaming TV channels, which apparently have no public disclosure oversight for issue advocacy ads maligning political candidates.
Expenditure Summary
The following table is a summary of expenditures for recipients of $10,000 or more.
An article from August gives information about the people listed above:
Lauren Fitzgerald is the former Communications Director for Gov. Kelly and now has a similar position with Kansas Coalition for Common Sense.
Jordanna Zeigler is the political director for the Democratic Governors Association.
Missing in this summary is the $23,000 Middle of the Road gave to Kansas Democrats.
Two Kansas senate Democratic candidates received $1000 PAC contributions: David Haley and Marci Francisco.
Recent contributors to PAC
A previous article about this PAC gives a summary of donors from the January and July reports.
The 17 contributors giving $10,000 or more in the current report account for 87% of the money raised this period.
Here’s a contribution summary broken down by five types of donors:
A summary of the contributions by state shows less than 15% of the donations come from Kansas sources!!
In the initial campaign finance report in January, two-thirds of donations were from out-of-state.
Reproducible research
Anyone can reproduce the numbers shown in this article using these two Excel files of data extracted from the original PDF file:
Contributions data
Expenditures data
Related
Kansas City attorney, lobbyist behind mystery postcards in County Commission races; leader won’t say who is financially backing the effort, Chad Lawhorn, Lawrence Journal-World, Nov. 4, 2024.
Gov. Kelly’s Middle of the Road PAC sent $10,000 to help Board of County Commissioner chair Mike Kelly’s Amberwave PAC in Johnson County. (The two Kellys are not related.)
Sad, and not even remotely surprising...