In a move that shows how worried the Democratic Party is over the ability of Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola to hang on to her seat in November, a shady group called “Vote Alaska Before Party” has just reserved nearly $4 million in television ads for the fall in Alaska. All of it is in support of Peltola.
The Vote Alaska Before Party group is really a subset of the congressional Democrats through their House Majority PAC, which was far-and-away the largest donor to Vote Alaska Before Party in 2022.
When the House Majority PAC announced its $186 million in ad buys last week to major media, it proudly mentioned major cities like Phoenix and Portland.
“We need four seats to win back the majority. That’s it,” Mike Smith, president of House Majority PAC, told CNN. “It’s a very tough four seats. Every single one of those is going to be trench warfare. We’re going have to invest a lot of money, hence the $186 million, but there’s a clear path to doing it.”
CNN continued: “Nothing has been reserved in Alaska to help Mary Peltola, but Smith said each media market has a different set of circumstances dictating when to place an ad buy, suggesting that Alaska would be on the group’s list for later in the cycle.”
The PAC left out Alaska because Alaskans famously don’t like Outside money — especially from the likes of George Soros and Nancy Pelosi — to muck around in Alaska races. House Majority PAC was trying to fly under the radar; the Vote Alaska Before Party group reserved the media buy, and while the cash transfer is not yet showing on federal reports, that kind of big money comes from one place — the House Majority PAC.
It’s a repeat play from 2022, but times three. While it got her elected in 2022, this time the Democrat cavalry is coming to save Peltola, after recent polling shows she is slipping in popularity. In January of 2023 she had a positive of 57% and negative of 28% among Alaskans in an Ivan Moore Alaska Survey Research poll. In March of 2024 she is now at 51% positive and 41% negative.
The reservations for ad time in Alaska media markets break down to the Anchorage television market with $2.669 million, Fairbanks with $956,520, and Juneau with $345,084. It is a record-setting amount for a congressional race in Alaska, which is considered a cheap media market.
The money that fuels Vote Alaska Before Party is coming from the usual suspects: George Soros, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Nancy Pelosi, and other big donor names — all anti-Second Amendment, radical environmentalist types from New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Labor unions and tribes such as the Puyallup Tribe of Washington state, also factor as big donors to the mother ship that floats Vote Alaska Before Party.
In 2022, the House Majority PAC was the largest contributor to Vote Alaska Before Party, with over $1.7 million. Sealaska Corporation came in second as a donor to VABP with $90,000, and Chugach Alaska Corporation chipped in $50,000, according to Open Secrets.
The House Majority PAC received $5 million from George Soros in 2022, which is why it had some spare money to give to the Vote Alaska Before Party fund to help Peltola, who seemed like a long shot at the time. Soros gives to campaigns and PACs through another fund, Democracy PAC, which he seeded with $125 million, and which is run by his son.
View the donor list for the House Majority PAC, where the money is housed before it goes to Vote Alaska Before Party at this link.
Vote Alaska Before Party spent $1.8 million for Peltola in the 2022 cycle, and none for Republicans. Of that $1.8 million, the group spent $1.66 million for media buys, a third of what it intends to spend on TV alone this fall, telling Alaskans to vote for Peltola.
The top expenditure for Vote Alaska Before Party is Waterfront Strategies, which is the No. 1 vendor for Democratic PACs, labor unions, and left-of-center nonprofits, spending $206 million in the 2018 election cycle, according to Influence Watch. Among its clients are the Democrats Senate Majority PAC, House Majority PAC, Women Vote, League of Conservation Voters, Climate Action and the government labor union, AFSCME.
Waterfront Strategies was paid $1.23 million by Vote Alaska Before Party in 2022. The left-leaning Lottsfeldt Strategies was paid $100,000.
Waterfront Strategies, a for-profit company based in Washington, D.C., has a parent company — GMMB, which was founded by Jim Margolis, a campaign consultant for President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and John Kerry, and who represents other high-profile Democratic campaigns.
The entire Vote Alaska Before Party operation is a pop-up similar to Bristol Bay Action, which is an Outside group popped up and paid for by dark-money Sixteen Thirty Fund, a subset of Arabella Advisors, which supports leftist candidates and causes in Alaska.
