Several left-of-center groups designed to look like local advocacy organizations pulled in millions from an influential D.C.-based dark money behemoth last year, newly released tax filings show.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, part of a sprawling Democratic-aligned dark money network managed by consulting firm Arabella Advisors, doled out over $18 million in 2023 to groups working to influence elections in key states while presenting themselves as local activists, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of tax disclosures. Large sums of dark money from the Sixteen Thirty Fund flowed into Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin to fund pro-Democratic get-out-the-vote campaigns, training and digital messaging.
Each of these states had at least one high-stakes election on Nov. 5, with some being key steps on the path to the White House, others hosting the congressional elections that ultimately decided control of the legislature and a handful having contentious initiatives on the ballot, like a referendum in Florida that critics charged would legalize abortion up to birth.
Arizona was the biggest target of the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s dark money operation, with the organization pumping nearly $4 million into purportedly local political groups in 2023, according to tax filings. Advancing Arizona took the lion’s share of this funding, using the financial windfall to attack the GOP’s fiscal proposals, advocate against Republican incumbents running in competitive districts and run anti-Republican ads.
Despite raking in millions from the D.C.-based dark money outfit, Advancing Arizona describes itself as “a grassroots coalition made up of Arizona families, seniors, working people, young advocates and everyone in between.”
The Sixteen Thirty Fund was also highly active in funding New York-based organizations ahead of the 2024 election, tax forms show. Political commentators predicted that control of the House could come down to how New Yorkers voted on election day, according to The Associated Press.
Empire State Voices received roughly $3.5 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2023, according to tax disclosures. After filing its coffers, the group ran a series of attack ads targeting vulnerable GOP Reps. Marc Molinaro and Anthony D’Esposito. Both congressmen are projected to lose their seats in the House, according to The New York Times.
Dumping dark money into swing states is common practice for the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the broader Arabella network. The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave roughly $164 million to super PACs and other explicitly political organizations in 2020, according to Politico. The organization did see both a fundraising and spending dip in 2023, however, raising $10 million less than it did in 2022 and decreasing its expenditures by roughly a quarter, according to tax forms.
Sixteen Thirty Fund also invested heavily in Virginia, doling out about $1.4 million in dark money grants ahead of its 2023 legislative elections. Following Republican Glenn Youngkin’s shock victory in the 2021 gubernatorial election and his consistently high approval rating since taking office, Democrats were concerned about potentially losing control of the commonwealth’s legislature. To prevent this, the Sixteen Thirty Fund joined forces with prominent liberal financiers like George Soros to bankroll Democrats.
The fund also contributed funding to New Virginia Majority and Freedom Virginia, two groups that work to elect Democrats across the Commonwealth, according to the tax disclosures.
Democrats ultimately succeeded in defending their majority in the Virginia Senate and took control of the House from Republicans in 2023.
“Sixteen Thirty Fund projects, grantees and partner organizations mobilized and supported critical efforts on the ground to not only advance progressive values but safeguard fundamental democratic principles in the face of critical threats,” a post shared with the DCNF by a Sixteen Thirty Fund spokesperson reads.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund is considered a dark money group because it funnels large quantities of anonymously sourced funds into the electoral process. One of the largest funders of the group is Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, who the AP reported was a foreign national as recently as April 2023. Just four anonymous mega-donors constituted roughly two-thirds of the funds raised by the group in 2023, tax forms show.
“It’s deeply concerning that a man like Hansjorg Wyss accounts for such a large portion of the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s revenues,” Parker Thayer, an analyst at the Capital Research Center, previously told the DCNF. “Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to PACs in the United States, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund contributes millions every year to Democrats-aligned PACs.”
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