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Will Democratic primaries become a new battleground for the MAGA-aligned right?
After the party’s bruising loss to Donald Trump and successive Senate defeats in 2024, the Democratic Party is at a crossroads. The next two years will determine whether the party embraces a populist, progressive path or abandons issues like transgender rights to focus on winning moderates and Republicans dis-enthused with Trumpism — or some combination of the two.
Some conservatives with deep pockets seem to smell an opportunity. With the Democrats divided and the party’s national leaders weaker than ever, some are hoping to steer the course of the left away from progressivism with strategic investments in off-year races.
Elon Musk, the president’s DOGE baron-in-chief, made a ham-fisted attempt at doing so earlier this year. With a massive investment in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, Musk sought to block a liberal judge from cementing a left-leaning majority on the state’s highest court. His efforts failed, thanks in no small part due to a massive campaign led by Democrats aimed at exposing his influence.
In New York’s heated mayoral primary, this phenomenon was embodied on Monday by Republican megadonor John Catsimatidis, a Trump supporter and longtime radio host who made his strategy plainly clear on WABC: “I am supporting [Andrew] Cuomo to wipe out all the socialists on June 24th.”
Cuomo, the former governor, resigned in disgrace after several women came forward and accused him of sexual harassment and attempts to silence victims. He’s now leading in polling for the upcoming Democratic primary after the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, became embroiled in a corruption scandal.
Hundreds of miles south in Pittsburgh, a separate tale of MAGA Republican influence in a Democratic Party primary continued to play out on the same day.
A historically working-class city in the far western reach of the state, Pittsburgh is a deep-blue bastion surrounded by comparatively much purpler and redder districts. In March, the city’s mayoral race made headlines after a number of high-profile Pennsylvania conservatives put money behind the effort to unseat incumbent Ed Gainey in a Democratic primary.
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The fears of MAGA influence have only grown more intense as the race nears the May 20 primary election.
On Monday, the mayor opened up a new offensive against his rival, Corey O’Connor.
Gainey, in a news release, reacted to a state election board filing detailing how a PAC supporting O’Connor, Common Sense Change, took in $150,000 during the last filing period — the majority of its contributions — from a separate PAC funded entirely by a nonprofit housed in Delaware with no public face identified only as “Good Leadership Action Inc.” That comes despite a claim last month from Common Sense Change’s administrator, Mike Mikus, stating that it was mostly funded by trade unions. Only a third of the PAC’s contributions in April and early May came from three unions backing O’Connor.
“My opponent has taken $160,000 from MAGA donors, been backed by 80 percent of the developer money in this race, and flipped his position on [University of Pittsburgh Medical Center] lawsuits after taking thousands from its corporate board,” said Gainey.
“Now, his backers are hiding the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars from voters because they know people in this city won’t support developers, MAGA money, or whoever these people are trying to buy Pittsburgh,” he charged.
Through the funneling scheme, the money’s origins are untraceable. But with the mayoral race coming down to a divide along key local issues, including development and affordable housing, there are signs that specific interests are working to unseat the mayor.
Democracy Wins PAC, the D.C.-based organization funded entirely by Good Leadership Inc., previously spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to block a Colorado state representative known for battling corporate landlords from winning a seat in the state senate. That time, it funneled money through a different PAC, Brighter Futures Colorado.
O’Connor responded on Monday, accusing Gainey in his own statement of taking so-called “dark money,” given the more than half a million dollars the Working Families Party has given the mayor’s campaign.
“It has made campaigns nastier and more personal, and it’s part of why voters are so frustrated with the political process,” O’Connor said in a statement first reported by Public Source.
“We don’t coordinate with any outside groups, and I believe all campaigns and committees, no matter who they support, should be transparent about where their money is coming from. That includes both Common Sense Change and the Working Families Party,” he said.
O’Connor outraised his opponent in direct funding over the course of the campaign, but dueling internal polls released by his team and Gainey’s show the race tightening in the final weeks.
While the Working Families Party PAC backing Gainey is registered nationally, conflating it with the groups channeling money in support of his opponent is a stretch.
Founded in 1998, the Working Families Party is a well-known progressive organization that has been active in Democratic politics across the East Coast for decades, issuing endorsements and encouraging Democratic candidates to run on the party’s ballot line in New York, where the party began. The WFP is supporting ten candidates in Pennsylvania in this cycle alone.
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The same cannot be said for either O’Connor’s independent expenditure or its main backer.
The website for Democracy Wins, now funding O’Connor’s independent expenditure, still reads as a pre-2024 artifact. It depicts the group as an organization bent on funding a now-failed bid to oust Rep. Lauren Boebert, who switched districts to avoid a tougher reelection fight. There’s no statement on the website explaining why the group has now engaged in two separate, unrelated Democratic primary races.
With the election a week away, Democrats are watching to see how this proxy fight for the party’s future plays out. But regardless of the result, the true outcome could already be plain: Republicans with deep pockets increasingly see the intra-party struggles of their opponents as just as relevant a battlefield as any general election in a swing state or district.
As Musk takes a step back from DOGE (and likely his efforts to bankroll GOP causes to curry favor with Trump dwindle as well), many Democrats will be breathing a sigh of relief. But that doesn’t mean their party’s fight against conservative money is over — not by a long shot. It may just be more difficult to recognize.
