What do Americans United for Change (AUFC), the Sierra Club, USAction (now People’s Action), Working America, and the now-defunct ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) all have in common?
The five left-wing groups provided original seed money in 2008 to the little known Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit “dark-money group” of the type the Democrats love to criticize. Even while publicly denouncing such organizations, Democrats were funneling millions into the fund, which spent $141 million on more than 100 leftist causes in 2018.[1]
According to VPAP, The Sixteen Thirty Fund donated $10,000 to the Democratic Party of Virginia on 2/3/2021. While Democrats in VA decry corporate donations they willingly accept untraceable “dark money” from the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
501(c)(4) organizations such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund may withhold the names of their donors and may engage in partisan political work, provide that is not their “primary” purpose: “(a requirement so hard to define and enforce that, in the words of one leading nonprofit tax scholar, it “virtually invites wholesale noncompliance”).[2]
Just a year ago, Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that, “Ten years ago, the Supreme Court… opened the floodgates to big, dark special interest money in our politics, undermining a fundamental American value: that we are a government of the many, not of the money.”[3]
But Democrats were funneling millions of “dark special interest money” through those same organizations they were publicly denouncing. Sixteen Thirty Fund sent $141 million into more than 100 left-leaning causes and organizations during the 2018 midterm election.[4]
In 2019, Politico and the Washington Post’s Editorial Board were both critical of The Sixteen Thirty Fund; three donations totaled over $88 million: one gift of $51,705,561, a second of $26,747,561, and a third of $10,000,000 [5]
The law may allow donors’ names to remain private, but nothing prevents donors from “outing” themselves, and several of the biggest Democratic donors have done so. In 2018 Michael Bloomberg gave money to Change Now, a super PAC linked to Sixteen Thirty Fund. Democracy Alliance, which counts George Soros among its members, also suggested that donors invest several million dollars into Sixteen Thirty Fund.[6]
Democrats demand transparency except when it reveals the real sources of their “dark money!”
[1] Sixteen Thirty Fund (1630 Fund) – InfluenceWatch
[2] From 501(c)(3) to 501(c)(4): Activists and the Tax Code – The Atlantic
[3] Pelosi Statement on Ten Years Since Citizens United | Speaker Nancy Pelosi
[4] Opinion | Big campaign donors have exploited a loophole. Congress must change the law. – The Washington Post
[5] Documents reveal massive ‘dark-money’ group boosted Democrats in 2018 – POLITICO
[6] Documents reveal massive ‘dark-money’ group boosted Democrats in 2018 – POLITICO