Corporate Dark Money Group Prepares to Spend Millions More in Attack Ads
Against Bernie Sanders
By Jackie Kucinich, The Daily Beast
06 March 20
Big Tent Project doesn't have to reveal its donors even as it plows millions
into taking down the Vermonter.
A dark money group opposing Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) presidential
campaign is set to drop more than $2 million on digital ads in three states
ahead of the March 10 primary, the executive director for the group
confirmed Friday.
The ads by Big Tent Project, an outside group formed by moderate Democrats
in the wake of Sanders rise in the Democratic field, will run in Michigan,
Idaho and Washington. All three are states Sanders won in 2016 and needs to
capture again in order to keep pace with newly-minted frontrunner, former
Vice President Joe Biden.
One of the ads will focus on the cost and impact of Sanders' signature for
all Medicare for All proposal, including tax increases, the loss of private
insurance and, the ad posits, Trump's re-election.
The Sanders campaign did not return a request for comment.
Sanders has appeared to falter after losses in several delegate-rich states
on Super Tuesday. But despite the changing dynamic of the race, Big Tent
Project is not letting up.
"Big Tent Project has spent nearly $7 million in South Carolina, Super
Tuesday and now Michigan, Washington and Idaho exposing Bernie's radical
record and ideas," said the group's executive director, Jonathan Kott. "Once
voters learn more about him they overwhelmingly reject his candidacy,
because they know the only thing he can actually deliver is another four
years of Trump."
Despite getting involved relatively late in the primary, Big Tent Project
has managed to get Sanders attention. In a recent appearance on The Rachel
Maddow Show, the Senator said that the group's presence in the race
"bothers" him.
"There's a group called the Big Tent, I don't know if you're familiar with
that," he said. "It is a super PAC funded by corporate interests, I suspect
the drug companies, insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry. They're
pouring millions of dollars into ugly negative ads against me, against our
campaign."
Big Tent Project is not, as Sanders said, a super PAC. It is a 501c4
organization, which means that it is not required to disclose its donors and
has not done so.
"[T]hat is the kind of political corruption that has got to end," Sanders
continued. "We need to end super PACs. We need to move to one person, one
vote. We need to restore democracy in this country."
