Mitch McConnell Funneled Cash to a PAC Pitting Arab and Jewish Voters Against Harris

A super PAC allied with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., poured money into a group that has deployed inflammatory tactics designed to pit Muslim and Jewish voters against Kamala Harris. 

The McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund gave $1.5 million to the FC PAC, formerly known as the Future Coalition PAC, which has faced criticism for its wedge tactics this election cycle.

In ads targeted at Arab voters in Michigan, the PAC highlighted the Jewish faith of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, a move that observers decried as antisemitic.

A recent Snapchat ad from the FC PAC targeting ZIP codes with large Arab populations in Michigan stated that Harris would be “a real pro-Israel president, right when we need one.” It added that her husband Doug Emhoff would be “the first Jewish presidential spouse ever!”

Flush with money from the Senate Leadership Fund as well as a new $2 million cash infusion from a dark-money nonprofit reportedly funded by Elon Musk, Thursday’s campaign finance report shows the FC PAC is not slowing down ahead of the November 5 election.

Super-Sized Attacks

When supporters of George W. Bush wanted to spread scurrilous rumors about the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during the 2000 presidential primary, they found a low-tech, low-cost way to target their audience while remaining anonymous: They put racist fliers on the windshields of cars outside a debate. 

Accusations flew that Bush hatchet man Karl Rove was behind dirty tricks targeting McCain, but the campaign disavowed it. No organization’s name was attached, and no Federal Election Commission filings were linked to the actions.

Today, a raft of ugly campaign ads — some playing on stereotypes, some leveraging misdirection — come not from the shadows, but from FEC-registered groups with millions in their war chests. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the proliferation of anonymous donations, and online ad microtargeting, practitioners of the dark arts of politics can wield a bigger bankroll than ever before. Well-known political operatives staff the groups and carry out their strategies. And candidates like Donald Trump do little to wash their hands of the endeavor.

Anna Massoglia, the investigations manager for OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks election spending, said, “The scale, to some extent, is unprecedented.”

To an untrained observer, some of the ads, such as the Snapchat spot in Michigan, might appear as if they were coming from the Harris campaign itself.

But by targeting areas with large Arab populations, such as Dearborn, the goal is to depress turnout rather than rally support. It’s a cynical ploy that appears to presume that Snapchat users in those areas are disgusted by the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel, or that dubious tropes of Arab antisemitism hold true.

The tell is another ad run in Pennsylvania, which has a substantial Jewish population, stating “two-faced Kamala Harris is secretly campaigning for Palestine, and trying to get away with it.”

The FC PAC lists a longtime Pennsylvania Republican operative who did not respond to request for comment as its treasurer. The PAC is financially backed by a dark-money nonprofit that has reportedly received funding from Elon Musk, Building America’s Future.

Few other details about Musk’s role in the nonprofit group have trickled out. The FC PAC did not respond to a request for comment on whether Musk has been involved in directing its operations.

Trump in recent weeks has appeared at Building America’s Future events and is scheduled to do so again in Pennsylvania next week.

The FC PAC received a $3 million donation from Building America’s Future earlier this year that was supplemented with the additional $2 million on October 7, according to a Thursday campaign finance report. The Senate Leadership Fund’s contribution was on October 16, well after critics accused the FC PAC of running antisemitic ads.

In recent weeks, the PAC’s ads have taken aim at Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin in addition to Harris.

Neither the Trump campaign nor the Senate Leadership Fund responded to requests for comment.

The FC PAC was previously called the Future Coalition PAC until it filed paperwork with the FEC last week to change its name. That shift came after a longtime progressive nonprofit called the Future Coalition put out a statement blasting the group.

“We completely denounce the anti-Semitic and hateful advertisements by ‘Future Coalition PAC’ leveraging our name and brand for political actions that do not reflect our values or principles,” the original group said in a statement. “We urge our supporters, partners, and the wider public to remain vigilant and discerning about the sources of political messaging in this time of concerning attempts to misinform and stew division.”

Hidden Funding

Remaining vigilant about political advertising is more difficult than ever, however. When shadowy players targeted McCain in 2000, they kept their names concealed — either to avoid legal issues or to maintain distance from those tactics.

These days, the FC PAC appears to follow all of the FEC rules for disclosure. The difference is that federal courts have shredded campaign finance rules to make them almost meaningless. With a pair of decisions in 2010, Citizens United and SpeechNow.org, the courts opened the door on unlimited contributions from corporate or nonprofit donors to “independent” campaign groups.

Taking advantage of those rulings, Building America’s Future has donated most of the FC PAC’s funding, which the latter has used to run a torrent of online ads on Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat that have racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

Building America’s Future itself does not have to disclose its donors. What little insight the public has into the nonprofit’s funding comes from reporting in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times that it has received money from Musk.

“One of the biggest things we’re seeing is not so much big-name corporations spending corporate treasury money on campaign spending independently, but what we see are 501c4s (nonprofits) being created as a mechanism for concealing where the money being used for a PAC is coming from,” said Erin Chlopak, the senior director for campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center.

The FC PAC has ticked boxes on campaign finance reports indicating that its ads both support and oppose Harris. There is nothing to stop a group from doing so, according to campaign finance experts.

“An ad that purported to speak on behalf of a candidate when the speaker didn’t have the authority to do that — that would violate a law. But beyond that, the courts have held that a number of times that you can’t regulate the content of political messages,” Chlopak said.

The microtargeting employed by FC PAC is also used by Building America’s Future and affiliated groups in the profusion of ads they have run on social media. Building America’s Future employs several of the same campaign contractors, according to FEC disclosures.

Massoglia uncovered a group tied to Building America’s Future called “Progress 2028” highlighting exaggerated or outdated policy stances from Harris, which seems designed to turn off moderate or conservative voters. The group’s name appears to be a play on Project 2025, the conservative wish list for the next Trump administration that has turned into a liability for his campaign.

“We know we have Kamala on our side when it comes to banning fracking, but did you know that Kamala wasn’t just a supporter of the Green New Deal — she was the first 2020 presidential candidate to fully champion it?” asks one ad, which has been shown over 1 million times in swing states, including Pennsylvania.

Harris once did support banning fracking and the Green New Deal, but she has backed away from both positions on the campaign trail.

Other ad campaigns supported by Building America’s future have attempted to target Black voters with messages about the administration’s proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, or young men who love Zyn — a nicotine pouch with a cult following that once included Tucker Carlson.

“There are so many different fictitious names they’re using as well, and all of these are targeting very specific voting blocs,” Massoglia said. “Also the fact that they’re focusing ads on both sides of different issues … pitting them against each other, is also really noteworthy.”

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