Inside One of the GOP’s Newest Money Machines

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The Center for Public Integrity’s Peter Stone has a profile of David Carney—George H.W. Bush adviser, Rick Perry consultant, and GOP operative. Carney is the founder and puppetmaster of Americans for Job Security, a shadowy Republican-leaning 501(c)(6) group that’s spent $9 million on negative ads this season. (Reporter Andy Kroll and I visited AJS’s address recently, which turned out to be a mailbox at a UPS store.)

As a non-profit business league, AJS doesn’t have to disclose its donors, making it an ideal partner for wealthy Republican donors who want to unload their cash quietly. Stone reports that the group has offered help to donors looking to cover their tracks, and dabbled in legally dubious campaign activities in Colorado, Texas, and Alaska:

“If you have a candidate, a campaign or an election that needs some help, we can be of some assistance,” was Carney’s message, according to the GOP source, who said he has known Carney for two decades and spoke on condition of anonymity because of his broad political ties. “What he was suggesting is, if you give us some money, we’ll spend it for you.”

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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