Untangling the DFL money machine

Campaign finance reports for 2024 reveal layers upon layers of donors to the state Democratic cause. As an example, we look at the money brought in by the large Democratic-aligned political action committee (PAC) Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM).

In 2024, ABM took in nearly $5 million, and all of it came from just seven (7) donors:

The largest donor to ABM was the related PAC “We All Do Better,” providing more than $3 million. We All Do Better is ABM’s principle fundraising entity, which donates all of its cash raised to ABM.

Tracing the original source of the cash proves to be difficult. As an example, We All Do Better received $300,000 in 2024 from a now discontinued ABM entity, funded by a donation from Raleigh, North Carolina:

To follow the money: $300,000 from unknown sources–> Strategic Victory 501c4 –> Strategic Victory Fund (NC) –> old ABM –> We All Do Better–> new ABM. Along the way, the same $300,000 donation gets triple-counted in Minnesota in 2024.

All told, Strategic Victory Fund of Raleigh was the ABM network’s largest single donor, totaling almost $1.2 million. Alida Messinger, Rockefeller oil heiress and the ex-wife of former Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, was a close second at $1.1 million.

Digging into its donor lists reveals that most of ABM’s 2024 cash originated from out-of-state entities.

Double counting seems to be a deliberate strategy among the main Democratic party vehicles in the state. Here’s a chart tracking the same $ moving back and forth in 2024:

ABM’s smallest 2024 donor ($22,000) is an entity named the Minnesota Family Prosperity Project, which is, in turn, funded entirely by the 501c4 dark money nonprofit North Star Prosperity. The Project’s $22,000 donation was the only one made by the entity in 2024. The Project spent the remainder of its $1.8 million cash hoard campaigning to elect Democrats to the state House of Representatives, an effort which failed to preserve the Democrats’ majority last year.

Tax records indicate that the St. Paul-based North Star Prosperity nonprofit took in more than $7 million during its first three years of existence (2021-2023).