Civics: Politics, Fund Raising, Lawfare and Legacy Media
This investigation was originally developed for The New York Times, where it underwent eight months of editing, multiple rounds of fact-checking, and independent replication of the underlying methodology. The piece had a scheduled publication date when requests for comment were sent. It was only after the Times reached out to the subjects of the investigation for routine comment that the Elias Law Group, representing the DCCC and DSCC, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the paper not publish. Although the paper’s fact-checkers and legal department later cleared the piece before sending out a second round of requests for comment, the Times ultimately decided to kill the piece.
The piece was subsequently slated for publication at The Bulwark, where it underwent additional fact-checking, data verification, and legal review. When requests for comment were sent to the subjects of the investigation, lawyers representing the Progressive Turnout Project and Mothership Strategies likewise responded with legal letters demanding that the article not run. From there, publication was repeatedly delayed. The piece cleared successive rounds of legal review. When I asked for a committed publication date after months of delay, The Bulwark conditioned publication on my accepting an extensive rewrite prepared by its editors that, in my assessment, removed key empirical findings without explanation, introduced claims contradicted by the data and fact-checking record, and presented the subjects’ legal defenses as my own conclusions. When I declined to publish under those terms, the piece was released back to me.
What follows is the complete investigation that emerged from this year-long process.
If you’ve ever donated to a Democratic campaign, you know the messages never stop: “All hope is lost.” “We’re BEGGING.” “Quadruple-match EXPIRES in 180 MINUTES!” They arrive at all hours, claiming to be “close to tears” because you haven’t sent $15.
Most of us dismiss them as annoying spam. But federal election records reveal a hidden population of seniors for whom these messages prove surprisingly effective. What reads as parody to one recipient may be psychologically triggering for another.
To understand how this system works, I combined contribution data from the Federal Election Commission with age data from voter registration lists, covering more than 300 million donations. The donors who send money in response to Democratic fundraising spam are overwhelmingly elderly, and a surprisingly concentrated group of them accounts for the bulk of the money raised.1
Looking closely at the donation data can be heartbreaking. An 85-year-old retiree in Oxford, Ohio made more than 7,800 donations totaling over $648,000 to Democratic causes, more than double the estimated value of his home. A 91-year-old woman residing in a senior living facility in Indianapolis donated over 25,000 times, totaling over $250,000, burning through money she may need for care.
As The New York Times reported in 2021, the all-caps writing and manufactured panic of political fundraising spam function as a filter, repelling savvy donors and taking advantage of the same cognitive vulnerabilities that make seniors targets for online fraud. A 2024 CNN investigation quoted a complaint from one person who discovered that their 93-year-old father was being inundated with Democratic donation appeals. “These fraudsters need to stop defrauding older people,” it read, “especially ones with mental impairments.”
