A Republican super PAC aligned with none other than Moscow Mitch McConnell is spending heavily in the North Carolina Democratic Senate primary. The Faith and Power PAC, formed earlier this year, has spent almost $3 million on the underdog candidate in the North Carolina primary, state Sen. Erica Smith. The PAC, which is funded entirely by McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund, aired ads earlier this month proclaiming Smith as the "only proven progressive" in the race and saying that the front-runner in the primary, former state Sen. Cal Cunningham, wasn't a true liberal. The president of the SLF, McConnell's former chief of staff Steven Law, says, "We stole a page out of Chuck Schumer’s playbook, and it’s been more successful than we could have imagined."
They didn't steal this from Schumer; they stole it from Vladimir Putin. One factor that makes it particularly clear where they got the idea: Smith is African American, Cunningham white. Pitting the lagging black candidate in an electorate that is heavily African American against a white candidate is exactly what Russia did do to try to foment racial tensions and resentments during an election. So OF COURSE McConnell is going to do it too.
Enough of this. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.
This puts Smith in the middle of a firestorm she never asked to be in, having to disavow the PAC’s support. In an interview with Politico, she said that "special interests and dark money should never play a role in an election," and made it clear that she has no connection at all to McConnell's group. It riles up Cunningham's supporters and forces him to respond to the ads as well.
All to prop up the weak Republican, Thom Tillis, who is using the ads and Cunningham's response in his own attacks on his likely opponent. The Moscow Mitch move is exactly what the Russians did and are probably still doing—creating chaos and discord to help the Republican win.