Staff Reports
In December, a political committee linked to George Soros gave a substantial boost to the campaign of Raphael Warnock, a state senator from Georgia. This group is affiliated with a dark money organization.
The two candidates, who are running in the most expensive midterm election contest, will face off on Tuesday. They are Herschel Walker, a former football player, and Raphael Warnock, a pastor. A political action committee known as Black Voters Matter ActionPAC previously spent over $141,000 supporting the pastor.
From November 21 to December 3, the superPAC gave almost $400,000 to various entities for various types of ads. One of the biggest donations was to Plateau Event Productions, which was for vehicle ads. According to a filing, the group gave the company $160,000 on Dec. 3.
The Georgia Republican Party criticized the actions of Raphael Warnock, saying that his campaign finance reports show that he accepted large donations from groups that are known to be radical. According to Repass, the party should urge Georgians to look into his record.
The BVM ActionPAC was launched in 2020 with the help of a group linked to George Soros. Through DemocracyPAC, which is a political action committee that the billionaire partly financed, the group received about $1 million. LaTosha Brown and Cliff Alright, who are the co-founders of the organization, also established two separate organizations. One of these is a charity called the BVM Fund.
Both of these organizations are focused on voter turnout and issues related to elections. In 2021, they backed Raphael Warnock's successful run against Kelly Loeffler, a Republican businesswoman. While these are often referred to as dark money groups, the BVM Fund's 149 donors were listed on its tax forms for 2020. These types of organizations are not required to disclose their donors to the IRS.
Some of the individuals who gave to the BVM Fund included the Windward Fund and the New Venture Fund, which are both managed by Arabella Advisors, a dark money network in the US. They also included organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the Tides Foundation.
Today is the last day of early voting in Georgia! Come thru family. Let’s GO! #WeWontBlackDown @BlackVotersMtr pic.twitter.com/yOQUoZJLS1
— LaTosha Brown (@MsLaToshaBrown) December 2, 2022
BVM ActionPAC has raised over $2 million from December 2020 to November 2022, and it has spent about $2.4 million. Most of the money went to supporting Democratic Senate candidates such as Mandela Barnes, Val Demings, and Cheri Beasley.
It's not clear how much the BVM Fund has spent so far in the Georgia runoff. However, according to an earlier statement by the group's co-founder, it planned to spend around $1.7 million on supporting Raphael Warnock.
According to the Washington Examiner, which has been following the campaign of Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, has spent about $1 million on security. He has also been criticized for his church's ownership of a low-income apartment building known as Columbia Tower. The building's residents have been forced to move out due to their past-due rent of $28.55.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Washington Examiner.
