[J]ust two weeks before the primaries, a political action committee funded by the Republican Governors’ Association has spent nearly $100,000 on TV ads for Gov. Phil Scott.
The RGA, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that backs conservative gubernatorial candidates, has poured $225,000 into a PAC called “A Stronger Vermont” this cycle, according to the latest filings with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office.
The RGA’s donor list includes the Koch brothers, Blue Cross Blue Shield, AT&T, and Pfizer. It has been called the Republicans’ “dark-money moving machine.”
In 2016, the RGA used “A Stronger Vermont” to spend more than $2.8 million supporting Scott’s bid for governor. Much of their spending funded political advertisements criticizing his then-opponent, Democrat Sue Minter.
Filings show the PAC has once again started spending on Scott’s behalf.
The RGA donated $175,000 to the PAC on July 27. Four days later, A Stronger Vermont spent $96,000 with Pinpoint Media, a political media placement agency based out of Virginia, mostly on TV ads. The PAC spent another $4,000 on consulting with RedPrint Strategy, another Virginia-based media firm.
Brittney Wilson, Scott’s campaign manager, said it was a “pleasant surprise” to see the RGA’s backing once again. Like in 2016, she said the Scott campaign did not coordinate or solicit the organization’s support.
“They really did a nice job running ads that portrayed the governor in a fashion that he wants to be portrayed,” she said of the ads the RGA ran for Scott’s 2016 campaign.
VTDigger was not able to view the ads being run for this election cycle. The RGA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Scott has seen his approval ratings among Republican dive after signing new gun control laws in April, but he is not expected to have any trouble beating Keith Stern, a grocer and political novice, in the party’s primary on Aug. 14. However, turnout is expected to be extremely low.
Scott has come under criticism from Vermont Democrats for accepting the support of the RGA and the corporations and billionaires who bankroll it. All of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in this election cycle have pledged not to take corporate campaign donations (Christine Hallquist accepted $16,000 in corporate contributions before making that pledge.)
Wilson reiterated that Scott is not beholden to corporate interests just because he has accepted corporate donations, and said the governor didn’t even know who the Koch brothers were ahead of the 2016 campaign.
“We kind of joked that we didn’t know who the Koch brothers were,” she said “Maybe it was naive and stupid of me not to know but it’s not even a factor here in Vermont. We’re doing our own thing and the governor is certainly his own type of Republican.”
Scott has out-raised even the best-funded Democrat in the primary almost 2-to-1, according to the latest campaign finance filings in mid-July.
As of July 15, he had raised about $213,000 and spent $176,000. Donors included Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, Vermont-based GW Plastics, and pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
Christine Hallquist, a former energy executive running in the Democratic primary, had raised $132,000 to date and spent $109,000, as of the last filing deadline.
NEW: The @RGA is re-upping its “A Stronger Vermont” PAC on behalf of @GovPhilScott with a $175k cash infusion. The PAC paid $100K late last month for TV ads for Scott #vtpoli
— Neal P. Goswami (@nealgoswami) August 3, 2018
In response to a tweet by WCAX reporter Neal Goswami about the RGA’s latest support for Scott, Hallquist sent out an email blast asking supporters to donate to her campaign.
“We won’t raise them dollar for dollar, and we don’t need to. We just need enough to keep getting Christine’s message out there to Vermonters around the state” she wrote.
