Asked on the debate stage last week by Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, likely her closest competitor in the Democratic primary for Vermont’s sole U.S. House seat, if she would reject super PAC spending on her behalf — and even go as far as to hold a press conference denouncing it — Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint did not hesitate.
“Yes,” was Balint’s confident, one-word answer.
“No further questions,” Gray replied, grinning broadly.
Federal campaign law imposes a cap on how much individual donors or corporations can give to political candidates. But those rules don’t apply to independent expenditure-only committees — better known as super PACs — which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against candidates. There is one catch: Campaigns aren’t allowed to coordinate with super PACs, which must act independently.
But campaigns have found a deceptively simple work-around to the prohibition against coordination: redboxing. “The Little Red Boxes Making a Mockery of Campaign Finance Laws” was the title of a recent New York Times article detailing the practice.
It works like this: On their websites, campaigns will use certain commonly known signals and phrasing — a typical construction is “voters need to know” — to highlight a message and key parts of the electorate they want that message to reach. When campaigns want to indirectly solicit TV ads, for example, they might write “voters need to see”; if they think direct mail will work better, “voters need to read.”
The page will usually highlight contrasts between their candidate and opponents that the campaign wants emphasized, and include B-roll and a photo gallery available for download.
Often but not always, the not-so oblique instructions will be encircled in a red box.
A little red button appears on the bottom of the “Meet Becca” page on Balint’s website that says “Learn more about Becca.” It leads to a gallery of photos, and then, in all caps: “Primary voters need to hear that Becca is the candidate in this race who has delivered and been a champion for rural Vermonters on the issues that matter most.”
The page goes on to describe key achievements for Balint during her time in the Vermont Senate — and takes care to highlight part of her biography that set her apart from Gray, although Balint’s chief rival is never mentioned directly. Over and over again, the page reiterates that Balint “has the track record to prove” she can get things done for Vermont. (Gray’s current role is largely ceremonial.)
VTDigger sent Balint’s website to Campaign Legal Center, a national campaign finance reform nonprofit that has worked to raise awareness about the tactic of redboxing.
That’s what’s happening here, they said.
“This type of coordination between supposedly independent super PACs and outside groups exposes the inadequacy of our existing campaign finance rules, which allow those groups to raise and spend unlimited amounts to support candidates based on the premise that their campaign activities are truly independent from the candidates they support,” Erin Chlopak, senior director for campaign finance at Campaign Legal Center, said in a written statement.
Saul Shorr, a Democratic media strategist who has worked on state and national campaigns, reviewed Balint’s campaign website at VTDigger’s request. He, too, thought it appeared to be a clear case of redboxing.
“It’s a little like abracadabra. The magic words are ‘Somebody needs to hear, see, whatever.’ Because otherwise, why would you write it that way? You would just write ‘Here’s my candidate,’” said Shorr, who was media consultant to Priorities USA, the pro-Obama Super PAC that helped the then-president defeat Mitt Romney and win reelection in 2012.
(Shorr is not working on either of the congressional campaigns this cycle. He said it’s possible he or his wife might have donated to Gray’s campaign but couldn’t recall. He wasn’t listed in her campaign finance filings with the Federal Election Commission through March 31.)
Balint’s campaign manager, Natalie Silver, noted that no super PACs had yet to appear on to the scene in the race. And she denied that the page was intended to communicate with such groups.
“The reason that is there is to communicate to people going to our website about like, what our path to win is, what Becca’s about, what her accomplishments are,” she said. Pressed about the specific phrasing used, Silver dismissed the question as a “grammatical criticism.”
“If you don’t like our writing — sorry,” she said.
Silver also took the opportunity to criticize Gray for a $5,000 contribution she received from American Crystal Sugar, a sugar-beet cooperative and one of the biggest corporate donors in Washington. And she implied Gray had not received sufficient scrutiny from the media about it.
“No one has followed up on that with her,” she said. “So I think that that merits a lot of conversation.”
The cooperative gives to Republicans and Democrats alike, but it came under scrutiny recently for being among the largest donors to GOP politicians who voted against certifying the presidential elections in 2020.
“If Becca had taken money from people who had supported overturning the election, I would tell her to give it back and I think that Molly Gray should do the same,” Silver said.
Samantha Sheehan, Gray’s campaign manager, accused Balint of “stunning” hypocrisy.
“Senator Balint stood on the debate stage and promised Vermonters she would reject Super PACs. Before the sun rose the next day, she used her campaign website to invite them in,” she wrote in an email to VTDigger.
As for Silver’s jab about American Crystal Sugar, she responded that the Balint campaign was engaging in “finger-pointing to cover (their) own dishonesty.”
Sheehan also noted all members of Vermont’s current congressional delegation have received donations from the sugar cooperative at various points in their careers.
