Today, new reporting from Real Clear Politics exposes how the Republican-aligned dark money group Fair Election Fund is taking credit for propping up Jill Stein and Cornel West’s spoiler campaigns by investing in paid media in critical swing states. By boosting Stein and West’s candidacies, these Republican allies aim to siphon votes from Vice President Harris and help Donald Trump win the election.  

In response, DNC Senior Advisor Adrienne Watson released the following statement: 

“Republicans are admitting here to buying nearly a million dollars of paid media to prop up Jill Stein and Cornel West’s spoiler candidacies. Stein delivered Trump the presidency in 2016 and she’s working alongside his closest allies to do it again in 2024. Thanks to Fair Election Fund for making it clear that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”

ICYMI: Real Clear Politics: Trump Allies Worked To Keep Jill Stein, Cornel West on Swing State Ballots

By: Philip Wegmann 

• The right has next to nothing in common with Jill Stein and Cornel West, but ideology isn’t the point… Those candidates have the potential to siphon votes away from Vice President Harris in swing states. This nightmare was enough to build a political machine designed to crush any candidate that could divide the anti-Trump coalition and cost Democrats the White House. 
• Candidates like this usually attract such a tiny share of the vote that they amount to a rounding error on election night, but in a close race, where margins are expected to be razor thin, they can be determinative.
• Enter the Fair Election Fund, the Republican-aligned dark money group now taking a victory lap.
• That dark money machine had been working since early this year to cull, first, the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and later, Stein and West.
• [In 2016,] Stein won more votes than Clinton lost by in Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump won that state by 23,000 votes. Stein carried 31,000. It was enough to earn Stein the… description of a “spoiler.”
• [T]he Fair Election Fund mobilized. They ran television ads, bought billboards, and even projected images on the North Carolina State Election Board’s building.
• They ran a similar strategy in other battleground states like Michigan, where both Stein and West remain on the ballot.
• The Fair Election Fund ran ads thanking Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin for keeping West on the ballot…
• The fact that [the founder of Fair Election Fund, former Georgia Rep. George Collins,] served four terms in Congress as a Republican and remains a close Trump ally isn’t lost on Democrats. 
• Said [Matt Bennett, executive vice president for Third Way], “It is the height of cynicism for Collins to be doing this.” He put the chances of Stein or West meaningfully competing at “literally 0.00%” and described the Green Party nominee as “an attractive nuisance,” who isn’t serious about environmental issues so much as she represents a serious political threat to Harris.