Democrat Who Ran Unopposed Received Mysteriously Massive Donation
It’s an oddity, needless to say, when someone who’s running unopposed in the primary for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives receives a $200,000 donation for his race. After all, it’s not going to improve his chances of winning — they’re already 100 percent.
If it all smells a bit rotten, prepare for that stench to become overwhelming when you find out who the donor was: Sam Bankman-Fried.
According to Chicago’s WLS-TV, a PAC funded by Bankman-Fried — the disgraced former FTX CEO — spent $200,000 on independent expenditures for Democratic Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s primary campaign.
He was unopposed in the Democratic race and faced little chance of defeat in the general election in Illinois’ deep-blue 4th Congressional District, which includes much of Chicago.
It just so happens that Garcia is a top candidate in the 2023 Chicago mayoral election, with polls showing him leading embattled Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
”Garcia has benefited from high name recognition in the mayor’s race, and early on the polling puts him as the front runner,” WLS reported.
“The poll, paid for by a union that has endorsed him, shows Garcia leading the field with 25%, with Lightfoot in second at 18%, followed by Paul Vallas at 14% and Willie Wilson with 10%,” it said.
However, those numbers could suffer from optics — particularly because Garcia, after getting $200,000 from Bankman-Fried’s PAC, spent Tuesday in a House Financial Services Committee hearing on FTX.
No, not to answer questions — to ask them.
He’s a member of the committee, after all. Because of course he is.
The only reason someone would want a congressman running unopposed to know that he had $200,000 worth of his support is if he expected something from the congressman — and in the case of the Notorious SBF, most of his campaign donation activity and time on Capitol Hill was spent trying to convince politicians cryptocurrency didn’t need strict regulation.
“When you’ve got folks putting that much money into a race that’s unopposed, you’ve got to ask questions about what are they really trying to do, what are they trying to influence,” Democratic mayoral candidate Kam Buckner said.
He’s not the only one; as Breitbart noted, “critics are painting the congressman as a corrupt, machine-style politician as the mayor’s race heats up.”
As for Garcia’s campaign, if you’ve ever heard one of these pro forma denials before, you practically could have written its response yourself.
“These are misleading and desperate attacks from floundering campaigns,” a spokeswoman for Garcia said.
”Congressman Garcia is and always has been a skeptic of cryptocurrencies and continues to advocate for stronger financial regulations on an industry he considers ripe for fraud.”
In the meantime, Garcia is scrambling to mitigate the damage via what one might call ineffective altruism. He gave a $2,900 donation to a Chicago-based charity last week to offset a direct donation given to his campaign by the SBF PAC.
As for the rest, however, he said the money was indirect expenditures that were completely out of his control.
Crain’s Chicago Business reported that money from the FTX-backed Protect Our Future PAC was spent on texts and mailers for the Garcia primary campaign — which, let us again note, was an unopposed one.
As for SBF himself, just when Garcia could use the money, he’s been extradited to the United States from the Bahamas after being charged “with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission and commit campaign finance violations,” according to a Department of Justice news release Dec. 13.
“As this indictment demonstrates, the U.S. Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and prosecute alleged criminal wrongdoing in the financial system and violations of federal elections laws,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the release.
Man. And just when it really mattered for “Chuy” Garcia. Of all the rotten luck.
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