In Texas’ toss-up U.S. Senate race, Democrat James Talarico routinely trashes “billionaire mega-donors” and big-money politics.
But buried inside Talarico’s campaign website is a messaging wish list for super PACs inclined to produce and run ads supporting his campaign against Republican Ken Paxton. Among Talarico’s asks: Tell Texas voters he supports capping insulin costs and “affordable prescription drugs from Canada” and opposes “puppet politicians.”
Lone Star Rising PAC, a super PAC primarily funded by billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, responded to the Talarico campaign’s bat signal. It spent hundreds of thousands of dollars this year across major Texas media markets on an ad praising Talarico’s advocacy for “cap[ping] the cost of insulin at $25” and “affordable prescription drugs from Canada” while fighting against “puppet politicians.”
More than a dozen Democratic candidates in the nation’s hottest congressional races have embraced “redboxing,” a controversial election-season technique that provides super PACs and other moneyed outside groups with campaign materials without, technically, violating federal laws against coordination.
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Five of these candidates removed “redboxing” content after inquiries from NOTUS.
Such materials, which are sometimes surrounded by a red box on the campaign website, include messaging priorities and specific instructions for where and how to spend on advertising, according to a NOTUS analysis of campaign websites for candidates in the closest House and Senate races as rated by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
At least one Republican candidate also features a “redboxing” memo, as do Democratic and Republican party committees, which are barred from directly coordinating messaging with super PACs.
Critics have characterized “redboxing” as an effort to circumvent anti-coordination laws, which were put in place to insulate campaigns from potential political influence from donors or groups. The practice is either patently “illegal” or, at least, violates the “spirit of campaign-finance regulation,” argue some supporters of stricter campaign finance rules.
But the Federal Election Commission, the government agency that interprets and enforces federal campaign finance laws, has previously determined that “redbox” requests posted publicly, such as on a website, and available to a general audience do not count as illegal coordination.
Democratic and Republican political operatives alike acknowledge that in practice, the average voter is not in a position to act on “redboxing” requests, nor are they the intended target. Super PACs and other outside groups, in contrast, may have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in reserve to help get their preferred candidate elected — and they’re on the lookout for campaigns’ wink-wink, nod-nod guidance.
The FEC has been effectively sidelined from making any new rulings this election cycle because it doesn’t have enough commissioners to cast binding votes.
In the nation’s closest congressional races, significantly more Democrats than Republicans use “redboxing” messages on their websites this year, NOTUS’ review indicates.
Democratic campaign websites with specific messaging and distribution requests include Jamie Ager in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, Christina Bohannan in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, Rep. Kathy Castor in Florida’s 14th Congressional District, Pia Dandiya in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District, Christina Hines in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, Bobby Pulido in Texas’s 15th Congressional District and Tom Suozzi in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. None of the campaigns responded to requests for comment.
In New Hampshire, three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in the state’s 1st Congressional District are using “redboxing” ahead of their Sept. 8 primary: Stefany Shaheen, Carleigh Beriont and Maura Sullivan.
Sullivan’s media page says her “name should come up within the first five seconds of any ad.”
A recent video ad from super PAC Vote Vets waits a little longer — 11 seconds — before mentioning Sullivan by name. But the ad incorporates several specific themes and details from Sullivan’s “redboxing” page, including that she waited tables in college, served in Iraq and would fight corruption. Both the “redbox page” and Vote Vets ad use the phrase “new generation of leadership.”
Sullivan spokesperson Emmett Avery declined to comment. Representatives for Shaheen and Beriont did not respond to repeated messages.
Five Democratic candidates pulled down their redbox-style media pages after NOTUS reached out for comment: Reps. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Adam Gray of California and Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico; Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd Congressional District; and William Lawrence in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District.
“We have no comment at this time,” Lawrence spokesperson Mya Legel said in an email to NOTUS. The Gray, Gonzalez, Vasquez and Villegas campaigns did not respond to several requests for comment, including on their decisions to take down the redbox-style pages.
The “Media” tab on Villegas’ campaign website now redirects to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “redboxing” page for the race, which includes specific talking points and a list of ZIP codes to target for digital advertising.
Party committees are also legally prohibited from coordinating with outside groups. The DCCC has “redboxing” pages for more than a dozen other competitive races, including “toss-up” races in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, Texas’ 34th Congressional District and Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.
“The messages we post on these pages are intended for the general public and are fully consistent with the law and FEC guidance,” DCCC Communications Director Courtney Rice said in an emailed statement to NOTUS.
Talarico’s “redbox” page, which his campaign updated and slimmed down in mid-August, previously stated it was “most important” to reach voters in the San Antonio, Austin and Harlingen-McAllen media markets.
The Lone Star Rising PAC aired its ads in each of these markets and several more, including Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. Collectively, prospective voters have seen the ad nearly 1.9 million times, according to political ad tracking firm AdImpact.
The Talarico campaign did not respond to several requests for comment. Lone Star Rising PAC also did not respond to requests for comment.
A few Republicans in key contests have also used “redboxing.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party committee supporting House Republicans, has its own “redboxing” page with specific instructions and requests for spending in competitive races.
The NRCC page for the “toss-up” race in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District reads: “It’s imperative that voters are educated on Toledo broadcast, streaming and in their mailboxes districtwide, particularly in Henry, Putnam, and Paulding Counties (which are in the newly drawn OH-09), that [Rep. Marcy] Kaptur has voted for far-left policies that are out of [sic] out-of-touch and make our communities less safe.”
The NRCC did not respond to requests for comment from NOTUS.
And in Florida’s 25th Congressional District race, Republican candidate Scott Singer’s campaign website published a memo last month with information on “How Voters Need to Receive Positive Information on Singer.” The Singer campaign does not link to the memo through a “Media Kit” or other vague label, as others do, but within the image of a thin line at the bottom of the campaign website — an unusual placement that a general audience would be less likely to notice.
Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center and a former enforcement attorney at the FEC, is one of the leading critics of “redboxing.” There is no exception explicitly written into the law for coordination via public platforms, Ghosh argues, and the practice undermines anti-coordination law that’s intended to ensure independence.
But “when big money is directly underwriting campaigns,” Ghosh told NOTUS, “you end up with Congress, White House, an elected government that is directly indebted to big money interests, and nothing could be more corrosive to everyday Americans having a voice and being actually represented in their government.”
Sean Cooksey, a former Republican FEC commissioner, dismissed Campaign Legal Center’s stance as “pearl-clutching.”
“Redboxing is not illegal,” and is “not a threat to democracy,” Cooksey told NOTUS via email. “I believe free speech is fundamental to democratic government and individual liberty.”
As recently as 2022, Cooksey and his former colleagues at the FEC, including Trump-ousted Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub, dismissed a complaint brought by Campaign Legal Center alleging coordination between a campaign and super PAC through social media.
When asked about candidates such as Talarico who campaign on getting big money out of politics but have these redboxing pages, Ghosh said it’s “a messaging point that maybe the candidates genuinely believe.”
“But for purposes of their own campaign and how they’re conducting their efforts to get elected, it’s clear that if they’re redboxing, they are asking super PACs to support them,” Ghosh said.
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