Follow the Power

Let me tell you how democracy actually dies. Not with jackboots and manifestos. With spreadsheets and Super PACs.

You want to know why your congressman sounds like he’s reading from a script written by someone who’s never set foot in your district? Because he essentially is. The script’s authors are sitting in D.C. offices funded by billionaires you’ve never heard of, running ideological PACs that have turned primaries into auction houses where democracy goes to the highest bidder.

Here’s what nobody tells you about modern American politics: The general election is theater. The primary is where power actually changes hands. And primaries have been completely captured by interests that represent maybe 1% of the American public.

I’ve got the receipts. Let’s walk through them.

The Takeover You Never Noticed

Remember when business PACs ran everything? Yeah, me too. It was corrupt, but at least those organizations represented actual economic interests—thousands of employees, entire industries, tangible stakes in governance. They wanted tax breaks and regulations that helped their bottom line. Corrupt? Sure. But comprehensible.

That system is dead.

Since 2010, ideological PACs have gone from bit players to the dominant force in primaries. We’re talking about a 6-10x increase in spending, adjusted for inflation. Business PACs? They’re getting outspent at rates that would make a hedge fund manager blush.

Let me put this in perspective: In the average primary today, ideological PACs drop more money than business PACs spent during their peak influence years. These aren’t organizations representing workers or industries or even coherent economic philosophies. They’re vanity projects for billionaires who’ve decided their personal ideological fever dreams should determine your representation.

The Math That Should Terrify You

Here’s what the Unite America Institute found when they actually ran the numbers—something journalists apparently forgot how to do:

When ideological PACs back a different candidate than business and labor PACs, their candidate wins 4 times more often.

Read that again. When the people who actually have to live with policy outcomes (businesses and workers) prefer one candidate, and the ideological zealots prefer another, the zealots win 80% of the time.

That’s not democracy. That’s oligarchy with extra steps.

Since 2012, the number of ideological PACs backing a candidate predicts primary vote share better than any other factor. Not endorsements. Not constituent service. Not voting record. Not even scandals. Just how many rich people’s pet PACs decide you’re sufficiently pure.

The Purity Test Industrial Complex

These PACs don’t care about governance. They care about ideological scorecards that read like they were written by someone who learned about politics from Twitter.

The playbook is devastatingly simple:

* Create a “scorecard” based on votes that sound good in fundraising emails

* Threaten any politician who breaks 90% compliance

* Drop $2 million in their primary if they call your bluff

* Watch everyone else fall in line

You know what doesn’t make it onto these scorecards? Whether the highway bill included funding for your district. Whether the farm bill actually helps farmers. Whether any of this actually works.

Governance requires compromise. Scorecards require purity. Guess which one wins in the new system?

The 27 Million Americans Who Can’t Fight Back

Want to know the real kicker? The people most affected by this ideological PAC takeover—independent voters—can’t even participate in most primaries.

Twenty-seven million Americans are locked out of the primaries that actually decide their representation. These aren’t fringe voters. They’re 33% of the electorate. They’re younger, more likely to be veterans, and they’re paying $287 million in taxes to fund elections they can’t vote in.

In 85% of districts with closed primaries, the general election is meaningless—the seat is safe for one party. So when ideological PACs capture the primary, they’ve captured the seat. And the fastest-growing segment of voters can’t do anything about it.

The system is perfectly designed to prevent accountability. The extremists love it.

How The Extraction Operation Works

Let me walk you through an actual primary hit.

Week 1-4: Ideological PACs poll the district. They’re not looking for what voters want—they’re looking for what attacks will stick. Immigration? Transgender issues? Gun rights? They’re searching for the nerve to hit.

Week 5-8: Test mailers go out. Different messages to different neighborhoods. They’re A/B testing democracy like it’s a social media ad campaign. The mailers that generate the most calls to the campaign? Those become the television ads.

Week 9-12: Saturation bombing. The average primary voter will see 8-13 pieces of mail, all variations on whatever theme tested best. The messages don’t have to be true. They don’t have to be fair. They just have to move numbers.

Week 13-14: The “positive” contrast ads. After destroying the incumbent for three months, they’ll run one ad about their handpicked candidate. He’s a “conservative fighter” or a “progressive champion.” Nobody knows what he actually believes because that’s not the point. The point is he’ll vote however the PAC tells him to.

Election Day: Turnout is 30%. The motivated extremists show up. The exhausted middle stays home. The PAC’s candidate wins with 6% of eligible voters.

The Aftermath: Every other politician in the state sees what happened. They adjust their votes accordingly. Not because their constituents want it—because they don’t want to be next.

The Solution Nobody Wants To Hear

The Unite America Institute found something interesting when they looked at states with open primaries—places where all voters can participate regardless of party registration.

In open primaries, ideological PAC money is 75% less effective.

Read that again. Simply letting all voters participate neutralizes three-quarters of the advantage these PACs have built.

In closed primaries, backing from 20 ideological PACs boosts a candidate’s vote share by 9.4 percentage points—usually enough to win. In open primaries? Same backing only gets you 2.4 points. That’s the difference between kingmaking and noise.

You know why this works? Because normal people—the exhausted majority who just want functional government—can actually vote. When turnout goes from 12% to 25%, the zealots lose their mathematical advantage.

Why This Won’t Change

Here’s the part where I’m supposed to give you hope. Where I tell you about the reform movement that’s going to fix this. Where I pretend there’s some groundswell of support for open primaries.

There isn’t.

The parties love closed primaries because they think it protects them from infiltration. (Joke’s on them—the infiltration already happened, just with money instead of voters.)

The ideological PACs love closed primaries because it makes their money more effective.

The politicians who survived the current system love it because they’ve already paid the protection money.

The only people who hate this system are voters. And when has that mattered?

The West Virginia Model Is Going National

Remember Craig Blair from the first and second articles? The 22-year incumbent who got primaried for voting like a normal human occasionally? That’s not an aberration. That’s the business model.

The groups that took him out—Make Liberty Win, Stand For Us PAC, West Virginia Family Foundation—they’re not going away. They’re franchising. Every state now has its versions. Same playbook, different letterheads.

They’ve learned that you don’t need to win general elections to control government. You just need to win primaries. And primaries are cheap. A $2 million gubernatorial primary campaign in West Virginia gets you more policy leverage than $20 million in a Pennsylvania Senate race.

The return on investment is spectacular. For the price of a decent Manhattan penthouse, you can own a congressional vote for two years. For the price of a yacht, you can reshape an entire state’s delegation.

What This Actually Means For You

Your representation is being auctioned to people who think compromise is treason and governance is a purity test.

Your congressman is more afraid of a primary challenge from someone who’s never held office than he is of you.

Your senator votes based on scorecards created by 25-year-old ideologues in D.C. who’ve never visited your state.

Your government is being held hostage by maybe 500 ultra-wealthy ideologues nationwide who’ve figured out how to hack democracy through its weakest point: primaries.

And unless you’re willing to register with a party you might hate just to vote in a primary you shouldn’t have to care about, there’s nothing you can do about it.

The Uncomfortable Reality

This is how democracy actually ends. Not with a coup. With a systematic capture of the machinery by interests that represent almost nobody but have figured out how to game the system.

The framers worried about faction. They didn’t anticipate faction with unlimited money and surgical targeting capabilities. They didn’t anticipate primaries that lock out independents. They didn’t anticipate a system where 6% of voters could effectively control the government.

But here we are.

The permanent campaign mode I described in the first article? This is why it exists. Politicians can never stop running because the next primary is always coming, and the ideological PACs are always watching, scorecards in hand.

The propaganda torrent from the second article? This is who’s funding it. Not parties. Not candidates. Ideological PACs with unlimited budgets and zero accountability.

This is the system. It’s not broken. It’s working exactly as the people who captured it intended.

The question isn’t whether this is sustainable. It’s not. The question is what replaces it when it finally collapses. And whether we’ll have any say in what comes next.

One Final Point

I’ve spent years watching this system metastasize. I’ve seen good people driven from office for the crime of occasionally thinking for themselves. I’ve seen extremists elevated for no reason beyond their willingness to be controlled.

The most maddening part? Everyone in politics knows this is happening. The operatives know. The donors know. The politicians definitely know. But nobody wants to be the one to say it out loud because the system punishes truth-telling harder than it punishes corruption.

So we pretend primary challenges are about “accountability” and “representing the base.” We pretend ideological PACs are about “principles” and “fighting for values.” We pretend this is democracy.

It’s not. It’s a hostile takeover wearing democracy’s skin suit.

And until we’re honest about what’s actually happening, we can’t even begin to fix it.

Data sources: Unite America Institute, “The Influence of Special Interests in Primary Elections” (2025)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Season 1

* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode

* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda

* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries

* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters

* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover Strategy

* Article 6 - The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear Ranked Ballots

* Article 7 - Buckley v. Valeo: The 1976 Decision That Built America’s Dark Money Architecture

* Article 8 - We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

* Article 9 - When Silicon Valley Meets Appalachia: The Systematic Failure of Campaign Technology in Rural America

The System That Now Runs American Politics

Something fundamental shifted in American politics, and most people don’t realize it yet.

We’re not in a temporary crisis. We’re not dealing with an anomaly that will correct itself. We’re witnessing a structural reorganization of how political power operates—one that’s being driven by technology, enabled by law, and defended by inertia.

The old system is dead. We just haven’t fully absorbed what replaces it.

Let me explain what I mean, because this affects how you understand every race, every primary, every political story you see over the next five years.

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THE OLD SYSTEM (AND WHY IT PROTECTED YOU)

For most of American political history, there was a clear hierarchy:

Parties controlled messaging. If you ran as a Republican in a Republican district, the party apparatus helped you message. You didn’t have to build your own communication infrastructure. The party did that. Local party chairs, state party communications, national messaging—it was coordinated around you.

Parties protected members. If you were an incumbent with a voting record that could be attacked, the party mobilized resources to defend you. They couldn’t prevent primary challenges, but they could make those challenges expensive and difficult. An incumbent with party backing was genuinely hard to remove.

Parties coordinated strategy. The party decided which races were winnable, which candidates had the best shot, and where resources should flow. This sounds like centralized control (and it was), but it also meant that experienced, thoughtful people were protected long enough to develop actual expertise in governance.

Candidates competed primarily in general elections. Primaries existed, but they weren’t the existential threat they are now. You could usually survive a primary challenge if you had party backing. The real competition was in the general election, where party affiliation actually meant something and swing voters actually decided outcomes.

This system had real flaws. It was sometimes corrupt. It protected entrenched interests. It wasn’t particularly responsive to grassroots movements. All of that is fair criticism.

But it had one crucial feature: it created stability for people willing to do the work of actual representation.

If you were willing to serve your district, pay attention to local concerns, build relationships with constituents, and cast difficult votes with party backing, you could have a career. You could serve for years or decades. You could develop expertise. You could take positions that weren’t purely aligned with national ideological movements because you had local political protection.

The party’s interest in electing and protecting you aligned, at least roughly, with your interest in serving your district. You were a long-term investment. They wanted you to keep winning.

THE NEW SYSTEM (AND WHAT IT REPLACED)

Then several things happened simultaneously:

Citizens United and subsequent campaign finance decisions eliminated many restrictions on outside money. Wealthy individuals and organized groups could now spend unlimited amounts on independent campaigns. The law now permits something that was previously restricted: outside actors spending $8.7 million to defeat politicians in states where they don’t live and have no accountability.

Technology made targeting cheap and fast. You can now identify voters with surgical precision, send them different messages based on their demographics, and measure the impact in real-time. Organizing a million-voter outreach that used to take months now takes weeks. The cost per contact has dropped dramatically.

Media fragmented. There’s no longer a single local newscast that everyone watches, or a local newspaper that everyone reads. Instead, voters get information from social media, podcasts, targeted digital ads, and direct mail. It’s possible to reach specific voters with specific messages without that message being seen or discussed broadly. The public sphere fragmented into private spheres.

Parties weakened. For various reasons—demographic sorting, geographic polarization, internal divisions, donor consolidation—party infrastructure stopped being able to protect members the way it used to. Parties are still around, but they’re less able to rally resources to defend an incumbent against an outside attack.

Outside groups proliferated. Into the vacuum left by weakened parties came coordinated outside actors: PACs, advocacy groups, ideological organizations. These groups don’t answer to local voters. They’re not accountable to state or local party structures. They answer to donors. And they’re disciplined, well-funded, and strategically focused.

The combination of these factors created something genuinely new: outside actors with resources can now instantly identify vulnerable politicians, deploy targeted messaging against them in primary elections, and remove them before the general election even becomes relevant.

This isn’t an occasional tactic. It’s becoming the dominant strategy.

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS

The old system said: “You have a voting record. The party will defend you. You’re protected.”

The new system says: “You have a voting record. Someone will find the vote that can be reframed. They will spend six figures to tell primary voters that vote is disqualifying. You will be removed in a primary where you have no protection. Congratulations.”

The protection disappeared, but the vulnerability remained. In fact, the vulnerability got worse because your voting record became more exposed, more analyzed, more available for reframing.

Here’s what changed operationally:

Party affiliation became insufficient. Being a Republican in a Republican district used to mean something. Now it means you’re eligible to be primaried by someone more ideologically pure. Party label is still useful—it prevents you from being challenged from the other party—but it doesn’t protect you from being challenged within your party by an outside-funded actor.

Incumbency became a liability. Historically, incumbency was an advantage. You had name recognition, campaign infrastructure, relationships with donors. Now it’s often a liability because you have a voting record to defend. A blank slate candidate funded by an outside group can attack you for years of votes while maintaining the fiction of ideological purity because they’ve never voted on anything.

Institutional power became risky. If you rise in seniority in your legislative chamber, you accumulate a longer voting record. Every vote is a vulnerability. Higher office (state legislative leadership, congressional seats) means more votes to defend. Experienced legislators are now more vulnerable than less experienced ones, which is backwards from how it used to work.

Outside money became determinative. If you’re running without a PAC willing to spend $400,000 on your behalf, you’re at a disadvantage. This means politics is increasingly determined by which candidates attract outside backing rather than which candidates actually connect with voters or which candidates have the best ideas. The people with money to spend on campaigns are increasingly determining who gets to be a politician, not the voters of that district.

Primary elections became the real election. In safe districts and states, the primary is now where the outcome is decided. And primaries have lower turnout, more polarized voters, and more vulnerability to targeted messaging. If you can move the needle in a 20% turnout primary with surgical messaging, you can remove the incumbent before the general election is even relevant.

Ideological purity became competitive. The new system rewards politicians who are consistent enough that they can’t be reframed. But consistency and governance are in tension. Actual representation requires nuance, compromise, trade-offs. Ideological purity requires the opposite. So the system now incentivizes politicians to be ideologically pure rather than representative.

THE PERVERSE INCENTIVES THIS CREATES

Once you understand the new system, you understand why politicians now behave in ways that seem irrational or cowardly.

First, it incentivizes candidates to avoid positions entirely. Why take a stance on anything controversial when that stance can be weaponized by an outside group six months from now? This produces a generation of politicians who are essentially blank slates—all messaging, no actual governance philosophy. They’ll say they support “education” and “jobs” and “families”—concepts so vague they mean nothing. But they won’t say how they’d actually fund education or what kinds of jobs they’d create. Because specificity is vulnerability.

Second, it incentivizes candidates to hide their records. If you’ve been in government for any length of time, your record is vulnerable. The old response was to be transparent about your votes, explain the context, and trust the party to back you up. The new response is to hope nobody notices. When outside groups do notice and attack, the instinct is to go silent rather than defend, because defending requires re-litigating votes that half your primary voters might disagree with.

Third, it incentivizes primary challenges against any incumbent perceived as insufficiently ideologically pure.Because the playbook works, primary challenges become common. Incumbency becomes a liability. If you’re a moderate Republican in a district that’s trending conservative, or a progressive Democrat in a district trending progressive, someone will run against you from the “purer” direction. And with outside money, they can be competitive even if they have no track record.

Fourth, it requires outside money to remain competitive. If you’re running without a PAC willing to spend hundreds of thousands on your behalf, you’re operating with one hand tied behind your back. This concentrates political power in the hands of the people with money to spend on campaigns, which usually means wealthy individuals, organized industries, and ideological networks. This also means that politics becomes less responsive to actual constituents and more responsive to donors and outside groups.

The result is a political system where experienced, thoughtful people increasingly don’t want to serve, because the headache isn’t worth it. Why spend years building expertise and relationships if an outside group can end your career in a compressed primary cycle where you have no protection? Why cast difficult votes if every vote will be reframed? Why take positions if positions are vulnerabilities?

So experienced people retire. Blank slates rise. Outside groups get more influence. And the people who know how government actually works increasingly step aside.

THE WEST VIRGINIA EXAMPLE ISN’T UNIQUE—IT’S THE NEW NORMAL

Craig Blair’s 2024 primary loss is useful not because it was surprising, but because it was clarifying.

He was a state senator with over a decade of experience. He had favorable ratings in his district. He was leading in polling by double digits. He had party support. By every measure that mattered in the old system, he was safe.

Then Make Liberty Win, an out-of-state PAC funded by Texas donors, decided to attack him. They spent millions on mailers characterizing his votes (particularly on Medicaid expansion) as betrayal. They deployed these attacks in a compressed timeline 4-6 weeks before the primary. They operated without accountability to West Virginia voters. And they won.

But here’s the thing: Blair’s loss is becoming normal.

Primary challenges against incumbents have increased dramatically. Outside spending in primary elections has exploded. Voting records are being weaponized with increasing sophistication. Ideological purity tests are replacing coalition-building as a primary strategy. Experienced politicians are being replaced by candidates with thin or no records.

This isn’t a West Virginia problem. It’s not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It’s a structural problem in how American politics now operates. And it’s not going away.

Look at any state legislature, and you’ll see versions of this pattern:

* Wyoming: Outside groups attacked incumbents on voting records

* Ohio: Primary challenges funded by outside money defeated experienced legislators

* Idaho: Outside-funded challengers removed incumbents in safe seats

* Nevada: Similar patterns emerging

This is the new normal. Not the exception. The exception is the incumbent who survives a well-funded primary challenge when an outside group decides they’re a target.

WHAT PROTECTS YOU NOW?

The honest answer: not much.

But there are some asymmetries worth understanding:

Record cleanliness matters, but it’s almost impossible to maintain. If you serve in government for any length of time, you vote on complicated issues with genuine trade-offs. Any vote can potentially be reframed as betrayal. You could try to vote “safely,” but that’s not actual governance—that’s just surviving. And even then, someone will find a vote to attack.

Early narrative control is increasingly valuable. The outside group attacking you has an advantage if they define the narrative before you can. If you can control your own story before someone else tells it for you, you have breathing room. This requires resources, strategic messaging, and speed—essentially, your own outside-funded apparatus. So to compete with outside money, you need outside money. That’s a trap.

Outsider status can be an advantage in primary elections, but it’s a liability in general elections. You can win a primary as a blank slate because no one knows you well enough to have opinions about you. But in a general election, being a complete unknown is risky. This creates a perverse situation where the people who win primaries are often the people worst equipped to win general elections.

Ideological consistency can provide some protection. If you’re consistently voting a particular way, it’s harder to create the shock of “betrayal” that makes reframing effective. But ideology and governance are in tension—ideology is clean, governance is messy. So this protects you by making you a worse representative.

Being boring helps. Genuinely. If you’re not someone that outside groups perceive as a particular threat or opportunity, you might not attract the resources necessary for effective primary challenges. This is a depressing advantage, but it’s real: flying under the radar is safer than being visible and engaged.

Having a fully outside-funded apparatus of your own. If you can match the outside group spending against you with your own spending, you can survive. But this just means politics is now determined by who can attract the most outside money, not by who has the best ideas or who connects with voters best.

So the system doesn’t just offer you no protection. It offers you false options: either don’t govern well enough to have a record to defend, or don’t represent your district’s interests effectively so you’re not a threat to outside groups, or have enough outside money to match whatever’s thrown at you.

Most politicians can manage at most one of these. Many can manage none.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR DEMOCRACY (AND IT’S NOT OPTIMISTIC)

I’m going to be direct: this shift is corrosive to representative government.

When party affiliation provided real protection, it created stable incentives for legislators to serve their districts. They could cast difficult votes because they had institutional backing. They could take positions that weren’t purely aligned with outside pressure because they had party infrastructure. They could actually represent their communities in ways that didn’t necessarily align with national ideological movements.

Now, politicians are increasingly vulnerable to outside actors with resources and ideological purity tests. This creates pressure toward ideological conformity, against local representation, and in favor of politicians who can attract outside backing. Outside backing usually means alignment with national movements rather than local needs.

The irony is brutal: we’ve created a system where representatives are simultaneously less protected by their parties and more dependent on outside forces.

Party affiliation used to mean something. Now it’s just a label attached to a politician who’s essentially freelancing in a landscape where coordinated outside groups can take them down at any moment.

This is why you’re seeing so many retirements. Experienced politicians are looking at this landscape and deciding it’s not worth it. The protection that used to come with seniority is gone. The vulnerability is maximum. The headache is constant.

And as experienced politicians leave, they’re replaced by people who either:

* Haven’t served long enough to have a real voting record (blank slates)

* Are so ideologically pure that they can’t be reframed (which means they can’t compromise or negotiate)

* Have attracted outside backing and are therefore beholden to outside actors

None of these produces better representation.

THE SYSTEM REINFORCES ITSELF

Here’s the feedback loop that makes this hard to escape:

Outside groups attack incumbents → incumbents lose or retire → blank slates replace them → blank slates can’t be reframed because they have no record → they’re elected → they govern without experience → governance gets worse → voters get more frustrated → outside groups have easier targets.

Each element reinforces the others. It’s a system that perpetuates itself. And once it’s established, it’s incredibly hard to break because the incentives all push the same direction.

Consider what would it take to restore party protection:

* Parties would need to mobilize resources to defend members

* But parties are also weakened by the same dynamics

* Parties don’t have the donor base they used to have

* Parties don’t have the infrastructure they used to have

* So parties can’t actually defend members even if they wanted to

Consider what would take to reduce outside money:

* You’d need campaign finance reform

* But Citizens United made that a constitutional issue

* Reform efforts have consistently failed

* So outside money isn’t going anywhere

Consider what would take to make voters more resistant to targeted reframing:

* You’d need media literacy

* But media literacy is a slow educational process

* It competes against sophisticated messaging and algorithmic targeting

* So voters probably aren’t getting more sophisticated

The system is locked in place. The pieces reinforce each other. Attempts to fix one piece don’t work because the other pieces keep pushing the same direction.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

The most likely outcome is that American politics continues to become:

* More ideologically pure

* More driven by outside actors

* Less representative of local concerns

* Less able to attract experienced, thoughtful people to public service

I’m not happy about this prediction. But it’s the one the data supports.

Experienced legislators retiring. Blank slate candidates winning primaries. Outside groups deciding elections. Voting records becoming liabilities instead of assets. Ideological purity becoming the competitive advantage. Governance becoming secondary to survival.

This is the direction the system is moving. Not because people are making bad choices. But because the structure of incentives now rewards these outcomes.

THE REAL LESSON FROM CRAIG BLAIR

I keep coming back to Craig Blair’s loss because it’s clarifying in a specific way.

He had everything the old system said would protect you:

* Party affiliation ✓

* Institutional power ✓

* Electoral experience ✓

* Favorable polling ✓

* Double-digit lead ✓

And none of it mattered.

An outside group decided to attack him. They had resources. They had a compressed timeline. They had a reframing of his record that, while misleading, was technically defensible. They operated without accountability. And he lost.

His loss didn’t prove that party affiliation is useless. It proved that party affiliation is insufficient.

And that’s a different claim. A more unsettling claim.

Because if party affiliation can’t protect someone like Craig Blair—a legislator with experience, with favorable ratings, with party backing—then it can’t protect anyone.

If no one is safe, then politics becomes about constantly looking over your shoulder. Wondering which outside group will decide you’re next. What vote in your record will they use to take you down. Whether you should retire before they find it.

That’s not democracy. That’s paranoia with voting rights attached.

And it’s the system we’ve built.

WHAT NOW?

This is the operating environment. The old system is gone. Party protection is insufficient. Outside money is dominant. Voting records are vulnerabilities. Blank slates are competitive. Experienced politicians are leaving.

This is happening. The question now is: what do we do about it?

Some people will try to reform campaign finance. That probably won’t work—Citizens United is constitutional law now, and reform efforts have failed consistently.

Some people will try to strengthen parties. That probably won’t work—parties are also weakened by the same structural forces.

Some people will try media literacy efforts to make voters more resistant to reframing. That’s probably too slow to keep up with technological sophistication.

But there’s one thing that might actually work: understanding how the system operates and building defenses specifically designed to counter it.

Not campaign finance reform. Not party reform. Not media literacy. But coordinated, strategic, operationally sophisticated defense against the specific tactics that outside groups use.

If operatives understood how outside groups work—really understood it, not just the surface tactics but the machinery underneath—they could prepare differently.

If journalists understood the pattern across multiple states instead of treating each attack as an isolated incident, they could report with more skepticism.

If voters understood that they were being targeted by outside actors with specific intentions, they could be more resistant to reframing.

If states coordinated their responses instead of treating attacks as local problems, they could scale solutions that work.

None of this would eliminate outside money. None of this would reverse the structural shift. But it might make outside groups’ operations less effective, more expensive, more risky.

And that might change the calculus enough to matter.

WHERE THIS GOES

This is the first article of several. I’m going to walk you through:

* How outside groups actually operate operationally—the machinery underneath the tactics, the decision tree that determines which races they target, why standard responses fail.

* A detailed case study of Make Liberty Win’s operation in West Virginia—specifically how the machinery I describe in Article 2 played out in the Blair race in real time.

* What counter-infrastructure actually looks like—how operatives, journalists, and parties can build defenses specifically designed for the new system.

* How this plays out in practice, what works, what doesn’t, and how the system evolves.

My assumption is that you’re reading this because you’re either:

* A political operative trying to understand why your protected incumbent got removed in a primary

* A party leader trying to figure out why you can’t protect members anymore

* A journalist trying to understand what’s actually happening when outside groups attack candidates

* A voter trying to understand why politics feels more broken than it used to

If you’re in any of those categories, the old playbook doesn’t work anymore. Understanding the new system is the first step toward defending against it.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

We didn’t set out to build this system. We didn’t wake up one day and decide that American politics should be run by outside actors with no accountability to voters in the states they’re influencing.

It happened gradually. A court decision here. A technology change there. A party weakening. Media fragmentation. Each change made sense at the time. But the combination created something that nobody quite intended.

We’re now living in the world that combination created. And we’re just starting to understand what that means.

The next articles will help you understand it better.

Does this match what you’re experiencing? Are you seeing the pattern in your state or district? Are you watching incumbents lose in primaries they should have won? Are you seeing outside groups win elections with reframed voting records?

I’m genuinely curious how this framework maps onto what you’re observing on the ground. Let me know in the comments—the best follow-up articles will come from the patterns you’re seeing.

And if you know operatives, journalists, or party leaders who need to understand this system, share this with them. They probably need it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

In my article, “Big Pharma’s Dark Money Network in West Virginia,” we rolled up our sleeves and did the hard work of following the money. We started with a single, misleading political ad and pulled the thread, tracing it from a generically named Super PAC through state and federal databases, right to the doorstep of the dark money nonprofits that serve as the financial intermediaries for powerful corporate interests. We exposed the “how.”

Now, it’s time to talk about the “why.”

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Why go to all that trouble to hide the money? Why the bizarre, unrelated attack ads? The answer is bigger and more corrosive than a single election. What we witnessed in West Virginia wasn’t just a campaign; it was the execution of a sophisticated playbook designed to do one thing: create a chilling effect that freezes the democratic process itself. It’s a strategy that turns elections into a form of political extortion.

Based on their own after-action memo and the trail they left behind, we can deconstruct this playbook. These are the specific tactics that dark money networks use to manufacture consent, punish dissent, and make lawmakers afraid to represent the people who elected them.

SCREENSHOTS FROM THE MEMO

I need to go on record saying — this is wild!! This is INSANE!! It is blatantly clear that Corporate America inserted themselves into a democratic process. As a voter and citizen of this State, I’m offended! And, this is not okay!!

The Playbook of Influence: A Six-Step Guide to Corrupting Democracy

Step 1: Weaponize Complexity

The entire operation began by choosing a policy that is both legitimate and hopelessly complex: the 340B Drug Pricing Program. This is a federal program that allows hospitals serving vulnerable communities to buy prescription drugs at a discount. It’s a crucial financial lifeline for our state’s safety-net providers.

But let’s be honest: almost no one outside of a hospital billing department has ever heard of it. The architects of this campaign knew that. They chose it because it’s obscure. That complexity creates an information vacuum, and a vacuum is an opportunity. With no pre-existing public knowledge, the first group to define the program wins. And their definition, as we saw, was a masterclass in deception.

Step 2: The Bait-and-Switch

This is where the true genius of the strategy lies. The campaign wasn’t about the 340B program at all. It was, as we uncovered, likely punishment for a legislator daring to support a bill to control prescription drug costs. But you can’t attack a popular politician for trying to lower drug prices. So, you change the subject.

Stand for US PAC’s own memo admits it: they relentlessly attacked Senate President Craig Blair for strengthening a program that “uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize health care for illegal immigrants.”

This is a deliberate, strategic conflation. They took a complex healthcare finance issue and fused it with the hot-button cultural issue of immigration. It’s a classic bait-and-switch. The real motive (protecting pharma profits) is hidden behind a fake one (stopping illegal immigration). This tactic is devastatingly effective because it makes an honest debate impossible. The targeted official is left trying to explain the nuances of drug pricing policy while his opponent is running ads about the border crisis.

Step 3: The Media Echo Chamber

With their misleading message crafted, the network used its massive financial advantage to drown out any other viewpoint. The PAC spent over $400,000 in a single month on a state senate race. They unleashed a torrent of propaganda across every conceivable platform: direct mail, digital ads, text messages, phone calls, and, in the final weeks, radio and video.

This creates a powerful echo chamber. When a voter hears the same message on their phone, in their mailbox, and on their computer, it begins to sound like the truth. It manufactures the illusion of a widespread, organic concern, when in reality, it’s just one well-funded group shouting from a dozen different directions. The target, even with a respectable war chest of his own, is completely overwhelmed.

Step 4: The Dark Money Shell Game

None of this would be possible without the legal architecture of modern campaign finance. The money flows through a deliberately confusing chain of entities designed to hide its origin. As we traced in the first article, it’s a shell game:

* A corporation (like a pharmaceutical giant) donates to a 501(c)(4) nonprofit.

* That nonprofit, which doesn’t have to disclose its donors, then cuts a large check to a Super PAC.

* The Super PAC, with its generic, patriotic-sounding name, runs the attack ads.

This laundering process breaks the chain of accountability. Voters in West Virginia didn’t know they were watching ads funded by the pharmaceutical industry. They thought they were hearing from “Stand for US PAC.” It allows corporate interests to attack lawmakers with impunity and without leaving fingerprints.

Step 5: Make an Example of Them

After the campaign succeeded, the PAC didn’t celebrate in private. They published their “After-Action Memo” and sent it to “Interested Parties” across the country. This is the most chilling part of the entire strategy. The memo is a threat, plain and simple. It’s a public warning to every other Republican official in the country. Here’s what they wrote:

“That should make clear to Republicans across the country considering voting for legislation to strengthen the 340b program... that they will not be safe no matter how powerful they are... Republicans are now on notice that they support 340b... at their own political peril.”

This is extortion. It’s a political hit designed to intimidate not just one person, but anyone who might consider taking a similar stand. For the price of one campaign in West Virginia, they get to influence policy debates in statehouses from Florida to Alaska. It’s the most efficient form of lobbying imaginable.

Step 6: Data-Driven Destruction

Finally, this wasn’t a blind attack. It was a precise, data-driven operation. The PAC’s memo reveals they conducted extensive polling to identify their target’s vulnerabilities and track the effectiveness of their messaging. They knew their attacks were working in real-time, which allowed them to pour more fuel on the fire.

This isn’t grassroots democracy. This is a cold, calculated, and clinical execution. It’s using the tools of marketing to dismantle a political career and, with it, the will of the voters.

What This Means for West Virginia

When you put these six tactics together, you see a playbook for subverting democracy. It allows hidden interests to punish lawmakers who step out of line, to deceive voters with emotionally charged misinformation, and to ensure that policy is written for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful, not the public.

This is the “chilling effect.” It’s the silence in the legislature when a bill to lower drug costs comes up for a vote. It’s the fear in the heart of a public servant who knows their career could be destroyed by an anonymous, out-of-state entity if they vote the wrong way. It’s the erosion of public trust in a system that feels rigged.

Following the money was the first step. Understanding the playbook is the next. Now, we have to decide what we’re going to do about it.

What We Can Do About It

Now that we understand the playbook and the mechanisms of control, the question becomes: what do we do about it?

The good news is that knowledge is power, and you now have knowledge that most people don’t. You understand how the game is played. You know how to trace the money. You recognize the tactics when you see them. That makes you dangerous to this system—and that’s exactly what we need to be.

Here’s what you can do, right now, to fight back against dark money’s stranglehold on our democracy:

Become a Citizen Investigator

You don’t need a journalism degree to follow the money. In my first article, I showed you the exact steps: start with the ad, check the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance Reporting System, search the FEC database, and pull up the 990s on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.

Your Action: The next time you see a political ad from a group you’ve never heard of, don’t just scroll past it. Take fifteen minutes and trace it. Find out who’s really paying for it. Then share what you find—with your friends, on social media, in letters to the editor. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, but only if we turn on the lights.

Demand Transparency from Your Legislators

Our elected officials need to know that we’re paying attention. They need to understand that we see what’s happening, and we won’t tolerate it.

Your Action: Contact your state legislators—especially those in leadership positions. Ask them directly:

* Will you support legislation requiring full disclosure of political ad funding?

* Will you refuse to be intimidated by outside spending groups?

* Will you commit to voting based on what’s best for West Virginia, not what’s safest for your career?

Make it clear that you’re watching their votes, and you’ll hold them accountable. A legislator who knows their constituents are informed is far less susceptible to the chilling effect.

Support Campaign Finance Reform

This problem didn’t start in West Virginia, and it won’t end here. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited spending, and Congress has repeatedly failed to close them. But that doesn’t mean the fight is over.

Your Action: Support organizations working on campaign finance reform, such as:

* The Brennan Center for Justice

* Issue One

* End Citizens United

* RepresentUs

These groups are fighting for constitutional amendments, stronger disclosure laws, and better enforcement of existing rules. They need our voices and our support.

Vote—And Help Others Vote

Dark money thrives when voter turnout is low and when people are confused or apathetic. The best defense against a well-funded misinformation campaign is an informed, engaged electorate.

Your Action:

* Register to vote, and make sure everyone you know is registered.

* Research candidates and ballot measures using multiple sources—not just the ads you see.

* Volunteer as a poll worker or election observer.

* Have conversations with friends and family about what you’ve learned. Share this article.

Democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires our active participation, especially when powerful forces are working to undermine it.

Tell the Story

The reason I write these articles is simple: people need to know what’s happening. The dark money networks count on our ignorance and our exhaustion. They want us to throw up our hands and say, “It’s all rigged, there’s nothing I can do.”

But that’s a lie. There is something we can do. We can refuse to be silent.

Your Action: Share this article. Talk about it at the dinner table, at the coffee shop, at the church gathering. Write your own letters to the editor. Call in to local radio shows. Make noise. The more people who understand this playbook, the less effective it becomes.

The Stakes Are Too High to Stay Silent

This isn’t just about one election in West Virginia. It’s about whether we will allow our democracy to be quietly auctioned off to the highest bidder, or whether we will stand up and fight for a government that is accountable to the people, not to anonymous donors and corporate interests.

The chilling effect only works if we let it. If we stay informed, stay engaged, and stay loud, we can break the cycle. We can make it too costly, too risky, and too visible for these networks to operate in the shadows.

They’re counting on us to be afraid. Let’s prove them wrong.

What are you going to do? Let me know in the comments, and let’s build a movement for transparency and accountability in West Virginia politics.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Get full access to Carrie Clendening at carrieclendening.substack.com/subscribe

On April 15, 2025, Governor Patrick Morrisey stood in Ripley Elementary School surrounded by fifth-graders and signed Senate Bill 199 into law. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Amy Grady—herself an elementary school teacher—smiled for the cameras. It was a feel-good moment: a teacher-legislator helping other teachers deal with disruptive students.

What the cameras didn’t capture was the invisible hand that had been orchestrating this moment for years. Behind the wholesome optics stood a sophisticated network of dark money organizations that had spent nearly a decade engineering the complete transformation of West Virginia’s education system.

SB 199 wasn’t just a discipline bill. And it didn’t work alone.

In the spring of 2025, West Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed three education bills that, on the surface, seemed unrelated:

* SB 199: Allows teachers to more easily remove “disruptive” students from K-6 classrooms

* HB 2167: Makes “technical cleanup” changes to charter school law

* SB 746: Allows charter schools to bill Medicaid for student services

Each bill had its own sponsors, its own rationale, its own legislative journey. Each passed with broad bipartisan support. And each was signed into law by Governor Morrisey within weeks of taking office.

But these weren’t three separate bills. They were three parts of a single machine—a machine designed by two organizations with deep ties to anonymous billionaire donors: the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy and Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia.

This is the story of how dark money doesn’t just buy elections. It builds ecosystems.

The Architects: Cardinal Institute and Americans for Prosperity

Before we understand the bills, we need to understand the organizations behind them.

The Cardinal Institute: The Intellectual Engine

Founded in 2014, the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank that has become the state’s most influential voice for conservative education policy. Led by Executive Director Garrett Ballengee, the institute operates as West Virginia’s affiliate of the State Policy Network (SPN), a national organization that coordinates over 160 conservative think tanks across all 50 states. [1]

The Cardinal Institute’s signature achievement is the Hope Scholarship, West Virginia’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program. The institute began laying the groundwork in 2016 with the state’s first ESA research paper, built coalitions of supporters, and successfully shepherded the program through the legislature in 2021. The State Policy Network was so impressed that it published a detailed case study of the campaign as a model for other states to replicate. [2]

For this work, the Cardinal Institute won awards from both the State Policy Network and the Atlas Network, cementing its reputation as a leader in the national school choice movement. [3]

But here’s what the awards don’t mention: we don’t know who funds the Cardinal Institute. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, it’s not required to disclose its donors. What we do know is that in 2023, the institute received $76,500 from DonorsTrust, the so-called “dark money ATM of the conservative movement.” [4] That’s just what’s visible. The rest remains hidden.

Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia: The Political Muscle

If the Cardinal Institute provides the intellectual architecture, Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia provides the political muscle to make it happen.

AFP-WV is the state chapter of a national 501(c)(4) organization founded and funded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. Unlike 501(c)(3) organizations, 501(c)(4)s can engage directly in lobbying and political advocacy—and AFP does so aggressively. [5]

In 2022, the Koch network’s primary funding vehicles—the Stand Together Chamber of Commerce and Stand Together Trust—distributed $176 million to conservative causes. The largest recipient was Americans for Prosperity, which received $60 million, with its super PAC receiving another $26.5 million. [6]

That money cascades down to state chapters like AFP-WV, which use it for door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, direct lobbying, and—most importantly—campaign spending.

In the 2024 gubernatorial race, AFP-WV spent over $700,000 backing Patrick Morrisey. [7] He won. And on his second day in office, Morrisey issued an executive order directing his administration to make West Virginia’s school choice law the “broadest and most effective in the nation.” [8]

The return on investment was immediate.

The 2025 Legislative Agenda: “Pathway to Prosperity”

In January 2025, just days before the legislative session began, Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia released its “Pathway to Prosperity 2025 Legislative Agenda.” The glossy document laid out AFP-WV’s priorities for the year, with education at the top of the list:

“EXPAND EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM: Continue to empower parents to find the right educational pathway for their child’s unique needs by securing the expansion of the Hope Scholarship.” [9]

On the surface, this seems straightforward: AFP-WV wanted to expand the Hope Scholarship program, which was already scheduled to open to universal eligibility in the 2026-27 school year.

But here’s what the document didn’t say: for that expansion to work, West Virginia needed infrastructure. It needed more charter schools. It needed those charter schools to be financially viable. And it needed a way to move students out of traditional public schools and into those alternatives.

That infrastructure didn’t exist yet. So AFP-WV and the Cardinal Institute set out to build it.

The Three Bills: Building the Machine

SB 199: The Push (Out of Public Schools)

Sponsor: Sen. Amy Grady (R-Mason), an elementary school teacher

Signed: April 15, 2025 by Governor Morrisey

Effective: July 2, 2025

On its face, SB 199 is a common-sense discipline bill. It allows teachers in kindergarten through sixth grade to immediately remove students who are violent, threatening, or disruptive. After two removals in one semester, the student must be placed in an alternative setting. [10]

Teachers loved it. The West Virginia Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, called it a “great step.” [11] Senator Grady, the bill’s sponsor and a practicing elementary teacher, framed it as giving teachers “more control” over their classrooms. [12]

But buried in the bill’s language is a more consequential provision:

“The Legislature finds that isolating students or placing them in alternative learning centers or licensed behavioral health agencies may be the best setting for chronically disruptive students.” [10]

The bill doesn’t just allow removal—it explicitly endorses alternative placements as the solution. And it requires county boards to “create more alternative learning centers, expand its capacity for alternative placements, or partner with a licensed behavioral health agency” to serve these students. [10]

Here’s the strategic brilliance: SB 199 creates a pipeline of students who are being pushed out of traditional public schools and into alternative settings. It legitimizes the idea that some students are better served outside the public system. And it requires counties to build the infrastructure to receive them.

Where does that infrastructure lead? To charter schools.

HB 2167: The Pull (Toward Charter Schools)

Sponsors: Delegates Ellington, Statler, Willis, and W. Clark

Passed: April 11, 2025

Effective: July 10, 2025

HB 2167 was billed as “technical cleanup” of West Virginia’s charter school law—the kind of boring legislative housekeeping that doesn’t make headlines. [13]

But the “cleanup” included several provisions that fundamentally change the charter school landscape:

1. Fast-Track Conversion for Closing Schools

The bill allows public schools that are closing or facing consolidation to be fast-tracked for conversion to charter schools. [14]

Think about the implications: as traditional public schools lose enrollment (accelerated by the Hope Scholarship), they become candidates for closure. But instead of consolidating with other public schools, they can be converted to charter schools—essentially privatizing a public asset at the moment of its greatest vulnerability.

2. No Tuition for Full-Time Students

The bill clarifies that charter schools cannot charge full-time tuition, putting them on equal footing with traditional public schools in terms of cost to families. [14] This removes a barrier that might have prevented families from choosing charter schools.

3. Non-Certified Teachers Can Proctor State Assessments

Perhaps most significantly, the bill allows charter school teachers who are not certified or licensed in West Virginia to proctor state assessments, as long as they complete annual training. [14]

This removes a significant operational barrier. Previously, charter schools had to hire certified teachers for testing days or bring in outside proctors. Now they can use their existing (potentially non-certified) staff, reducing costs and increasing flexibility.

The Cardinal Institute Connection:

While the Cardinal Institute didn’t issue a press release about HB 2167, the bill implements the exact framework the institute has been promoting since 2019. In January 2022, the Cardinal Institute published “Charter Schools in West Virginia 101,” a comprehensive guide explaining the state’s charter law and its potential. [15]

HB 2167 removes the barriers identified in that framework and makes charter schools more competitive with traditional public schools.

SB 746: The Funding (Making It Sustainable)

Sponsor: Sen. Rucker

Status: Became law without Governor Morrisey’s signature (a telling detail)

Effective: July 9, 2025

SB 746 is the most technical of the three bills, and it received the least media attention. But it may be the most consequential. [16]

The bill allows the State Board of Education to delegate its Medicaid provider status to public charter schools, enabling them to bill Medicaid for services like speech therapy, occupational therapy, and mental health counseling provided to eligible students.

Traditional public schools have long accessed Medicaid reimbursement for these services—it’s a significant revenue stream that helps cover the cost of special education and health services. But charter schools, as new entities, didn’t automatically have this access.

SB 746 fixes that. And the financial implications are substantial.

Why This Matters:

Medicaid reimbursement can cover a significant portion of special education and behavioral health services—exactly the kinds of services that students removed under SB 199 might need. By giving charter schools access to this federal funding stream, the legislature made them significantly more financially sustainable, particularly for serving high-need students.

Here’s the synergy:

* SB 199 identifies students with behavioral issues and removes them from traditional classrooms

* HB 2167 makes charter schools more attractive alternatives

* SB 746 ensures charter schools can afford to serve these students by accessing Medicaid funding

The National Alliance Connection:

On May 5, 2025, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools issued a press release celebrating the passage of HB 2167 and SB 746:

“The West Virginia legislature has strengthened public school choice for families in the Mountain State by passing HB 2167 and SB 746. HB 2167 and SB 746 provide clarity on key provisions and allow eligible students access to Medicaid funding.” [17]

The fact that a national charter school advocacy organization was tracking these bills and immediately celebrated their passage indicates they were involved in supporting them during the legislative process.

The Machine in Action: How the Three Bills Work Together

Separately, each bill seems reasonable:

* Teachers should be able to remove violent students (SB 199)

* Charter school law needs technical cleanup (HB 2167)

* Charter schools should have access to Medicaid like public schools do (SB 746)

But together, they create a complete system:

The Pipeline:

* SB 199 identifies “chronically disruptive” students and creates pathways to remove them from traditional public schools

* HB 2167 provides charter school alternatives to receive these students

* SB 746 ensures charter schools can afford to serve them via Medicaid revenue

The Destabilization:

* SB 199 removes students → reduces traditional public school enrollment

* Lower enrollment → triggers school closures

* HB 2167 → closed schools convert to charters instead of consolidating with other public schools

The Financial Advantage:

* Traditional public schools: Lose student + lose per-pupil funding

* Charter schools: Gain student + gain per-pupil funding + gain Medicaid revenue (new via SB 746)

The Result:

A perfectly coordinated ecosystem that makes charter schools more attractive and sustainable while making traditional public schools less viable—all timed to coincide with the Hope Scholarship’s expansion to universal eligibility in 2026-27.

The Funding Trail: Follow the Dark Money

The diagram above shows how anonymous donations flow through a sophisticated network:

Layer 1: Anonymous Donors Wealthy individuals and foundations make tax-deductible donations to donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust and the Koch network’s Stand Together.

Layer 2: Dark Money Intermediaries

* DonorsTrust ($1.29 billion in assets) distributes grants to conservative organizations

* Koch Network/Stand Together ($176 million distributed in 2022) funds political advocacy

Layer 3: National Coordinating Organizations

* State Policy Network received $10.5 million from DonorsTrust in 2023

* Americans for Prosperity received $60 million from Koch network in 2022

Layer 4: State-Level Actors

* Cardinal Institute received $76,500 from DonorsTrust in 2023

* AFP-WV received funding from national AFP (amount undisclosed)

Layer 5: Political Outcomes

* AFP-WV spent $700,000+ backing Morrisey’s gubernatorial campaign

* Cardinal Institute provided intellectual framework for education reform

* Governor Morrisey issued executive order on Day 2

* Legislature passed SB 199, HB 2167, and SB 746

The Result: A complete privatization infrastructure supporting the Hope Scholarship’s expansion to universal eligibility, projected to cost $244.6 million by 2027.

The Cardinal Institute’s Invisible Hand

While Americans for Prosperity-WV operates openly—releasing legislative agendas, running ads, backing candidates—the Cardinal Institute works more subtly.

The institute didn’t issue press releases about SB 199, HB 2167, or SB 746. It didn’t testify at legislative hearings (that we can find). It didn’t claim credit for their passage.

But the bills implement the exact policy framework the Cardinal Institute has been building since 2016:

2016: Published West Virginia’s first ESA research paper

2018: Published research on ESAs for special needs students

2019: West Virginia legalized charter schools

2021: Hope Scholarship passed

2022: Published “Charter Schools in West Virginia 101”

2025: SB 199, HB 2167, and SB 746 pass

This is the Cardinal Institute’s strategy, documented in the State Policy Network’s case study of the Hope Scholarship campaign:

“The Cardinal Institute created Education Choice West Virginia, a parent advocacy group of 30-40 families. These families provided the ‘real stories’ and human faces that lawmakers and media could point to as evidence of public demand.” [2]

The pattern is clear: build the intellectual foundation, create the appearance of grassroots support, work behind the scenes, and let others take credit. Then, after the bills pass, the State Policy Network highlights the victories in its “Week in Review” newsletters, crediting the Cardinal Institute and providing a model for other states to follow. [18]

It’s a long game, and it’s working.

The Grassroots Illusion

The genius of this system is that it looks organic.

Senator Amy Grady isn’t a dark money operative—she’s a genuine elementary school teacher who saw real problems in her classroom and wanted to help her colleagues. Her sponsorship of SB 199 provided authentic credibility that no amount of Cardinal Institute research could buy.

The delegates who sponsored HB 2167 weren’t taking orders from the Koch brothers—they were responding to what they saw as needed technical fixes to charter school law.

Senator Rucker, who sponsored SB 746, wasn’t trying to privatize education—she was trying to give charter schools access to the same federal funding that traditional public schools receive.

But here’s the thing: they didn’t have to be in on it for it to work.

The dark money network doesn’t need to control every legislator. It just needs to:

* Fund the think tanks that write the research

* Fund the advocacy groups that mobilize supporters

* Fund the campaigns of sympathetic governors

* Provide model legislation from other states

* Create an environment where the “right” bills feel inevitable

When Senator Grady introduced SB 199, she was solving a real problem. But the solution she chose—alternative placements for disruptive students—aligned perfectly with the infrastructure being built by HB 2167 and SB 746.

Coincidence? Or coordination?

The Timeline: Too Perfect to Be Accidental

Let’s look at how quickly this all came together:

November 5, 2024: Patrick Morrisey wins governorship with AFP-WV backing

January 13, 2025: Morrisey inaugurated

January 14, 2025: Morrisey issues executive order on school choice (Day 2 in office)

January 2025: AFP-WV releases “Pathway to Prosperity” legislative agenda

February-April 2025: SB 199, HB 2167, and SB 746 introduced and passed

April 15, 2025: Governor Morrisey signs SB 199 with sponsor Sen. Grady present

May 5, 2025: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools celebrates HB 2167 and SB 746

July 2025: All three bills take effect

2026-27 school year: Hope Scholarship opens to universal eligibility

Three complementary bills, passed in the same legislative session, immediately after a dark money-backed governor takes office, following years of groundwork by SPN-affiliated think tanks, celebrated by national charter school organizations, and timed perfectly to support the Hope Scholarship expansion.

That’s not coincidence. That’s coordination.

What We Still Don’t Know

The dark money system is designed to make certain questions unanswerable:

* Who are the Cardinal Institute’s donors beyond the $76,500 from DonorsTrust? We’ll never know. They don’t have to disclose.

* How much did AFP-WV spend lobbying for these specific bills? Unclear. Lobbying disclosure laws in West Virginia are weak.

* Did the Cardinal Institute provide model legislation or talking points to bill sponsors? Probably, but there’s no paper trail.

* Was there coordination between the Cardinal Institute, AFP-WV, and the bill sponsors? Almost certainly, but proving it requires documents that don’t exist or aren’t public.

* How much money flowed from DonorsTrust and the Koch network to West Virginia in 2024-2025? We only see snapshots from tax filings that are years old.

This is the brilliance of the dark money system: it operates in the shadows by design, using layers of nonprofit intermediaries to obscure the money trail and prevent accountability.

The Bigger Picture: West Virginia as Prototype

West Virginia isn’t unique. It’s a prototype.

The State Policy Network has published a detailed case study of the Cardinal Institute’s Hope Scholarship campaign, explicitly framing it as a model for other states to replicate. The same organizations—DonorsTrust, the Koch network, SPN affiliates, AFP chapters—are operating in all 50 states.

The three-bill strategy we’ve documented here—create a push out of public schools (discipline), create a pull toward alternatives (charter expansion), and create sustainable funding (Medicaid access)—can be replicated anywhere.

In fact, it probably already is being replicated. Right now. In your state.

The playbook is proven. The funding is massive. And the network is patient.

The Question We Should Be Asking

The debate about school choice often focuses on whether vouchers and charter schools are good or bad policy. Reasonable people disagree.

But that’s not the question this investigation raises.

The question is: Who gets to decide?

Should education policy be shaped by:

* Elected officials responding to constituents?

* Teachers and parents working through democratic processes?

* Transparent debates about costs, benefits, and tradeoffs?

Or should it be shaped by:

* Anonymous billionaires funneling money through donor-advised funds?

* National networks coordinating state-level campaigns?

* Think tanks and advocacy groups funded by undisclosed donors?

When Senator Amy Grady introduced SB 199, was she representing her constituents’ concerns? Or was she—unknowingly—implementing a strategy designed by the Cardinal Institute and funded by DonorsTrust?

When the legislature passed HB 2167 and SB 746, were they solving West Virginia’s problems? Or were they building infrastructure for a national movement funded by the Koch network?

The answer is probably both. And that’s what makes this so insidious.

The dark money network doesn’t replace democracy—it hijacks it. It finds real problems, offers real solutions, and uses real people to implement an agenda designed in boardrooms and funded by anonymous donors who will never face accountability for the consequences.

What Happens Next

All three bills are now law. They took effect in July 2025.

By the time you read this, West Virginia’s education system will already be changing:

* Teachers are removing more students under SB 199’s provisions

* Charter schools are being planned and opened under HB 2167’s framework

* Those charter schools are billing Medicaid under SB 746’s authority

And in the 2026-27 school year, the Hope Scholarship will open to universal eligibility. The State Treasurer projects it will cost $244.6 million annually—more than 25 times its initial cost.

The infrastructure is in place. The funding is flowing. The machine is running.

And the organizations that built it—the Cardinal Institute, Americans for Prosperity-WV, the State Policy Network, DonorsTrust, the Koch network—are already moving on to the next state, the next campaign, the next policy transformation.

Their donors remain anonymous. Their strategies remain hidden. And their accountability remains nonexistent.

The Bottom Line

SB 199, HB 2167, and SB 746 weren’t three separate bills that happened to pass in the same session.

They were three parts of a machine, designed by the Cardinal Institute and Americans for Prosperity-WV, funded by DonorsTrust and the Koch network, coordinated by the State Policy Network, and implemented by well-meaning legislators who may not have fully understood how their bills fit into a larger agenda.

The machine creates a push out of public schools, a pull toward charter schools, and sustainable funding to make it all work. It’s timed perfectly to support the Hope Scholarship’s expansion. And it’s all funded by anonymous donors who will never face consequences if it fails.

This is how dark money works in 2025. Not through bribery or corruption, but through patient, coordinated campaigns that build ecosystems of policy change while keeping the funders hidden.

West Virginia’s children are the test subjects. The rest of America is next.

References

[1] Cardinal Institute, “Our Story,” https://cardinalinstitute.com/our-story/

[2] State Policy Network, “Case Study: How the Cardinal Institute built coalitions to bring universal school choice to West Virginia,” https://spn.org/case-study-cardinal-institute-school-choice/

[3] Atlas Network, “Cardinal Institute increases access to education in West Virginia,” https://www.atlasnetwork.org/articles/cardinal-institute-increases-access-to-education-in-west-virginia

[4] Center for Media and Democracy, “DonorsTrust Injected More Than $150 Million in Untraceable Cash Into Right-Wing Groups in 2023,” November 20, 2024, https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2024/11/20/donorstrust-injected-more-than-150-million-in-untraceable-cash-into-right-wing-groups-in-2023/

[5] SourceWatch, “Americans for Prosperity,” https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Prosperity

[6] Center for Media and Democracy, “Charles Koch’s ‘Stand Together’ Donor Conduits Move $176 Million,” December 20, 2023, https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/12/20/charles-kochs-stand-together-donor-conduits-move-176-million/

[7] Steven Allen Adams, “Americans for Prosperity pushing for changes to West Virginia education, healthcare,” News and Sentinel, February 1, 2025 https://www.newsandsentinel.com/news/local-news/2025/02/americans-for-prosperity-pushing-for-changes-to-west-virginia-education-healthcare/

[8] West Virginia Watch, “Morrisey sworn in as WV governor, says he’ll ‘end wokeness,’ prioritize cutting government waste,” January 13, 2025, https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/01/13/morrisey-sworn-in-as-wv-governor-says-hell-end-wokeness-prioritize-cutting-government-waste/

[9] Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia, “Pathway to Prosperity 2025 Legislative Agenda,” http://wv.americansforprosperity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-WV-Pathway-to-Prosperity.pdf

[10] West Virginia Legislature, SB 199 (2025 Regular Session), https://www.wvlegislature.gov/bill_status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=sb199%20sub1%20enr.htm&yr=2025&sesstype=RS&i=199

[11] West Virginia Watch, “WV Senate passes elementary student discipline bill, state teachers union calls measure ‘great step,’” March 10, 2025, https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/03/10/wv-senate-passes-elementary-student-discipline-bill-state-teachers-union-calls-measure-great-step/

[12] West Virginia Watch, “Morrisey says WV teachers will have ‘more control’ over classrooms with elementary discipline law,” April 15, 2025, https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/04/15/morrisey-says-wv-teachers-will-have-more-control-over-classrooms-with-elementary-discipline-law/

[13] West Virginia Legislature, HB 2167 (2025 Regular Session), http://www.legis.state.wv.us/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hb2167%20sub2%20eng.htm&yr=2025&sesstype=RS&i=2167

[14] Ibid.

[15] Cardinal Institute, “Charter Schools in West Virginia 101,” January 13, 2022, https://cardinalinstitute.com/charter-schools-in-west-virginia-101/

[16] West Virginia Legislature, SB 746 (2025 Regular Session), https://www.wvlegislature.gov/bill_status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=sb746%20sub1.htm&yr=2025&sesstype=RS&i=746

[17] National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “West Virginia Passes Two Bills to Strengthen Public School Choice,” May 5, 2025 https://publiccharters.org/news/wv-passes-bills-to-strengthen-choice/

[18] State Policy Network, “Week in Review: April 11, 2025,” https://spn.org/week-in-review-april-11-2025/

If this investigation opened your eyes to how dark money operates in your state, please share it. The only defense against hidden influence is public awareness. Subscribe for more investigative reporting on the forces reshaping American education and democracy.

About This Investigation: This article is based on public records, tax filings, legislative documents, and investigative journalism sources. The funding trail diagram represents documented financial flows based on IRS Form 990 filings and public disclosures. While direct coordination between organizations cannot be definitively proven due to the opacity of dark money networks, the pattern of timing, funding, and policy alignment is documented throughout.

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Remember when political parties actually stood for different things? When “Republican” and “Democrat” meant something beyond which color tie someone wears while disappointing you?

Those days are dead. Murdered. Buried in a shallow grave marked “Thoughts and Prayers.”

Here’s what we’ve got instead:

Republicans roll up promising “parental rights” and “fiscal responsibility” while schools can’t afford tissues. They’re out here defending your right to have opinions about education while systematically defunding the actual education part.

Democrats counter with beautiful speeches about “equity” and “investing in our children” before getting tangled in bureaucratic red tape so thick you’d need a machete to cut through it. They’ll create seventeen committees to study the problem of why we need so many committees.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, teachers are buying supplies with their own money, parents are going broke trying to fill the gaps, and nobody with actual power seems to care which flag they’re waving when the building’s on fire.

Drowning in Buzzword Soup While Rome Burns

Every election cycle, we get a fresh batch of focus-grouped nonsense:

* “School choice!” (Translation: Your choice to struggle differently)

* “Accountability!” (Translation: More tests, same problems)

* “Systemic reform!” (Translation: Meetings about having meetings)

* “Public investment!” (Translation: Money we’ll definitely allocate after this next election)

These words don’t mean anything anymore. They’re the political equivalent of “We should get coffee sometime!”—polite sounds people make while having zero intention of following through.

And we don’t have time to decrypt this garbage while trying to explain fractions and remember which kid has soccer practice and which one has the science fair project due tomorrow that they definitely didn’t mention until right now.

The Social Media Circus: Because Apparently We Elected Middle Schoolers

Here’s my favorite dystopian development: Elected officials—grown adults who theoretically passed some kind of screening process—are out here fighting on X (I prefer to call it Twitter) like it’s a YouTube comment section.

Red tie, blue tie, doesn’t matter. They’re all posting clapbacks and sick burns while parents are up at midnight trying to figure out how to pay for both the field trip and groceries this month.

This isn’t governance. This is performance art for an audience of other politicians and the extremely online. Meanwhile, the actual constituents—you know, the people they work for—are just trying to survive Tuesday.

When did we decide that the appropriate response to policy disagreements was social media beef? When did “public servant” become “professional troll”?

Having worked in government for almost two decades, I can confirm what you probably suspected: most of what you see is theater. Rehearsed, focus-grouped, strategically meaningless theater.

The real decisions happen in hallways and conference rooms you’ll never see. The public meetings? Those are the show. The legislation? Often written by people who will never feel its consequences. The promises? Designed to expire the moment after the election.

Both parties know this. Both parties participate in this. Both parties count on you being too exhausted to call them on it.

Well, guess what? Some of us are exhausted and angry. Dangerous combination.

Parents Don’t Have Time for Your Creative Writing Exercise

Here’s what parenting actually looks like in 2025:

* Juggling full-time jobs that barely cover rising costs

* Managing schools that are functionally underfunded regardless of which party’s in charge

* Providing the emotional labor of raising humans in a world that feels increasingly hostile to families

* Doing all of this while politicians cosplay as leaders on social media

We need actual solutions, not slogans. We need functional schools, not philosophical debates about theoretical improvements. We need leaders who remember they work for us, not for their party’s talking points or their Twitter ratio.

Time to Get Serious (No, Really This Time)

So here’s my message to every elected official, regardless of party affiliation, tie color, or social media follower count:

Stop.

Stop the theater. Stop the buzzwords. Stop fighting with each other online while families are drowning offline. Stop treating governance like a team sport where the only thing that matters is your side winning.

Parents everywhere—the ones working two jobs, the ones rationing medication, the ones buying classroom supplies because the system won’t, the ones held together by coffee and spite—we’re done with excuses.

We’re done with “the other party blocked it.” We’re done with “it’s complicated.” We’re done with “we’ll look into it.”

We need you to act like the adults you’re supposed to be. We need you to remember that behind every policy decision is a real family trying to survive your legislative slow-motion disaster.

The political theater has run its course. The audience has left the building.

It’s time to get things done, or get out of the way for people who will.

P.S. - If your response to this is tweeting about “angry parents” or “both sides,” you’ve completely missed the point. Which, honestly, tracks.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program, celebrated as the nation’s first “universal” education voucher system, was not a grassroots West Virginia innovation. It was the product of a sophisticated national dark money network connecting the Koch family foundations, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), and donor anonymity organizations like DonorsTrust—a coordinated infrastructure that funnels millions through untraceable channels to state legislators and advocacy groups. Americans for Prosperity The result: a $245 million annual subsidy program WVTreasury that primarily enriches families already in private schools while systematically defunding public education through financial asphyxiation. Americans for Prosperity

The evidence is stark and documented. Senator Patricia Rucker, the bill’s champion and ALEC’s current National Chair, explicitly admitted the Hope Scholarship “model came from ideas that were presented to me at ALEC conferences.” American Legislative Exchange Council State Treasurer Larry Pack acknowledged that 90% of scholarship recipients were already in private school before the program—meaning the vast majority of taxpayer funds subsidize families who could already afford private education. And West Virginia Board of Education President Paul Hardesty now openly accuses ALEC of pursuing a “heavy handed” strategy to “decimate public education” financially. West Virginia Watch This investigation reveals how that strategy works, who funds it, and what mechanisms keep the money hidden.

Dark Money’s Hidden Architecture

The funding infrastructure behind West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship operates through deliberately opaque channels designed to obscure the identity of wealthy donors while maintaining legal compliance. At the center sits DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund—the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement”—which raised over $1 billion in 2021 alone, much from just two anonymous donations exceeding $425 million each. DeSmog These donor-advised funds legally shield original donors from public disclosure while distributing to 501(c)(3) organizations that advocate for school privatization. DeSmog

DonorsTrust’s model is elegantly simple and devastatingly effective: wealthy individuals or corporations deposit funds into donor-advised accounts, DonorsTrust then distributes grants to recipient organizations, and those recipients report only “DonorsTrust” as their funder—never the original source. DeSmog dianeravitch The mechanism guarantees ideological alignment; DonorsTrust explicitly requires recipients support “liberty” and promises donors their contributions will “never be used to support politically liberal causes.” Philanthropy Daily Between 2010 and 2012 alone, DonorsTrust distributed $716,800 to the Institute for Justice, the legal organization that later defended West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship in court. PR Watch By 2020, DonorsTrust was distributing $188.3 million annually, with $137 million specifically directed to right-wing policy infrastructure. DeSmog

The Charles Koch Foundation and broader Koch network form the second pillar of this infrastructure. Koch foundations provided the $350,000 seed funding that created the Institute for Justice in 1991 and contributed an additional $337,415 between 2001 and 2020 for school choice legal defense. Wikipedia The Koch network operates through multiple interconnected entities—Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together coalition, Yes. Every Kid., and the Charles Koch Foundation itself—each playing distinct roles while sharing funding sources, personnel, and strategic coordination. Influence Watch Americans for Prosperity In West Virginia specifically, Americans for Prosperity spent over $700,000 in recent elections supporting Governor Patrick Morrisey and Republican legislators who champion the Hope Scholarship. News and SentinelAmericans for Prosperity

Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy serves as the crucial local node connecting national funding to state policy. Founded in 2014 and led by Executive Director Garrett Ballengee—a graduate of Koch’s training programs (Koch Internship Program 2011, Koch Associate Program 2012)—Cardinal is a member of the State Policy Network, which received $10.5 million from DonorsTrust in 2023 alone. Cardinal Institute Stand Together Fellowships Cardinal introduced the ESA concept to West Virginia in 2016 and spent five years “educating” legislators and the public before HB 2013 passed. Stand Together Trust State Policy Network The organization refuses to disclose its donors, stating only that it “strictly respects donor privacy” Cardinal Institute and receives support from DonorsTrust. Diane Ravitch’s Blog This creates an impenetrable wall: donors give anonymously through DonorsTrust, which gives to Cardinal, which lobbies West Virginia legislators—and the public never learns whose financial interests drive the policy.

State Policy Network itself functions as the coordinating infrastructure for this strategy across all 50 states, with 167 member organizations and combined revenue exceeding $152 million. Lawson Bader, president of DonorsTrust, chairs SPN’s board of directors—a direct organizational link between the dark money conduit and state-level policy advocacy. PR Watch SPN describes its model as “IKEA-style” policy making: offering a catalog of pre-designed policies that state groups can “build” locally while appearing to be independent grassroots organizations. PR WatchThe Bradley Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and multiple Koch entities fund SPN, which then provides training, grants, messaging support, and strategic coordination to members like Cardinal Institute. dianeravitch

The Funding Flows Documented

While complete transparency remains impossible by design, investigative reporting and IRS Form 990 filings reveal partial funding flows:

Charles Koch Foundation → Institute for Justice: $337,415 (2001-2020) for legal defense of school choice programs, including West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship constitutional challenge.

DonorsTrust → Institute for Justice: $716,800 (2010-2012) for school choice litigation nationwide.

DonorsTrust → Cardinal Institute: Confirmed grantee relationship, specific amounts undisclosed. Cardinal received funding for its ESA advocacy campaign that introduced and championed the Hope Scholarship. State Policy Network

Koch Network → Americans for Prosperity-WV: Undisclosed amounts funding lobbying, political campaigns, and advertising. AFP-WV’s State Director Jason Huffman refused to name donors, citing “their right to privacy and freedom of speech.” Mountain State Spotlight AFP spent “low six figures” on voucher advocacy in 2019 alone, West Virginia Gazette Mail plus $700,000+ in recent election cycles supporting Hope Scholarship champions.

DonorsTrust → State Policy Network: $10.5 million in 2023, making SPN one of DonorsTrust’s largest beneficiaries. Washington Examiner SPN then supports Cardinal Institute and coordinates multi-state school choice campaigns.

Stand Together Trust → West Virginia Families United for Education: $50,000 documented grant to WV organization providing Hope Scholarship support services. EXPOSED by CMD

These documented flows represent only the traceable portion. The fundamental design of this infrastructure—using 501(c)(3) organizations that don’t disclose donors, donor-advised funds that legally shield identities, and multi-layered grants that obscure original sources—means the total funding deployed for West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship campaign remains unknown. Cardinal Institute’s operational budget: undisclosed. AFP-WV’s total spending on the Hope Scholarship campaign: undisclosed. The identities of the individual billionaires or corporate interests funding these efforts through DonorsTrust: permanently concealed.

West Virginia’s Disclosure Failures Enable The Strategy

West Virginia’s weak disclosure laws create the perfect environment for dark money influence. The state’s lobbying disclosure system ranks among the worst nationally: reports are due only every four months, meaning disclosures about Hope Scholarship lobbying came months after the bill passed in March 2021. The entire Ethics Commission website consists of unsearchable PDF files with no database functionality—unlike Texas and other states with real-time, searchable systems. Critically, West Virginia does not require disclosure of lobbyist compensation, how much was spent on grassroots campaigns, or coordination between multiple organizations. Mountain State Spotlight

The federal tax code compounds these gaps through the 501(c)(4) dark money loophole. While 501(c)(3) organizations like Cardinal Institute must file Schedule B listing donors who gave over $5,000 to the IRS (though not publicly), 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations face zero donor disclosure requirements to either the IRS or the public. GRF CPAs & Advisors Skadden They can engage in unlimited lobbying and up to 49% political activity while keeping funders completely anonymous. UpCounsel Skadden Americans for Prosperity operates as a 501(c)(4), allowing it to lobby aggressively for the Hope Scholarship and spend heavily on electoral campaigns without ever revealing who funds these efforts.

The strategic use of different nonprofit structures maximizes opacity. Educational research and coalition building flows through 501(c)(3) organizations that can claim “educational” purposes (Cardinal Institute, EdChoice). Direct lobbying and political campaigns run through 501(c)(4) organizations with zero donor disclosure (Americans for Prosperity). Legal defense operates through 501(c)(3) litigation groups funded by Koch and DonorsTrust (Institute for Justice). IEach entity reports its finances separately, making it impossible to track the total resources deployed or identify unified funding sources.

When WVBE President Paul Hardesty accused ALEC of trying to “decimate public education” financially in October 2025, West Virginia Watch he articulated what the funding structure confirms: this was never about empowering West Virginia families. West Virginia Public Broadcasting It was about deploying national dark money through coordinated advocacy organizations to rewrite state education law according to a pre-designed model, all while concealing the financial interests and identities of those who profit from education privatization.

Alec’s Model Legislation Pipeline

The most damning evidence of coordination requires no inference: Senator Patricia Rucker openly admits it. In an EdChoice interview published by ALEC itself, Rucker stated: “I introduced, in West Virginia, a universal education savings account (ESA) called the Hope Scholarship—the model came from ideas that were presented to me at ALEC conferences.“ EdChoice American Legislative Exchange Council ALEC’s website confirms this, crediting Rucker as the “ALEC Board Member and West Virginia State Senator” who “based it on ALEC’s model policy, the Education Savings Account Act.” American Legislative Exchange Council

Rucker serves simultaneously as ALEC’s current National Chair, a member of ALEC’s Executive Board, and chair of ALEC’s Education and Workforce Development Task Force—positions that make her both a state legislator and a national policy coordinator for education privatization. She joined ALEC in 2017 and attended the 2019 ALEC Annual Meeting and the December 2020 ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit, where she participated in over 15 sessions including workshops on “New Education Polling Data” from EdChoice and “Against Critical Theory’s Onslaught: Reclaiming Education and the American Dream.” At these conferences, ALEC presents model legislation that state legislators can introduce with minimal modification.

A side-by-side comparison of ALEC’s “Education Savings Account Act” model policy and West Virginia’s HB 2013 reveals near-identical structure. Both establish universal eligibility for all students (West Virginia used a phased approach reaching universality by 2026), both fund accounts at the state per-pupil amount subtracted from districts, and both list nearly identical qualifying expenses spanning 15 categories from private school tuition to educational therapies to transportation. Both include explicit protections for school autonomy—ALEC’s model states “The Department or any other state agency may not in any way regulate the educational program of a participating private school,” a principle West Virginia implemented through minimal regulation. The primary difference is implementation timing, not substance.

After West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship became law in March 2021, ALEC explicitly renamed its ESA model policy the “Hope Scholarship Act” to honor Rucker’s achievement and create a template for other states. ALEC’s website explains: “A year after the Hope Scholarship Program became law, ALEC passed a new ESA model policy and titled it the ‘Hope Scholarship Act,’ implementing many of the improvements that were found in Senator Rucker’s final legislation.” American Legislative Exchange Council This represents policy laundering in real time: ALEC develops a model, a state legislator implements it, ALEC then rebrands the model after the state’s version to give other states a “successful” example to replicate.

The National Replication Strategy Documented

West Virginia was always intended as proof of concept for national expansion. In January 2024, ALEC launched the Education Freedom Alliance with the explicit goal of bringing “education freedom” to 25 states by 2025. The coalition, co-chaired by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey (both from states that followed West Virginia with universal vouchers), coordinates ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, EdChoice, Heritage Foundation, Job Creators Network, and Parents Defending Education. Bleeding HeartlandALEC CEO Lisa B. Nelson framed it as applying “the same evolutionary spark that created iPhones and Teslas to the classroom.” American Legislative Exchange Council

The strategy worked. Before West Virginia (2021), only Arizona had an ESA program, limited to special needs students. After West Virginia demonstrated the model: American Legislative Exchange Council

* 2022: Arizona expanded to universal eligibility (83,000+ students by 2025) PR Watch American Legislative Exchange Council

* 2023: Iowa passed HF 68 establishing universal ESAs (Governor Reynolds now EFA co-chair) American Legislative Exchange CouncilAmerican Legislative Exchange Council

* 2023: Arkansas passed the LEARNS Act (95% of new voucher users already in private school) Guest Post

* 2023: Utah passed HB 215—Utah Fits All Scholarship Program American Legislative Exchange Council

* 2023: Florida expanded existing programs to universal eligibility (220,000+ students)

* 2024: Oklahoma, Indiana, and Ohio passed universal or near-universal programs American Legislative Exchange Council

* 2025: Alabama passed the CHOICE Act (HB 129), becoming the 11th state American Legislative Exchange Council

* 2025: Tennessee passed an Education Freedom Act American Legislative Exchange Council

ALEC openly tracks this through its “Index of State Education Freedom,” ranking states by their privatization policies. West Virginia ranks 6th nationally in 2025, following only Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Iowa—all states with universal voucher systems promoted through the same ALEC-Koch-SPN network. American Legislative Exchange Council

At ALEC’s July 2024 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston gave the keynote on school choice, joined by Patricia Rucker and EdChoice’s CEO on a panel promoting voucher expansion strategies. American Legislative Exchange Council The Center for Media and Democracy documented that in 2015, 172 ALEC education bills were introduced in 42 states, with ALEC’s “Great Schools Tax Credit Act” alone spawning 17 bills in 13 states. PR Watch Between 2011 and 2012, approximately 1,000 ALEC-based bills were introduced annually across all policy areas, with roughly 20% becoming law. By 2025, 11 states have achieved ALEC’s vision of universal education vouchers.

The Rigged Marketplace: Subsidies Without Accountability

The Hope Scholarship creates a structurally rigged educational marketplace by subsidizing private schools with public funds while imposing radically different regulatory requirements on public and private providers. The program amounts to government-mandated competitive advantage for private schools combined with systematic disadvantage for the public system.

The 90% windfall effect

The most damning evidence of the program’s true purpose came from State Treasurer Larry Pack himself in July 2024. Pack, who chairs the Hope Scholarship Board, admitted that only 10% of Hope Scholarship recipients were actually enrolled in public school before transferring. 90% of students were already in private school or homeschool WITHOUT the scholarship. A senior advisor for the Treasurer’s office confirmed: “85-90% of students would have done alternative education without Hope.” Legal Newslinelegalnewsline

This contradicts every promise made during the legislative campaign. The program was marketed as providing educational access to families who “couldn’t afford” private school. Legislators required prior public school enrollment specifically to limit the program to those without existing access. Americans for ProsperityWest Virginia Legislature But the 45-day loophole (students need only attend public school for 45 days before becoming eligible) and the kindergarten exception created workarounds that rendered the restriction meaningless. In 2021, private school parents held meetings explicitly teaching others “how to work around the system” by temporarily enrolling children in online public school classes while continuing private school attendance. West Virginia Watch

The financial implications are staggering. In 2025-26, the program will cost approximately $100 million with roughly 15,000 students participating. West Virginia Watch If 90% were already in private school, that means $90 million subsidizes families already affording private education, with only $10 million actually expanding access. When the program becomes fully universal in 2026-27—removing even the token public school enrollment requirement—the windfall effect will approach 100%. Projections estimate 30,000-40,000 additional students will become eligible, virtually all of whom are already in private education, potentially tripling costs to $150-$315 million annually for pure wealth transfer to already-privileged families. The IntelligencerWV MetroNews

Geographic data confirms this regressive distribution. McDowell County, West Virginia’s poorest county, had zero students use the program in 2022-23 or 2023-24. EdChoiceCenter for American Progress The scholarship primarily benefits higher-income urban and suburban families near private schools who can afford the tuition gap between the $5,267 voucher and average private school tuition of $6,200-$10,738. Center for American Progress

The Fixed-Cost Trap Destroying Public Schools

West Virginia public schools face total per-pupil spending of approximately $15,356, including $8,219 in state funding, $2,974 in federal funding, and $5,492 in local funding. Schoolchoiceweek WVpolicy The Hope Scholarship removes $5,267 in state funding per student Cardinal Institute Hopescholarship but does not proportionally reduce public school costs. Buildings still require maintenance regardless of enrollment. Transportation infrastructure remains largely fixed. Teacher salaries and benefits cannot be reduced proportionally—schools cannot fire half a teacher when class sizes shrink. Administrative overhead stays relatively stable. Special education requirements remain for students with IEPs. WVPolicy

The impact is documented and severe. Between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, 53 of 55 West Virginia counties experienced enrollment loss resulting in reduced state funding. In eight counties, Hope Scholarship enrollment exceeded the total enrollment decline, meaning they would have experienced growth without the voucher program. 51.9% of statewide enrollment decline is attributable to the Hope Scholarship. The result: 493 professional educators and 327 service personnel lost their jobs statewide.

Specific county impacts reveal the death spiral:

* Cabell County: 97% of enrollment loss attributable to Hope Scholarship

* Kanawha County: 58% of enrollment loss from the program (246 of 560 lost students)

* Wood County: 57% of enrollment loss from vouchers

* Harrison County: 49% of enrollment loss from the program

Over 25 public schools were approved for closure or consolidation in 2024-25 due to enrollment decline and funding loss. West Virginia Watch Counties eliminated alternative education programs (Chandler Academy in Kanawha, Crossroads Academy in Cabell), Advanced Placement courses, specialized support staff including nurses, counselors, and social workers, and enrichment programs. WVPolicy Roane County declared a state of emergency in July 2025 due to financial crisis driven by declining enrollment. West Virginia Watch West Virginia Department of Education West Virginia faced $465 million in potential federal funding clawbacks for failing to maintain education spending levels, requiring special waivers. WV MetroNews

This is precisely the strategy Hardesty described: financial asphyxiation. West Virginia Watch Public schools lose funding but cannot reduce costs proportionally, forcing cuts to programs and staff, which makes the schools less attractive, which drives more families to use vouchers, which accelerates the cycle. WVPolicy Rural areas are particularly vulnerable because transportation costs are high and consolidation is geographically difficult.

The Accountability Double Standard

The regulatory disparity between public schools and Hope Scholarship recipients is so extreme it borders on absurdity. West Virginia public schools face: Weirton Daily Times

Teacher Requirements: Must hold bachelor’s degree, complete state-approved teacher preparation program, pass three Praxis exams (Core Academic Skills, Principles of Learning & Teaching, Subject Test), complete clinical teacher-of-record placement, maintain ongoing professional development, and hold state licensure. Teacher Certification Degrees

Curriculum and Testing: Must follow West Virginia Content Standards (Policy 2520 series), teach required courses in history, civics, Constitution, and specific subjects, West Virginia Department of Education administer mandatory statewide assessments (WV General Summative Assessment grades 3-8, SAT School Day in high school, subject-specific end-of-course exams), West Virginia Department of Education and have performance publicly reported and tied to school accreditation.

Accountability Standards: Subject to WV System of Support and Accountability (Policy 2322), Annual Approval Status and Accreditation Report, WV Balanced Scorecard metrics, WV Accountability System Efficiency Standards (11 operational efficiency standards monitored), State Board oversight and intervention authority, West Virginia Department of Education and must meet Standards of Quality defined in 1,350 pages of West Virginia School Laws Code Book.

Non-Discrimination Requirements: Must serve all students regardless of disability, religion, race, gender, or other characteristics; comply with IDEA for special education; West Virginia Department of Education and enforce civil rights protections under federal law. Subject to FOIA for all records.

Private schools receiving Hope Scholarship funds face:

Teacher Requirements: No certification required under West Virginia law. No degree requirements specified. Ed Schools may voluntarily prefer certified teachers, but it’s not mandated. Teacher Certification Degrees

Curriculum Requirements: Must provide instruction in reading, language, mathematics, science, and social studies plus required courses in US history, civics, US Constitution, WV government, and WV history. West Virginia Legislature No specific curriculum standards beyond subject areas. No alignment to state standards required. West Virginia Department of Education

Testing Requirements: For “Exemption K” registered schools, must administer a nationally normed standardized test chosen by the school. Test must score at or above 40th percentile composite. If below 40th percentile for two consecutive years, loses exemption status. EdWest Virginia Department of Education No state-mandated assessments. No public reporting of individual school results. SOS AZnetwork

Accountability: No state oversight of instruction quality. No public performance reporting. No accreditation required (optional for registered schools). Ed No intervention or improvement requirements. West Virginia Department of Education Many Hope Scholarship recipient schools are unaccredited according to the WV Education Associatio.

Governance and Oversight: Subject to what WVBE President Hardesty characterized as “single sheet of paper” or “index card” of requirements compared to 1,350 pages for public schools. Weirton Daily Times No state board oversight of operations. No public meetings requirements. Not subject to FOIA. West Virginia Legislature Private governance by school board or owner.

Discrimination: Can discriminate in admissions based on religion, disability, academic performance, or other factors. Can refuse students with special needs. Ed No requirement to serve all students. ACLU West Virginia

This creates seven distinct competitive advantages for private schools receiving public funds:

* Cherry-picking students: Can deny admission to students with disabilities, behavioral issues, or learning challenges while public schools must serve all, creating adverse selection that concentrates higher-cost students in public schools.

* Lower operating costs: No requirement for certified teachers (can pay less), no requirement for expensive special education services, can avoid state-mandated programs, and facilities not subject to state building codes and inspection.

* Reduced competitive pressure: No public test score reporting or accountability, no requirement to improve if performing poorly, no state intervention if failing students, can present selective narrative about quality.

* Financial subsidization without accountability: Receive $5,267 per student in public funds, face minimal oversight, can reject expensive-to-serve students, avoid costs of special education and transportation required of public schools. Americans for Prosperity

* Marketing advantage: Can advertise as “free” or “low-cost” due to Hope Scholarship, can target families with subsidy as recruitment tool, smaller class sizes easier to maintain when cherry-picking students.

* Religious mission protected: 77% of Hope funds go to religious schools ($17.1 million of $22.3 million in 2023-24). West Virginia Watch Schools can integrate religious instruction funded by taxpayers, require religious adherence or practice, raising First Amendment establishment clause concerns.

* Regulatory arbitrage: Can structure programs and offerings without state curriculum mandates, flexibility in scheduling, calendar, and graduation requirements, can experiment or offer niche programs without bureaucratic approval.

Meanwhile, in 2025-26, the Hope Scholarship costs 10 times West Virginia’s child care assistance budget, double the Promise Scholarship college aid budget, and 20 times the Communities in Schools program. The Legislature fully funded Hope Scholarship expansion while denying teacher raises and stripping funding from a bill to increase school social workers. West Virginia Watch The market isn’t free—it’s rigged by design.

The Revolving Door And Legislative Capture

The personnel connections between ALEC, Koch network organizations, and West Virginia government reveal how national dark money infrastructure captures state policy through trained operatives and coordinated legislators.

Garrett Ballengee: Koch Pipeline To West Virginia Policy

Garrett Ballengee represents the archetypal revolving door case. In 2011, Ballengee completed the Koch Internship Program (KIP) followed by the Koch Associate Program (KAP) in 2012 at Charles Koch Institute headquarters. Atlas Network In his own words: “Professor Ryan also introduced me to the Charles Koch Institute’s educational programs, which presented a whole new career opportunity—public policy... I slowly realized that public policy, specifically the non-profit, free-market public policy space, was where I wanted—and needed—to dedicate my time.” Standtogether fellowships

After Koch training, Ballengee worked in Washington, D.C.’s policy sector from 2012-2015, then moved to West Virginia in 2015 to become the first employee and Executive Director of the newly-created Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy. Standtogetherfellowships Cardinal is a State Policy Network member receiving Koch network funding through DonorsTrust. Stand Together (Koch’s umbrella organization) features Ballengee as a success story on their Fellowship website, quoting him: “I cannot explain the amount of knowledge that I soaked up during my time in KIP and KAP.” Standtogether fellowships Standtogether fellowships

As Cardinal Institute’s leader, Ballengee introduced West Virginia to the ESA concept in 2016, spent five years “educating people on the idea” through events, media, and meetings with legislators, and built coalitions with parents, private school groups, and homeschool organizations. Standtogethertrust After HB 2013 passed, Ballengee stated: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Hope Scholarship qualifies on that level” of something West Virginians can be proud of nationally. Weirton Daily TimesNews and Sentinel Cardinal Institute won Atlas Network’s Smart Bets 2020 competition for this education work, was a finalist for the Templeton Freedom Award 2021, and won the Bob Williams Award for Outstanding Policy Achievement. Cardinal Institute Ballengee himself won the 2022 Buckley Award. Cardinal Institute

This is the revolving door in action: Koch network identifies and trains promising young conservatives through paid internship and fellowship programs, places them in Washington policy organizations for additional experience, then deploys them to found or lead state-based think tanks that appear local but actually implement national agendas designed by the Koch network and funded through DonorsTrust. Ballengee is not some grassroots West Virginia activist—he’s a Koch-trained operative executing a national strategy.

Patricia Rucker: ALEC’s woman in Charleston

Senator Patricia Rucker simultaneously serves as:

* West Virginia State Senator (16th District)

* ALEC National Chair (2025)

* ALEC Board Member (Executive Board)

* ALEC Education and Workforce Development Task Force member (since 2017)

* Former Chair of WV Senate Education Committee (2019-2022)

* Recipient of Americans for Prosperity-WV’s 2025 Freedom Award American Legislative Exchange Council

Rucker joined ALEC in 2017, the year after her election to the State Senate. She attended the 2019 ALEC Annual Meeting and the December 2020 ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit, where she participated in over 15 sessions including workshops with EdChoice on polling data, panels on fighting critical race theory, and State Chair meetings. At these conferences, ALEC presents model legislation and trains state legislators on implementation strategies.

Rucker’s dual role as state legislator and national ALEC chair creates direct organizational integration between West Virginia’s government and ALEC’s corporate-funded policy operation. She doesn’t just attend ALEC meetings—she chairs them. She doesn’t just receive ALEC model legislation—she helps develop it. ALEC’s Education Task Force includes corporate members like K12 Inc. (for-profit online education founded by junk-bond king Michael Milken), Sylvan Learning, and education technology companies that financially benefit from public education privatization. EdWeek Rucker sits at the table with these corporations as they vote on model policies alongside legislators.

After the Hope Scholarship passed, Americans for Prosperity-WV presented Rucker with their 2025 Freedom Award at a legislative reception in February 2025, explicitly recognizing her work on education privatization. Americans for Prosperity AFP-WV

had been lobbying for the Hope Scholarship since 2019, issued key vote alerts urging legislators to support HB 2013, and spent “low six figures” on voucher advocacy West Virginia Gazette Mail plus $700,000+ in recent elections. Americans for Prosperity Rucker receiving AFP’s highest honor demonstrates the coordination: ALEC provides model legislation, AFP provides grassroots pressure and electoral muscle, and compliant legislators like Rucker receive recognition and political support.

The ALEC caucus in Charleston

At least 10 current West Virginia legislators have documented ALEC membership or attendance at ALEC conferences:

House of Delegates:

• Del. Elias Coop-Gonzalez (R-67) - ALEC State Chair

• Del. Dean Jeffries (R-61) - ALEC Education Task Force member, co-sponsor of HB 2013

• Del. Rick Hillenbrand (R-88)

• Del. Gary Howell (R-87) - ALEC member since 2013

• Del. Margitta Mazzocchi (R-31)

• Del. William E. Ridenour, II (R-100)

State Senate:

• Sen. Patricia Rucker (R-16) - ALEC National Chair, Education Task Force

• Sen. Mark Maynard (R-06) - ALEC State Chair

• Sen. Mike Azinger (R-3) - ALEC member since 2018

• Sen. Eric Tarr (R-4) - ALEC member since 2019

One co-sponsor of HB 2013 is a confirmed current ALEC member (Jeffries), and the Senate champion is ALEC’s National Chair. This represents organizational capture: ALEC doesn’t just influence West Virginia legislators—it has members throughout the Legislature who attend ALEC conferences, receive ALEC model legislation, and introduce ALEC bills.

The Coordinated Coalition

The Hope Scholarship campaign demonstrated sophisticated multi-organizational coordination. In February 2021, before the legislative session began, a coalition held a virtual press conference calling for passage of ESA legislation. The coalition included:

• Republican legislators (Rucker, Roberts, others)

• Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia (Jason Huffman, State Director)

• Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy (Garrett Ballengee)

• EdChoice (national school choice advocacy organization)

• ExcelinEd (Jeb Bush’s education foundation)

• Institute for Justice (Koch-funded legal group)

• Yes. Every Kid. (Koch-launched 2019 grassroots organization)

• Education Choice West Virginia (parent group co-created by Institute for Justice)

• West Virginia Christian Education Association

• Association of Christian Schools International

• Catholic Education Partners

This wasn’t a spontaneous coalition—it was a coordinated national network with shared funding sources executing a planned strategy. AFP-WV provided lobbying, issued key vote alerts, and organized grassroots pressure. Cardinal Institute provided research, media, and education for legislators. Institute for Justice provided legal strategy and was prepared to defend against constitutional challenges. EdChoice provided polling data and research. National organizations provided resources and coordination. Local religious school associations provided authentic grassroots cover.

After passage, AFP-WV published a “2021 Legislative Key Vote Scorecard” tracking how legislators voted on Hope Scholarship and other priorities. In 2022, AFP-WV endorsed Senator Rollan Roberts, stating: “Senator Roberts was instrumental in securing the passage of the Hope Scholarship Act. As Vice Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, his leadership helped turn West Virginia, overnight, from last to the gold standard in the nation for educational freedom.” AFP conducted direct mail and digital advertising campaigns supporting endorsed candidates. In 2024, AFP-WV endorsed Patrick Morrisey for Governor in July 2023—more than a year before the election—and spent heavily on ground game including canvassing, phone banks, and door knocking. Morrisey won and continued supporting Hope Scholarship expansion.

The personnel connections, organizational coordination, and political muscle demonstrate how national dark money infrastructure captures state policy: train operatives, fund think tanks, provide model legislation to ALEC-member legislators, coordinate advocacy organizations, provide political support to compliant legislators, and punish opponents. West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship wasn’t democracy in action—it was oligarchy by design.

The Hidden Costs and Unanswered Questions

The Hope Scholarship’s explosive growth reveals a program fundamentally out of control. From $7.7 million in year one (2022-23) to $22.3 million in year two (2023-24) to a projected $245 million in year three (2024-25), the costs increased more than 30-fold in three years. When universal eligibility triggers in 2026-27, projections estimate $150-$315 million annually as 30,000-40,000 additional students—virtually all already in private school—become eligible. This crowds out every other education priority. The Legislature fully funded Hope Scholarship expansion while denying teacher raises and stripping funding from bills to increase school social workers.

But the true costs remain hidden because the fundamental question cannot be answered with available information: Who profits from this program, and are they the same people who funded its creation?Private school tuition prices have received $22.3 million in taxpayer subsidies in 2023-24, projected to grow to $245 million in 2025-26. Education vendors, curriculum providers, and service providers receive Hope Scholarship payments. Out-of-state schools in Virginia, Utah, and New Mexico received West Virginia taxpayer dollars—$210,311 to Virginia alone.

Do the anonymous donors funding Cardinal Institute through DonorsTrust have financial interests in private schools or education service providers? Do Koch network entities profit from education privatization? Does ALEC’s corporate membership include companies that benefit from voucher programs? The dark money infrastructure makes these questions unanswerable. When Treasurer Pack admitted 90% of Hope Scholarship recipients were already in private school, he revealed that the program primarily transfers wealth to families with existing resources. But we cannot know if those families include the children of the very donors who funded the advocacy campaign—because donor identities remain concealed.

The spending data raises additional troubling questions. Hope Scholarship funds were spent on dance lessons, piano lessons, jiujitsu, iPads, water tables, Clay Center children’s museum memberships, and extracurriculars far beyond traditional education. Multiple schools receiving Hope funds are unaccredited. Some private schools had just a handful of students but received tens of thousands in taxpayer subsidies. The lack of accountability means taxpayers cannot assess whether students are learning, whether schools are providing quality education, or whether funds are being used appropriately.

West Virginia faces federal Maintenance of Effort violations that threatened $465 million in clawbacks because education spending hasn’t kept pace with requirements. The Hope Scholarship contributes to this by diverting state funds while public school fixed costs remain. Yet the program faces no serious political challenge because the dark money network that created it provides political protection. AFP-WV spent $700,000+ supporting Hope Scholarship champions in recent elections. ALEC provides ongoing model legislation and coordination. Cardinal Institute provides research and messaging. The same infrastructure that passed the program now defends it from reform.

Paul Hardesty’s October 2025 statement that “members of the legislature privately told me that, hey, this has gotten too big too fast, and we can’t control it, but they have no remedy” reveals the political capture. Legislators recognize the program is spiraling out of control but feel powerless to stop it because the political coalition supporting it—funded by anonymous donors and coordinated by national organizations—will punish any opposition.

Conclusion: The Rigged Market’s Real Purpose

West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program represents dark money infrastructure achieving its intended purpose: using concealed funding to pass model legislation that transfers public resources to private interests while systematically defunding public institutions. The 90% windfall effect isn’t a bug—it’s the feature. The regulatory double standard that subjects public schools to 1,350 pages of requirements while private schools face a “single sheet” isn’t an oversight—it’s the design. The fixed-cost trap that forces public schools to eliminate teachers, counselors, and programs while enrollment declines isn’t an unintended consequence—it’s the strategy Paul Hardesty identified: “decimate public education” financially.

The evidence documents a sophisticated national network connecting Charles Koch Foundation funding, DonorsTrust donor anonymity, State Policy Network coordination, ALEC model legislation, Americans for Prosperity political muscle, and strategically placed operatives like Garrett Ballengee in state think tanks and Patricia Rucker in state legislatures. This infrastructure spent years—possibly millions of dollars—engineering a policy outcome that primarily benefits families already in private school while accelerating public school closures, all while keeping the funding sources and financial beneficiaries hidden from public scrutiny.

West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship is not school choice. It is school market rigging—subsidizing private competitors while starving public providers, imposing crushing accountability on public schools while exempting private schools, and using the tax code’s dark money loopholes to conceal the wealthy interests funding the transformation. When you see “education freedom,” read “public education starvation.” When you see “school choice,” read “public funding for private schools without accountability.” When you see “Hope Scholarship,” read “wealth transfer to the already wealthy, funded by donors who won’t identify themselves.”

The unanswered questions reveal the real scandal. We know Patricia Rucker used ALEC model legislation. We know Garrett Ballengee was trained by the Koch network. We know DonorsTrust funded multiple organizations in the Hope Scholarship coalition. We know 90% of recipients were already in private school. But we don’t know which billionaires or corporate interests funded this campaign. We don’t know if they have financial stakes in private schools or education vendors now receiving $245 million annually. We don’t know the total resources deployed to pass HB 2013. We don’t know because the infrastructure was deliberately designed to prevent us from knowing.

That’s how dark money rigs markets: in the shadows, with plausible deniability, using donor anonymity vehicles like DonorsTrust and weak state disclosure laws to ensure the public can never trace the money back to its source. West Virginia’s children, teachers, and public schools are paying the price. The only people who benefit are those wealthy enough to already afford private school—and the anonymous donors who funded the campaign to subsidize them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

I know you don't have time for this. You're working full-time, shuttling kids to activities, doing homework help at 9 PM, and trying to figure out what the hell a "Hope Scholarship" even is because your neighbor mentioned it at the bus stop and you nodded like you knew.

I get it. I'm doing it too.

I'm a single-parent with two kids in West Virginia public schools. I work full-time. I have a college degree in public policy analysis and 15+ years of government experience, which is a fancy way of saying I can read policy briefs without falling asleep and I know when politicians are lying.

In the video above, President Hardesty perfectly illustrated what policy analysts call asymmetric regulation. It’s a classic managed-decline strategy. You don’t actively destroy your target—you just rig the game so it can’t possibly compete. Impose crushing compliance costs on one player while letting competitors operate with zero constraints.

The Funding Trap: Policy Malpractice 101

Let me put on my nerd glasses and explain the con at the heart of this whole scheme.

West Virginia funds schools through the Public School Support Plan (PSSP)—an enrollment-based model. Simple concept: money follows students. Enrollment up? Funding up. Enrollment down? Funding down.

Sounds fair, right?

Here’s the trap: This only works if costs are variable. If expenses scale directly with student numbers, enrollment-based funding makes perfect sense.

But most school costs are fixed, not variable.

Let’s break down what school districts actually pay for:

* Infrastructure: Buildings, maintenance, utilities (fixed)

* Transportation: Buses, routes, drivers—especially in rural areas where you can’t just cancel a 40-mile route because three kids left (fixed)

* Administration: Principals, superintendents, support staff (fixed)

* Debt service: Bond payments on capital projects (fixed)

Only a slice of costs—mainly teacher salaries and instructional materials—actually vary with enrollment.

So when a school loses students, it loses proportional funding but cannot reduce its fixed costs proportionally. The result? A structural deficit that can only be “solved” by cutting teachers and programs or closing schools entirely.

This is what we call policy malpractice. Any competent first-year policy student would flag this model as unsustainable.

The legislature knows this. They’ve been told. Repeatedly. By the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy and others. They’ve done nothing to fix it.

* West Virginia Must Modernize School Funding Formula to Prioritize Community Schools and Student Needs

* Tracking Public School Closures in WV

* The Perfect Storm: Limited Oversight and Accountability Contribute to Growing Costs of the Hope Scholarship

The ALEC Playbook: Starve the Beast

When President Hardesty named ALEC—the American Legislative Exchange Council—as the architect of West Virginia’s school choice strategy, I wasn’t even slightly surprised. I’ve tracked ALEC’s model legislation for years.

When he said, “If you bankrupt the school system, change can occur,” he was describing a strategy ALEC has deployed across multiple states. It’s called “starve the beast.”

Here’s the playbook:

Step 1: Create alternatives (charters, vouchers, ESAs) that siphon students and funding from public schools.

Step 2: Maintain crushing regulations on public schools while exempting alternatives, ensuring public schools can’t compete.

Step 3: Underfund the public system while pointing to “declining enrollment” as justification, manufacturing a fiscal crisis.

Step 4: Point to the crisis as “proof” that public schools are “failing” and must be replaced with privatized alternatives.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it’s devastatingly effective.

The Competitive Rigging I See Every Single Day

Here’s where my policy and mom brain really start screaming at each other.

As policy analyst, I can explain regulatory capture and asymmetric compliance burdens. As a mom, I live the consequences.

My son’s elementary school principal spends hours every week on compliance paperwork:

* Special education documentation

* Teacher evaluation protocols

* Attendance reporting

* Nutrition program requirements

* Safety drills

The list is endless.

Meanwhile, the charter school that opened last year? “Exempt from many regulatory constraints.” They hire and fire at will. Set their own curriculum. Establish enrollment “preferences” that—surprise, surprise—let them cherry-pick students.

This is textbook competitive disadvantage imposed by regulation. And it’s deliberate.

The legislature could have:

* Reduced regulatory burden on public schools when they created charter alternatives

* Applied equal accountability standards to all schools

* Leveled the playing field

They did none of that. Because fair competition was never the goal. Managed decline was always the plan.

The Numbers They Hope You Won’t Notice

Let me show you what the data actually reveals—because this is where policy expertise becomes most valuable.

State Funding Trends (inflation-adjusted):

* FY 2009 baseline: 100%

* FY 2026: 83% (down 17%)

Enrollment Trends:

* 2009-2026: Down 14.7%

See the problem? The funding decline (17%) exceeds the enrollment decline (14.7%). That means per-pupil funding is actually decreasing, not just total funding.

Per-Pupil Spending (2023):

* West Virginia: $14,575

* National average: $16,526

* Difference: -$1,951 per student

* Regional ranking: Dead last among all neighboring states.

Now here’s the question any policy analyst has to ask: Is this because West Virginia is poor? Can’t afford education investment?

Nope. West Virginia has run budget surpluses in recent years. The state has money.

The legislature is choosing to underfund public education while simultaneously pumping $245 million into programs designed to drain students from those schools.

This is a policy choice, not fiscal necessity.

MY KIDS: Why This Isn’t Academic For Me

I need to tell you about my kids, because this isn’t abstract policy analysis for me. This is my family’s future.

My oldest started kindergarten in Fall 2013. They’re graduating high school in Spring 2026. That means they’ve watched West Virginia public education transform from 2013 to 2026—the entire arc of their K-12 experience.

They’ve spent their middle school and high school years watching programs shrink, teachers leave, class sizes grow, and opportunities disappear as funding gets diverted to subsidize private school tuition for families who already had money.

My fourth-grader has ADHD and a high IQ. They’re in the gifted program, which provides exactly the kind of specialized, individualized support that makes the difference between a kid who thrives and a kid who struggles. I am terrified that program will be cut.

Because here’s what happens when $52 million gets diverted from public schools: specialized programs disappear first. Gifted programs. Advanced courses. Arts. Music. The “extras” that aren’t actually extras—they’re what makes education work for kids whose brains work differently.

Private schools don’t have to replicate these services. They don’t have to accept kids with IEPs. They don’t have to provide the same level of special education support. They can be selective in ways public schools legally cannot.

So when families with resources leave public schools via Hope Scholarships, the students who remain—the ones who need the most support, the ones with learning differences, the ones whose families can’t afford alternatives—get fewer services with less funding.

My fourth-grader, who needs that gifted program? They’re not going anywhere. We can’t afford private school even with a $4,921 subsidy. I can’t homeschool because I work full-time. We’re staying in public school.

And that public school is getting gutted to fund scholarships for other people’s kids.

Tell me how that’s fair. Tell me how that’s “choice.” Tell me how that helps my child.

I’ll wait.

The Money Behind the Machine: Koch Cash and Dark Money Pipelines

Here’s where we follow the money—because understanding who’s funding this dismantling matters. (Learn how to track Dark Money HERE AND HERE)

Behind the deliberate strategy to bankrupt public education sit powerful organizations operating in close coordination:

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

The model legislation factory. They write the bills, lawmakers copy-paste them into state law.

Americans for Prosperity West Virginia (AFP-WV)

The ground-level mobilization arm. They organize, lobby, and campaign for the policies ALEC designs.

Both are funded extensively by Koch family foundations—Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch Charitable Foundations among others. These foundations channel millions through donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which serve as dark-money conduits for politically aligned campaigns supporting both ALEC and AFP.

The Stand Together network, led by Charles Koch, acts as an umbrella funneling resources to grassroots advocacy and model legislation strategies. This funding supports lobbying, organizing, and promoting school choice legislation that siphons money from public schools to privatized alternatives.

AFP-WV operates as the key state-level mobilizer, campaigning for education policies aligned with ALEC’s model legislation while obscuring funding sources and coordination.

This isn’t conspiracy theory. It’s documented funding flows and organizational relationships. The question isn’t whether this network exists—it’s why more people aren’t talking about it.

The Constitutional Violation Nobody’s Prosecuting

West Virginia Constitution, Article XII, Section 1: “The Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.“

Current reality:

* Thorough? 53 schools closed, 25 more closing, programs gutted

* Efficient? Spending $52 million to help 2.2% of students while defunding schools for the other 97.8%

* Free? Hope Scholarship covers 27-32% of actual private school costs

As a policy analyst, I’d argue this constitutes a violation of the state’s constitutional duty.

As a mom, I’d argue they’re breaking their promise to my kids.

The McDowell County Smoking Gun

Here’s the data that should end every “school choice helps poor kids” argument forever:

McDowell County (poorest in WV): ZERO Hope Scholarship recipients. Not one. Nada. Zilch.

Berkeley County (wealthy DC suburbs): 439 recipients

Just five affluent counties (Kanawha, Berkeley, Wood, Cabell, and Raleigh) captured 40% of all Hope scholarships. These same counties contain 30% of the state’s private schools.

My Battle Plan: What I’m Doing With This Knowledge

I’m in a unique position. I have policy expertise to understand exactly what’s happening and personal stakes to care deeply about stopping it.

So here’s my battle plan:

* Documenting Everything: Building a comprehensive dataset showing direct correlation between Hope Scholarship expansion and public school decline. Data doesn’t lie, even when politicians do.

* Translating Policy Into Plain Language: Most parents don’t have time to decode legislation and fiscal notes. But they need to understand what’s being done to their schools. So I’m writing, speaking, explaining.

* Organizing: Individual parents feel powerless. Organized parents are a political force. We need a coalition of parents, teachers, and community members who understand what’s at stake.

* Holding Legislators Accountable: Tracking votes, analyzing statements, calling out the gap between rhetoric and action. When legislators claim to support public education but vote to expand vouchers without fixing the funding formula, their constituents need to know.

The Frustrating Truth: This Is Completely Fixable

The legislature could:

* Reform the funding formula to account for fixed costs and provide stability grants to declining-enrollment districts

* Level the regulatory playing field by reducing burden on public schools OR increasing accountability for charters (pick one, cowards)

* Adequately fund public education at competitive regional levels

* Add guardrails to Hope Scholarship to control costs and prevent fiscal collapse

* Conduct comprehensive fiscal impact analysis of school choice policies on public school sustainability

These aren’t radical ideas. They’re basic good governance.

My mom heart knows they won’t do any of this unless we make them.

To Every Parent Who’s Too Tired to Fight (But Too Angry to Quit)

I know you don’t have time to analyze policy. You’re working, raising kids, trying to survive. I get it—I’m doing it too.

But here’s what you need to understand:

This isn’t incompetence. It’s not budget constraints. It’s not demographic destiny.

It’s a deliberate, coordinated, billionaire-funded campaign to destroy public education.

They’re betting you’re too busy to notice, too tired to fight, too overwhelmed to organize.

Prove them wrong.

Print these numbers. Make them explain how ZERO scholarships to McDowell County helps “poor kids.”

Ask uncomfortable questions: Why are we subsidizing families who already chose private school?

Share this everywhere. Make it viral. Make it uncomfortable. Make them answer for it.

I’m not just a policy nerd who can decode their strategy. I’m a mom whose kids are in their crosshairs.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

My journey into decoding political nonsense has, once again, led me down a rabbit hole I didn't ask for. It started, as these things often do, with a simple research prompt from a friend about a group called the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN. My first thought was, "ICAN? Sounds like a super wholesome group that probably knits sweaters for puppies." Boy, was I wrong. Dead wrong.

Instead of hand-knit sweaters, what I found was a multi-million dollar political machine that's less about puppies and more about a very particular brand of democratic chaos. Think of them as the universal remote for misinformation—sometimes it works, and you get a clear message; other times, it just makes a weird static noise and turns on the wrong channel. And in this case, the channel is "How to Use the American Legal System as a Propaganda Tool".

It turns out, ICAN, led by a former Dr. Phil producer named Del Bigtree, is a fundraising powerhouse. They've seen their revenue skyrocket from a humble $120,500 to a mind-boggling $23.2 million. A good chunk of that cash—over a third of their 2019 income, in fact—went straight to legal fees. To a single law firm, no less: Siri & Glimstad. In 2020, their payments to that firm hit $2.1 million.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but even I know that’s a lot of billable hours. So, what were they doing with all that legal firepower? Building a case for a new form of governance? Advocating for a more efficient bureaucracy?

Nah. They were essentially weaponizing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Imagine this: The anti-vaccine movement is a social movement that uses legal tools to create a false narrative. ICAN filed FOIA requests not to get specific documents that they knew existed, but to ask the government to answer queries, which isn't what FOIA requests are for. For example, they’d ask for "documents proving the CDC has ever conducted a study on a specific topic". When the government—surprise!—couldn't produce a single document formatted exactly that way, ICAN would turn to its followers and say, "SEE? The government admits it! They have no proof!".

It's a brilliant, if deeply cynical, strategy. They're not trying to win in a courtroom; they're trying to win in the court of public opinion. The lawsuits and the court "stipulations" became talking points for their movement. They’d get a voluntary dismissal from a lawsuit and then declare it a "key legal win". It’s less about a legal victory and more about a public relations triumph. ICAN consistently misrepresents the results of its legal battles to its followers.

Take the time they filed a lawsuit against the CDC to get studies proving that a range of vaccines didn't cause autism. The CDC responded by providing a list of studies that, in fact, showed no link between vaccines and autism. But instead of acknowledging this, ICAN published an article titled "Stipulated Order Proving CDC Has No Studies to Support Claim that Vaccines Given in First 6 Months of Life Do Not Cause Autism". They lied. The studies existed. The CDC had provided them. But for ICAN, the truth was an obstacle to a better story.

They did the same thing with lawsuits against Facebook and YouTube after their content was removed. They filed a complaint for a Bivens violation, which is a fancy legal term for suing a federal agent for violating your constitutional rights. The only problem? Facebook and YouTube are private companies, not federal agents. The court ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, but not before ICAN used it to create the narrative that they were fighting against "censorship by these companies, at the behest of the government".

This, my friends, is the game. They’ve built an entire business model on generating "fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines". And it's working. They're getting rich, their lawyers are getting rich, and all they have to do is keep the chaos coming. It's a survival guide for democratic chaos, all right, and it’s a playbook written for an audience of one: the checkbook.

This whole thing reminds me of a weird political theater. ICAN and their lawyers aren't just filing lawsuits; they're staging performances for their audience. They write their complaints not for the judges, but for their followers. The lawsuits are filled with a litany of anti-vaccine claims, even when those claims have nothing to do with the legal matter at hand. The goal is to provide their supporters with "official" sounding talking points.

They present the results of these lawsuits as "legal validation for anti-vaccine beliefs". They don't tell their followers, "We settled the claim, and that shows we agreed we received sufficient documents, and nothing more". They don't tell followers, "When an agency says it did not find documents, all it means is that it did not find documents". Nor do they tell followers, "ICAN agreed to voluntarily dismiss the suit". Instead, they spin the results to convince their audience that they are winning and that their beliefs are supported by the legal system. It's a way to reinforce the narrative that the government is hiding something, and that ICAN is the only one brave enough to expose it.

This strategy is particularly effective for people who are already hesitant about vaccines but lack the legal or scientific background to see through the misrepresentations. A person who is unsure about vaccines might hear that a court ordered the CDC to admit they had no studies and believe it without question. They don't know that FOIA requests can't "prove" a fact, only that a document exists. Creating this kind of fear and uncertainty is a clear gain for ICAN. It's a small step towards their larger goal of undermining public health initiatives.

And it's a model that's spreading. Other anti-vaccine groups, like Children's Health Defense, have followed a similar playbook, even trying to use the same failed legal arguments against social media companies. This isn't just a quirky organization with a weird legal strategy; it's a template for how a well-funded group can use the legal system as a shield and a sword for their agenda. They’ve created an alternate reality, and the lawsuits are simply the stage on which they perform their act.

The group's approach to citizen petitions is just as revealing as its litigation strategy. ICAN filed numerous petitions with the FDA, each one a carbon copy of the last, for different COVID-19 vaccines. They used these petitions to raise concerns about vaccine trials and demand changes, which the FDA routinely denied because they lacked scientific evidence. But again, the point wasn't to win. The point was to create a narrative that they were challenging the establishment and that the establishment was stonewalling them. They'd upload the petitions to their website with titles like "ICAN therefore filed a forceful petition", but they wouldn't upload the FDA's detailed response explaining why the petition was denied. They used this strategy to give their claims an air of official legitimacy and to galvanize their followers into action.

What we're seeing here is a masterclass in modern political activism. It's no longer just about lobbying or protesting. It's about using the very rules and procedures of the system to your advantage, not for their intended purpose, but as a marketing tool. It’s a cynical genius that turns legal defeats into fundraising victories and turns bureaucratic procedures into emotional rallying cries. In this world, the legal system isn't a place for justice; it's a content farm, and the lawsuits are just new episodes of the show. And as long as the ratings—and the donations—are high, the show will go on.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

This article is a response to the statement “West Virginia Public Broadcasting has not been able to trace the expenditures or original donors to this PAC.” From WV Public Broadcasting article “Dark Money Group Targets Local Election In National Initiative To Help Big Pharma”

Stand For US After Action Memo

Step 1: Start with the Advertisement

Every investigation begins with the most public-facing piece of evidence: the political communication itself. This could be a television commercial, a glossy mailer that arrives in a voter's mailbox, a targeted digital ad on social media, or a radio spot. The crucial piece of information on this artifact is the "paid for by" or "sponsored by" disclaimer. Federal and state laws require most forms of political advertising to include this disclaimer, which identifies the committee or organization that funded the message. If the disclaimer names a candidate's official committee, the funding is transparent. However, if it names a Super PAC or another outside group with an unfamiliar or generic-sounding name (e.g.,"Stand For US"), that is the thread to pull. This name is the starting point for the entire investigation.

The Stand For US PAC employed a multi-faceted media approach in West Virginia, utilizing broadcast advertisements, direct mail, digital display ads, text messages, and phone calls to reach voters. Their messaging strategy deliberately conflated separate policy issues, linking 340B program support with immigration policy and transgender rights to maximize political damage.

Stand for US PAC’s messaging proved particularly effective because it exploited the complex nature of the 340B program, which many voters do not understand. The program allows qualifying hospitals and healthcare providers to purchase medications at significantly reduced prices from pharmaceutical manufacturers, with the savings intended to be passed on to vulnerable patients. However, the PAC’s simplified messaging characterized it as subsidizing healthcare for undocumented immigrants, creating powerful negative associations among conservative voters.

Step 2: Trace the Expenditure (WV CFRS)

With the name of the spending group in hand, the first analytical step is to visit the West Virginia Secretary of State's Campaign Finance Reporting System (CFRS). Using the portal's search function for "Independent Expenditures" or "Electioneering Communications,” the investigator can find the official report filed for that specific advertisement. This filing serves several key purposes. First, it provides official documentation of the expenditure, including the exact amount spent and the date. Second, it confirms the name of the candidate being supported or opposed. Third, it provides a digital paper trail that anchors the investigation in official state records. This step validates that the group is active in West Virginia and quantifies the scale of its intervention.

Stand For US PAC WV CFRS Account

Step 3: Identify the Funder (FEC/OpenSecrets)

The next, and most critical, pivot is from the state database to the federal databases. The name of the spending group identified in the CFRS (Stand for US PAC (FEC C00873174)) must be searched on the Federal Election Commission's website, fec.gov.

The FEC's committee search tool will lead to the group's profile page, which contains all of its financial filings. The investigator should download and examine the committee's reports (Form 3X), paying close attention to the schedule of itemized receipts. This is where the Super PAC's donors are listed. In a dark money scheme, this list will not contain the names of individual philanthropists or well-known corporations. Instead, it will feature large, round-numbered contributions from one or more 501(c)(4) organizations. At this stage, cross-referencing the Super PAC's name on OpenSecrets.org is highly recommended. OpenSecrets often provides a cleaner, more summarized view of a committee's top donors and may have already published analysis connecting the Super PAC to its dark money funders, saving time and providing valuable context. This step achieves a primary goal of the investigation: it identifies the specific dark money nonprofit that is acting as the financial intermediary.

Step 4: Profile the Dark Money Group (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)

Once the name of the 501(c)(4) funder is known, the investigation moves to its final phase: profiling the dark money organization itself. The primary tool for this is ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. By searching the 501(c)(4)'s name in this database, the investigator can access its IRS Form 990 filings, often going back many years. It is essential to download and review several years of these documents to identify financial patterns, changes in leadership, and recurring vendors. A single year's filing provides a snapshot; multiple years provide a narrative of the organization's evolution and priorities.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/851359192/202433209349311668/full

Political Precedent and Future Elections

The Stand for US PAC campaign establishes a concerning precedent for how complex healthcare policy can be weaponized in political campaigns through oversimplified and misleading messaging. The success of linking healthcare programs to immigration concerns suggests that similar tactics may become more common in Republican primaries, potentially chilling support for beneficial programs among GOP officials.

The campaign also demonstrates how outside spending can overcome traditional political advantages such as incumbency, name recognition, and fundraising capacity. Blair’s defeat, despite his leadership position and substantial resources, shows that well-funded opposition campaigns can reshape electoral dynamics even in seemingly safe seats.

Future Outlook

Stand for US PAC’s West Virginia intervention represents a significant development in American political campaigning, successfully demonstrating how targeted Super PAC spending can eliminate established political figures through strategic messaging and media saturation. The organization’s estimated $400,000 expenditure in West Virginia, representing approximately 8.3% of its total federal spending, achieved outsized impact by defeating a sitting Senate President and sending a clear message to other Republican officials about the political risks of supporting policies opposed by conservative activists and potentially pharmaceutical industry interests.

The campaign’s success raises important questions about the role of outside money in American elections, the vulnerability of complex policy debates to oversimplified attack messaging, and the potential consequences for healthcare policy in states like West Virginia that rely heavily on federal programs to serve vulnerable populations. As Stand for US PAC expands its operations to other states, the West Virginia model may become a template for future campaigns targeting Republican incumbents deemed insufficiently conservative on key issues.

The broader implications extend beyond individual electoral outcomes to fundamental questions about democratic governance, transparency in political spending, and the ability of well-funded interest groups to reshape policy debates through strategic political interventions. West Virginia’s experience with Stand for US PAC spending thus serves as both a case study in modern campaign tactics and a warning about the potential consequences of unlimited political spending in the post-Citizens United era.

Advanced Techniques and the Path to Transparency

The primary path for tracking dark money—following the trail from state expenditure reports to federal PAC filings to nonprofit tax forms—can uncover a significant portion of the network. However, the most sophisticated operations require investigators to look beyond these core documents and employ more advanced techniques. Furthermore, understanding the landscape of watchdog organizations and potential policy reforms is crucial for both contextualizing investigations and contributing to a more transparent future.

Beyond the 990: Advanced Investigative Strategies

When the trail on the Form 990 runs cold or fails to provide a complete picture, investigators can turn to other public records to find critical connections.

* Lobbying Disclosures: Many politically active nonprofits also engage in direct lobbying of legislators and executive branch officials. At both the federal and state levels, groups that lobby must file regular disclosure reports detailing their activities, expenses, and the issues they are working on. In West Virginia, anyone who lobbies state officials for compensation must register with the Ethics Commission and report expenditures made for the benefit of public officials. These lobbying reports can provide valuable clues about a dark money group's policy priorities and financial relationships that may not be apparent from its Form 990.

* Corporate Records: When a Super PAC receives a large donation from an obscure LLC, the Form 990 is of no use. The next step is to research corporate records. Every state, including West Virginia, maintains a business registration database, typically managed by the Secretary of State. By searching for the LLC's name, an investigator can often find its articles of incorporation, which list the names of the incorporators or the registered agent. While these individuals may be lawyers or professional service providers, they can sometimes be a direct link to the true individuals behind the shell company.

* Media Buys: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires television stations to maintain a "political file" that is accessible to the public. This file contains records of all requests to purchase airtime for political advertising. These records, known as media buy documents, can provide a level of granularity not found in campaign finance reports. They detail who purchased the ad time, the cost, the specific dates and times the ads ran, and often include information about the ad's content. This can be a powerful tool for verifying the scale of an ad campaign and identifying the specific media consulting firm placing the ads on behalf of a dark money group.

* Following the People: Ultimately, dark money networks are run by people. The most effective investigations often come from tracking the movement of key individuals—political consultants, lawyers, and operatives—between different organizations. A law firm like Bowles Rice in West Virginia, which explicitly advertises its expertise in forming Super PACs, navigating campaign finance law, and handling high-profile election cases, is a central node in this ecosystem. Identifying which operatives work for which consulting firms, and which firms are being paid by which dark money groups, can reveal the human architecture of an influence campaign.

Ultimately, tracking dark money in West Virginia is a challenging but not impossible task. It requires a methodical approach, a mastery of disparate data sources, and an understanding of the legal and political forces that have created the current system of secret spending. By following the trail from the most public advertisements to the most obscure tax filings, a dedicated investigator can shine a light on the hidden networks of influence that seek to shape the state's democracy from the shadows.

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