October 18, 2022

Smiley funded by same donors who bankrolled the insurrection

“Smiley is a MAGA candidate through and through, and if elected, she would no doubt be a vote to help MAGA republicans enact their extreme agenda that’s wrong for our state”

(Seattle, WA) – New FEC filings show that MAGA Republican Tiffany Smiley’s campaign is bankrolled by a slew of election-denying extremists and Donald Trump associates (keep reading).

Recently, Smiley has ramped up her appearances on Fox News — appearing with extreme figures including Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity — and increasingly leveraged the right wing hate-for-profit disinformation machine to fundraise for her Senate campaign. Her FEC filing is just the latest proof that, if elected, Smiley would answer to the wishes of MAGA extremists and Republican elites — not the people of Washington state.

YIKES: Smiley will take money from anyone – including insurrectionists and election deniers.

  • Stephen Schwarzman, a longtime Trump supporter and funder, who gave $344,000 to Trump’s campaign and defended his illegitimate lawsuits over the 2020 election results. Schwarzman and his wife have donated a total of $46 million to outside groups that spent to help elect Republican election deniers.
  • Tiffany Smiley has also accepted thousands in direct contributions to her campaign account from other extremist Republican donors who gave money to groups and legislators who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election — Richard Uihlein, Cliff Asness, and Laurel Asness. Uihlein in particular helped fund the March to Save America Rally that preceded the violent insurrection on January 6th. 
  • Smiley received more than $100,000 from Leadership PACs of sitting Senators including insurrectionists who voted against certifying the 2020 elections, such as: Rick Scott, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Cynthia Lummis, and John Kennedy.

MAGA MONEY PILING IN FOR TIFFANY SMILEY:

  • Adam Beren, a Republican mega-donor who gave $250k to Trump’s inauguration and $500k to the RNC in 2016.
  • Sylvie Legere, who is married to RNC finance chairman Todd Ricketts and is part of the Ricketts family – which includes Pete Ricketts, the Republican governor of Nebraska and a key player in the high-dollar GOP fundraising world more broadly.
  • Brian Baker, considered the “political right hand to the billionaire Ricketts family” and “one of the few big money players to support Trump in 2016”.
  • Andrew Sabin, who also contributed $100k to Trump Victory in 2016.
  • Club for Growth, a nonprofit that counts Republican and mega-donor Richard Uihlein as one of its largest funders.
  • Barbara Grimm Marshall, who also gave $350,000 to Trump.
  • George Rowley, another Republican mega-donor and Trump loyalist, who previously gave $25,000 to an organization campaigning to overturn a Washington state bill that created common sense comprehensive sex-ed.
  • Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born Russian, who gave $3.5 million to Mitch McConnell’s Super PAC and $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. The latter were investigated by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller.
  • Timothy Barnard, who led a construction company that received a $73.3 million contract from the Trump administration to build the border wall. As of 2020, Barnard’s company had received more than $1 billion to build only 37 miles of the wall.

“Tiffany Smiley’s FEC disclosures make clear her campaign is bankrolled by election deniers and those who helped prop up the violent insurrection on January 6th — Smiley is a MAGA candidate through and through, and if elected, she would no doubt be a vote to help MAGA Republicans enact their extreme agenda that’s wrong for our state.” said Washington State Democratic Party spokesperson Caitlin Harrington. “Despite going out of her way to hide her extreme views, all you need to do to see where Tiffany Smiley really stands – and who she’ll answer to — is follow the money. If she can’t even stand up to people spreading blatant lies about an election, she absolutely will not stand up for our state and our democracy in the U.S. Senate.”

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