Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) pledged to refuse donations from corporate PACs, which the Senate candidate running to fill Michigan’s open seat has sought to outlaw. Her donors rely on them.
In 2022, Slotkin co-sponsored a bill that would ban for-profit corporations from operating political funds she’s chided as being “corrupt” for exerting outsize influence on elections. But the House Democrat has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporate-funded leadership PACs since 2017, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of campaign finance disclosures.
Slotkin’s longtime willingness to take large checks from leadership PACs, which are maintained by federal officeholders and disburse cash to support others, will likely open her up to hypocrisy charges from Republicans on the campaign trail. Michigan’s Senate seat, which is being vacated due to the retirement of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), is widely viewed as a toss-up. Polling shows Slotkin neck-and-neck with potential GOP opponents, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee-endorsed Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and former Michigan congressman Peter Meijer, one of 10 House Republicans in 2021 who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump.
“Elissa Slotkin has been a prodigious fundraiser,” said David Dulio, a political science professor at Michigan’s Oakland University and author of Michigan Government, Politics and Policy and Campaigns from the Ground Up. “Corporate PAC money can arguably not be avoided, because it’s everywhere. Leadership PACs have become more and more popular over the years.”
Slotkin, a New York City native who was a CIA analyst and Defense Department official in the Obama administration, first vowed in 2018 to swear off corporate PAC money. In doing so, she called the campaign finance system in the United States “broken” and accused lawmakers of “putting the interests of powerful insiders and corporations ahead of constituents.”
“Despite our campaign finance laws it is possible to run a clean, transparent campaign — and that’s what we intend to do,” Slotkin asserted. She later said corporate money is “corrosive” and began attacking then-GOP congressman Mike Bishop in Michigan for accepting it.
“Not many Senate candidates refuse corporate PAC money,” Slotkin said on social media last February, linking to an ActBlue fundraiser. “If we want to improve our democracy, we need to improve our politics. Chip in to join us.”
Still, in 2023, leadership PAC money flowed to Slotkin’s Senate campaign, Federal Election Commission records show. Slotkin, for instance, scored maximum contributions of $10,000 each from PACs tied to Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tina Smith (D-MN), Jon Tester (D-MT), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and other senators.
In turn, PACs for these 10 Democratic senators raked in $1.9 million combined since 2007 from the likes of committees for General Motors, UPS, Deloitte, Microsoft, Comcast, Honeywell, Pfizer, Aflac, Home Depot, and AT&T. Others that have wired cash to the leadership PACs include CVS Health, Fedex, T-Mobile, General Dynamics, Visa, Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Toyota.
“When I first ran for office, I pledged never to take a dime of corporate PAC money,” Slotkin said in February 2023. “That isn’t going to change now that I’m running for the U.S. Senate. We’re powered by real people, contributing what they can, when they can.”
Slotkin said in September 2020, “I don’t take money from corporate PACs, which means that my campaign relies on grassroots support.”
In March of last year, Slotkin transferred more than $643,000 from her congressional campaign to her Senate campaign, which filed its statement of organization one month prior.
Her House committee similarly enjoyed financial support from leadership PACs and, all in all, received roughly $1.6 million from PACs of various types between 2017 and 2023.
To Michigan state representative Matt Maddock, there’s one obvious reason Democrats like Slotkin exhibit hypocrisy on the issue of corporate PAC donations.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“They’re hypocrites about everything,” Maddock, a Republican, told the Washington Examiner.
Slotkin’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
