When it comes to publicizing Republican gaffes or digging up dirty laundry on conservative politicians, American Bridge 21st Century is the reigning champion. Founded in 2010 by David Brock, the former right-wing muckraker who had a change of heart and became a Democrat, American Bridge is unique among Democratic super PACs. AB PAC made very few independent expenditures in its early years, instead devoting its resources to staffing a vast network of “trackers,” who followed Republican candidates and elected officials to every public appearance they made and monitored their public comments for opposition research. It has since shifted to more outside spending and become more of a destination for Democratic mega-donors.
As the following brief explains, AB PAC has often been effective in its opposition research efforts, publicizing splashy stories of Republican politicians making stupid and outrageous comments. It also understands that in an era of the “permanent campaign,” Democratic electoral groups need to engage in year-round messaging. At the same time, it’s unclear whether opposition media and negative ads are the most efficient use of resources for influencing voters.
Based on extensive independent research and reporting, including conversations with experts on political advertising, Blue Tent advises donors to only consider giving to American Bridge. Similarly, like other super PACs that rely primarily on mega-donors, Blue Tent considers AB PAC a low priority for small and mid-level donors. (Explore our methodology.) Those donors should instead seek to have greater impact by giving directly to candidates or to organizations focused on grassroots organizing. American Bridge did not respond to requests for comment by Blue Tent.
What are its core strategies?
American Bridge’s identity is very much rooted in that of its founder, David Brock, a unique figure in American politics. Brock started his career as a right-wing journalist who targeted liberal politicians with hit pieces, particularly the Clintons in the ’90s. While working on a book about Hillary Clinton, Brock had a kind of conversion and decided he was challenging the wrong people. He switched sides and brought his track-and-attack skills to the liberal camp to use against conservatives.
His first blue project was Media Matters, a watchdog outlet intended to highlight hypocrisy and falsehoods at conservative media giants like Fox News; Brock still serves as board chair. Brock used much of that same model to found American Bridge 21st Century in 2010. Originally focused on tracking and monitoring conservative politicians, AB PAC’s outside spending these days more closely resembles that of a typical liberal super PAC—with most of its money going to media. Here are AB PAC’s core strategies currently:
Opposition media: AB PAC now operates as part of the Democratic Party’s stable of outside spending allies, helping pummel Republican candidates. In 2020, the super PAC focused most of its spending on President Trump, spending more than $51 million on media opposing him—nearly all of it digital. AB PAC made its first major media purchase in November of 2019 with videos criticizing Trump’s hypocrisy, but as the pandemic developed, the videos centered on his poor handling of the crisis. The group also spent a small fraction of its funds opposing Georgia Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler ($5 million) and David Perdue ($3.5 million).
Opposition research: AB PAC has been compiling opposition research on Trump since he entered the political scene in 2016. In 2020, the super PAC publicly released its Trump Research Book, a rare move for a political operation; most would keep that kind of research internal. The project was part of the super PAC’s larger messaging project of painting Trump as an ineffective leader.
Tracking conservatives: AB PAC’s trackers were its signature when the super PAC first formed a decade ago. Looking through the group’s spending records on OpenSecrets.org, through the 2018 election cycle, payroll made up the largest portion of the group’s expenses as it continued its tracking efforts. That spending was completely dwarfed by its media purchases in 2020, and the group now operates more similarly to the other top liberal super PACs.
What is its track record of achieving its goals?
AB PAC’s original in-the-field strategy involved a high degree of time and effort with limited returns, though its trackers did have some successes early on. These days, their tracking strategy has been rendered somewhat moot by the advent of smartphones and social media, giving the super PAC’s staff comparable access to potential flubs via people filming political events and posting videos.
Its biggest get of 2012 was a quote from Todd Akin, a Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, defending his no-exceptions stance on abortions by saying women won’t become pregnant in the case of “legitimate rape.” The quote was quickly clipped and disseminated by an American Bridge tracker, went viral, and was credited with sinking Akin’s campaign, demonstrating the impact the super PAC’s tracker system could have.
But after the Akin quote, conservative campaigns started to get wise to the tracker system and tightened their public messaging in the 2014 midterms. Leading into the 2016 presidential race, Brock would use another project through American Bridge to keep their opposition operation fresh.
In 2013, AB PAC founder David Brock started Correct the Record, intended to counter disinformation about Hillary Clinton online. Because the hybrid PAC was web-based, Brock argued it should be allowed to coordinate with the Clinton campaign without violating FEC rules. Correct the Record hired former Clinton advisors like Burns Strider, and in 2015, it broke off from American Bridge to run its own operation.
Brock and American Bridge continued to provide opposition research for Clinton’s camp, hitting Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the press whenever they could during the 2016 cycle. Ahead of the Republican National Convention, the super PAC funded a pop-up museum featuring all of Donald Trump’s failed businesses and highlighting his odd merchandise. American Bridge continued to spend most of its money on staff and had most of the same top individual donors as in 2012, except now, its biggest donor was its own 501(c)(4) arm, which provided more than $3 million that cycle.
Does it have strong leadership and governance?
American Bridge’s current president is Jessica Floyd, a longtime Democratic political staffer and operative. She was most recently the managing director of campaigns at the Hub Project, which focuses on developing progressive organizations and coalitions, and before that spent more than a decade working for Democratic campaigns, committees and elected officials. Floyd became president of the group in March of 2021, replacing Bradley Beychok, one of the group’s co-founders.
In 2021, American Bridge also added a new director of polling and analytics in Ian Smith as well as national press secretary Tiffiany Vaughn Jones. The organization’s new presidential research director is Julie Alderman Boudreau, who like Beychok is an alumnus of Media Matters for America, another David Brock project. Pat Dennis serves as the group’s vice president of research—an important role for a super PAC built on opposition media—and also leads the Trump War Room research team. There isn’t much publicly available information about Dennis’s prior experience.
In early 2021, the Washington Post reported that AB PAC was naming several new “co-chairs” of the organization, including former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, former Montana governor Steve Bullock, former Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez and former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards.
David Brock has not been listed as a board member or employee of AB PAC or AB Foundation in recent tax filings, and his continued role in the organizations, if any, is unclear. Brock still identifies as chairman of American Bridge on his Twitter account, and in 2020, a conservative activist group accused Brock of illegally profiting from American Bridge, whose dark money arm invested millions of dollars into a for-profit news site owned by Brock. AB PAC denied any wrongdoing, citing Brock’s resignation from the group in 2016.
Is its staff diverse and culturally competent?
American Bridge does not publish its staff demographics, and did not respond to requests for comment from Blue Tent. In terms of the group’s engagement with people of color, the organization Democracy in Color issued a report in 2020 grading the leading liberal super PACs on their transparency and demographic targeting. The report gave American Bridge a “D-” in demographic targeting, citing AB PAC’s “Swing County Project” as focusing too much on older white voters.
What kinds of donors support it?
For a super PAC that raises and spends as much as it does, AB PAC’s donor rolls are not as top-heavy as some of its peers. The only mega-donor who gave $1 million in a given cycle before 2020 was George Soros ($2 million in 2016, $1 million in 2012 and 2014), and there are a large handful of midsize donors who regularly make high six-figure contributions, like Anne Earhart ($800,000-plus in 2012 and 2014, $750,000 in 2016) and Paul Egerman ($650,000 in 2014 and 2016). Through much of the last decade, midsize donors have made up the bulk of AB PAC’s donor rolls—in 2012, just under 80% of donations were of $1,000 or more, with 92.5% of donors giving at least that much in 2014 and 93.4% in 2016.
The Trump era seems to have brought out a new wave of donors to the super PAC. In 2020, AB PAC took in nearly 1,000 more individual donations than 2018, with 76.9% of them at $250 or less. The group also attracted a new crop of mega-donors, with Deborah Simon giving $6 million, Micahel Moritz giving more than $3 million, and Stephen Mandel giving $2 million. Additionally, big-money liberals like Vinod Khosla, Josh Bekenstein, Reid Hoffman and S. Daniel Abraham gave at least $1 million.
It’s hard to know who American Bridge’s other big donors have been, given its reliance on dark money sources. Chief among its funding sources in 2020 were its own c4 arm ($11.1 million) and the Sixteen Thirty Fund ($4.2 million).
How cost-effective and efficient is its spending?
It is difficult to say conclusively whether AB PAC spends its money efficiently. While its early days of tracking and opposition research required a great deal of investment, the work did produce things like the Trump Research Book, which became a resource for Democrats. In this most recent cycle, AB PAC spent most of its money opposing Trump and supporting Biden, which, of course, yielded successful results, but it’s unclear exactly how much impact the super PAC’s specific media had on voters.
In their report on the 2020 elections, Democracy in Color gave AB PAC a “D+” overall grade, specifically criticizing the group’s demographic targeting, geographic targeting and use of data in informing its strategy. The report argues that the super PAC’s ad buys did not target enough critical or winnable areas, despite having significant presence in important battleground states. Further, political advertising experts who spoke with Blue Tent questioned the efficacy of such heavy investments in negative ads, which is the dominant strategy of not just AB PAC, but liberal super PACs in general.
How transparent is it about its spending, results, and learning from its mistakes?
AB PAC is uniquely transparent for a top super PAC. Releasing its Trump Research Book to the general public was a rare step for an opposition research outfit, while Democracy in Color praised the group’s consistent public communication of its media strategy and rationale, grading AB PAC with an “A” for transparency.
That being said, like many other super PACs, AB PAC gets a large share of its funding through a dark money arm, American Bridge Foundation, and other dark money groups, none of which are required to disclose their donors. The role of American Bridge within the wider world of groups affiliated with David Brock is also unclear, as is Brock’s association with the group. In a 2020 report, the Daily Beast pointed out that AB PAC and the AB Foundation, like many groups with multiple nonprofit arms, share board members, staffers, and office space. Until recently, American Bridge also shared an address with Media Matters for America, which Brock still chairs, as well as American Independent Foundation, which Brock chaired until 2018.
Does it have clear and realistic plans for the future?
AB PAC started on its 2022 midterms spending in early 2021. In March, the super PAC launched a $100 million ad campaign promoting President Biden’s stimulus package, hoping to communicate early to voters the contrast between Biden’s response to the pandemic and that of Republicans. The group is also producing media opposing Republican lawmakers who continue to push the “Big Lie” that Trump won the 2020 election and continues to put out releases on the conservative figures its trackers are following. As of now, AB PAC has not released an official statement outlining its plans for the 2022 midterms overall. However, a visit to its website and social media channels shows that the organization is already deeply enmeshed in key races, engaging in extensive, research-based attacks on GOP candidates for federal and state office.
Conclusion
AB PAC continues to play its unique role as “the largest research, video tracking, and rapid response organization in Democratic and progressive politics,” as it describes itself. AB Foundation, on the other hand, appears to be working to mimic conservative news and propaganda networks, investing millions in liberal for-profit media, which publishes and boosts the research and writing of closely connected nonprofit groups.
Given American Bridge’s strong backing by liberal mega-donors, small and mid-level donors will be unlikely to have much of an impact giving to either AB PAC or AB Foundation. While it’s encouraging that American Bridge has devoted resources to positive media recently, we have strong doubts about the effectiveness of opposition research and negative attacks, which remain the core of its work. For these reasons, Blue Tent advises donors to only consider giving to American Bridge, and rates the group as a low priority for progressives.