Launched in 2016, BlackPAC and its affiliated Black Progressive Action Coalition nonprofit set out to reach Black voters and give more attention to their priorities. Started by community organizer and social justice advocate Adrianne Shropshire, the super PAC technically did its first work in the 2016 presidential race, but started making a real impact in state-level races the following years, including the Virginia governor’s race and the Alabama Senate special election. Blue Tent recommends BlackPAC to donors, and we believe giving to it is a priority. (Explore our methodology.)
BlackPAC has faced some criticism for its use of dark money, which accounts for a significant portion of its funds. Most of these sources are well-established liberal nonprofits, and the more notable portion of its money comes from major hubs of liberal cash, such as Priorities USA Action and the Senate Majority PAC, as well as deep-pocketed liberal donors like Michael Bloomberg. Still, Shropshire maintains the group’s funders do not influence BlackPAC’s core goals, and from what we can determine, the super PAC does indeed spend its money on its priorities, which overlap significantly with those of other PACs and nonprofits.
Through on-the-ground outreach, media targeting Black voters, partnering with other groups sharing their goals, and surveys of Black Americans to gauge priorities, BlackPAC engages Black voters more than many of the leading super PACs, which often focus exclusively on buying ads. Although its funders undeniably entrench it in the Democratic Party’s network of national outside spending organizations, which primarily court the largest mega-donors the left has to offer, donors interested in contributing to a super PAC of this kind should consider BlackPAC.
What are its core strategies?
BlackPAC has a primary goal of getting Black voters to the polls, so much of its work involves on-the-ground organizing, but as a major outside spender, the super PAC also spends significant money on media. Here are its major focuses:
Outreach to voters. BlackPAC has developed a network of staff and volunteers who do the work of door-knocking, calling and texting potential Black voters directly. In partnership with other liberal voter outreach groups, BlackPAC helps mobilize voters in key states where the organization believes these voters will have the most impact.
Supportive media. 2020 was the first year BlackPAC officially endorsed Senate candidates, and while the group wasn’t able to provide organizing help to each of those candidates, it did commit to purchase media for all of them. Unlike most liberal super PACs of this size, BlackPAC’s media is almost entirely positive rather than negative, spending just under $30 million supporting Biden and about a dozen Congressional candidates in 2020 while spending just $2.6 million opposing Republicans. (It spends on candidates it doesn’t officially endorse.)
Surveys. BlackPAC conducts regular surveys of Black voters that typically get media coverage to highlight the priorities of African-Americans and inform the super PAC’s strategy in election years.
What is its track record of achieving its goals?
Although launched in 2016, BlackPAC was only modestly involved in that cycle’s presidential race, spending around $3 million on media, direct mail and canvassing to help Hillary Clinton. One of the group’s first concentrated efforts was in support of Democrat Ralph Northam’s successful gubernatorial campaign—BlackPAC spent modestly on canvassing and media while partnering with other Black-led organizations involved in the race. But the first victory to put the super PAC on the map came in Alabama, when the group helped Democrats win a special Senate election in 2017. BlackPAC worked in conjunction with other leading liberal groups to knock more than a half-million doors for Doug Jones, helping him defeat Republican Roy Moore. The super PAC would go on to support a handful of other candidates with media in the 2018 midterms, and although the results were mixed in a down year for upper chamber Democrats, BlackPAC’s spending on canvassing for Jones all went toward a victory, demonstrating the strength of the group’s ground game.
In 2020, BlackPAC was part of the Democrats’ coalition of groups focused on Black voters, and especially helpful in Georgia during the Senate runoff races. BlackPAC spent around $10 million on media that year on a dozen or so Senate and House races, supporting the winner in half, according to OpenSecrets.org. The group took in $4 million from Michael Bloomberg for a specific voter turnout media push in Florida in the weeks leading up to Election Day, which turned out to be something of a bust, as Republicans won several seats. In the midst of the pandemic, BlackPAC shifted to phone-based organizing, helping voters navigate mail-in voting and keep them engaged.
With no public memos or data that we can find, it is difficult to assess BlackPAC’s impact on the 2020 race specifically. However, early research and media coverage has largely credited Black voters with helping Biden secure the presidency. Even as some heavy non-white districts notably trended toward Trump in 2020, majority Black areas saw the smallest of these shifts.
Does it have strong leadership and governance?
BlackPAC’s executive director and founder is Adrianne Shropshire, a career community organizer long involved in social justice movements. Her biography on the super PAC’s site notes she worked on projects like police accountability in Los Angeles and labor and economic justice work in New York. This background in local organizing makes her a somewhat unusual leader for a PAC of this size (big PACs tend to be run by people with strong institutional connections to the Democratic Party).
Is its staff diverse and culturally competent?
As a Black-founded and Black-led organization focused on turning out African-American voters, BlackPAC is uniquely focused on engaging people of color for a super PAC of its size. While the Center for Public Integrity has raised questions about its consistency as a Black-focused organization that takes the bulk of its money from white and establishment sources, Shropshire maintains that BlackPAC’s donors “are supporting our agenda—not the other way around,” as she told the Center for Public Integrity.
Additionally, BlackPAC conducts regular surveys of Black voters and uses them to inform policy priorities and guide its organizing. This kind of focused attention on the concerns of voters of color is also relatively rare among high-level super PACs, and it’s encouraging to see the group’s emphasis on staying engaged with the community it’s organizing.
What kinds of donors support it?
Shropshire credits SEIU with “incubating” the super PAC in its early days, with the union providing nearly $1 million in 2016, but the top contributor was actually Priorities USA Action, which gave a total of $1.5 million that year. The group’s donor rolls typically show the largest gifts coming from Democratic Party-affiliated super PACs like Priorities, the Senate Majority PAC, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
The group does take in a significant amount from dark money sources, as the Center for Public Integrity has reported repeatedly. In 2018, BlackPAC’s top contributor was America Votes, a 501(c)(4) organization that does not disclose its donors and gave the super PAC $1.7 million that year. America Votes then gave more than $10 million in the 2020 election cycle. BlackPAC takes smaller sums from other dark money groups, as well, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund ($2.25 million in 2020) and Propel Capital ($100,000 in 2018).
2020 saw the group attracting donations from some of the top sources of funds for liberals, including Michael Bloomberg ($7.4 million), the George Soros-created super PAC Democracy PAC ($2.5 million), the League of Conservation Voters ($1.75 million), and Unite the Country ($1.6 million). Like many super PACs in 2020, BlackPAC saw an uptick in individual small donations ahead of the Georgia Senate runoffs—many of those coming through Act Blue—but the donor rolls remained top-heavy, and many of the mid-level donors were also familiar faces of the liberal mega-donor world, such as Reid Hoffman and Karla Jurvetson.
How cost-effective and efficient is its spending?
The BlackPAC website indicates the group is most active in Midwestern and Southern states. Shropshire was on the record in 2020 saying BlackPAC was focused on states where Black voters could have the most impact, indicating the group is thoughtful about where it puts its resources.
In 2020, BlackPAC ratcheted up its media spending significantly. More than $8 million each went to two vendors, OTG Strategies, a familiar vendor for many liberal super PACs, and Burrell Communications Group, a Black-led, diversity-focused ad agency. This kind of spending seems consistent with BlackPAC’s goals and though it’s difficult to assess the effectiveness of media buys from the outside, it seems these were not exorbitant or wasteful: At least half of BlackPAC’s media spending went to digital ads, with less than $50,000 spent on broadcast, and the group’s first significant anti-Trump buy came in May of 2020, indicating an early-and-often strategy that some argue has become more effective than the traditional late-in-the-cycle broadcast TV blitz.
What metrics and milestones does it use to measure its success?
We don’t know much about the specific metrics BlackPAC uses each election cycle to measure its impact. Its website claims the group has engaged 15 million Black voters and trained 5,000 organizers since 2016, but there’s no cycle-by-cycle breakdown of how many voters were reached or moved to the polls. The super PAC does tout its involvement in several successful House, Senate, and gubernatorial campaigns, along with state legislature races; on the federal level, the group has won roughly half the races it has invested in.
Does it have clear and realistic plans for the future?
There are no reports or public statements from BlackPAC outlining the group’s plans for 2022 or beyond. Blue Tent reached out to the organization but has not yet heard back.
Conclusion
BlackPAC is unusual for a PAC both in its focus on Black voters and its mix of on-the-ground work with ad spending—many PACs largely exist to funnel money to TV ads, and BlackPAC has had a reasonable amount of success deviating from that model. While we recommend the group to donors, PACs tend not to be super efficient because candidates can buy ads for cheaper, so we give the group a priority rating rather than a high priority.