TOPEKA — A political action committee targeted Leavenworth’s mayor on social media in May for her “liberal agenda,” accusing her of holding back progress in the northeast Kansas town.
The Defend US PAC ran three advertisements in May on Instagram and Facebook that tagged Mayor Holly Pittman. One said Pittman’s agenda was to “waste taxpayer money, lose good-paying jobs and call it ‘progress.’” All three ads encouraged people to call Pittman.
The ads did not directly mention the city’s disagreement with CoreCivic, a private prison planning to reopen as an ICE detention facility, but that is the most recent controversy that could affect community jobs.
Leavenworth city officials went to court to force CoreCivic to follow its development process and apply for a special use permit before reopening. The prison closed in 2021.
CoreCivic did not reply to a question about whether it was involved with running the advertisements.
“I was disappointed to see this PAC targeting and spending money against me,” Pittman said. “As the mayor, I serve as one of five commissioners on the Leavenworth City Commission. Decisions are made collectively by the entire commission, not by me alone.”
She said the ad misrepresents the process and ignores the “collaborative approach” taken in Leavenworth.
Marina Pino, counsel at the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the issue of PACs spending money at the state and local levels is “especially acute” right now. The Brennan Center has researched dark money funding and its effects on the political process.
Dark money is a term used to denote funds affecting politics that can’t be traced to specific donors.
“When you have these hidden funders of advertising, they often hold economic interests in the contests where these outcomes could have significant and immediate impact on their bottom lines,” Pino said.
One concern about PAC donations is the way they may shift local elections.
These three advertisements ran in May on Facebook and Instagram, targeting Leavenworth Mayor Holly Pittman.“Local elections and potentially local issues are low-information elections compared to national elections,” she said. “What that means is it may not take much advertising to sway voters.”
Facebook highlights the range of dollars to run an ad. For instance, one of the ads paid for by Defend US Inc. cost between $600 to $699. Defend US spent $2,900+ on the Pittman ads.
“What they spent was a pretty insignificant amount of money in most terms,” Pino said. “When we did this report in 2016, we found that these dark money groups across several states were spending amounts in the low one hundred thousands, or even low ten thousands. For those groups, that’s a modest business expense, but it’s also a major hurdle for local candidates. They’re not spending that type of money on elections.”
Pino said the Brennan Center did a recent report looking at dark money spending in the 2024 elections. Although it didn’t consider local election spending, the two tend to trend the same way, she said.
“We saw the dark money spending in the 2024 election break a serious record,” she said. “It was around $1.9 billion that was spent in the 2024 elections. That’s the money we can trace. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to trace.”
Pino noted that dark money spending occurs in both Democratic and Republican political races and issues.
A Defend US PAC financial report filed with the Federal Election Commission showed the organization collected $1.6 million in contributions from Jan. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024. Of that, $729,000 was from individuals and the remainder was from organizations, most of which were conservative PACs, such as the American Exceptionalism Institute.