October 8, 2018

Paul Ryan Decries Tribalism as His Super-PAC Spreads It

A Republican leader’s crocodile tears.

House Speaker Paul Ryan lamented the increasingly personal tone of American politics at a National Press Club event Monday. “I worry about this a lot,” he said. “The incentive in politics is invective; it’s outrage; it’s hysteria.”

He ought to know. Ryan’s super-PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, has spent the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections churning out attack ads—some featuring barely disguised racism—that rely on those exact ingredients. 

In his statement, Ryan blamed social media and cable news for our tribalized politics, but for another source, he need look no further than the CLF tweets below.

One especially transparent set of CLF attack ads targets Antonio Delgado, the Democratic House candidate for New York’s 19th District, painting him as a “big-city rapper” who “gave voice to extreme New York City values.” One ad features decade-old photos of Delgado, a black man running in an overwhelmingly white swing district, wearing a black hoodie. Another closes with “not our values.”

To cite Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy:

Delgado did release a rap album, in 2007, under the pseudonym AD the Voice. In a July story about his race against incumbent Republican Rep. John Faso, the New York Times reported Delgado’s songs “criticize capitalism and America’s history of racial injustice…include frequent use of a racial epithet common among black rappers, and criticize some of the founders as ‘dead presidents’ who ‘believe in white supremacy.’” It sounds a lot like the kinds of political views, in other words, you’d expect from a young, politically active black progressive.

Another CLF ad says Ohio Democrat Aftab Pureval, who is of Indian and Tibetan heritage, “can’t be trusted.” The ad accuses the candidate of “selling out Americans,” explaining that “Pureval’s lobbying firm made millions helping Libya reduce payments owed to families of Americans killed by Libyan terrorism.” Pureval did not yet work at the company at the time of that settlement, which was blessed by none other than George W. Bush.

Yet another series of ads goes after Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat running for a House seat. CLF used information obtained from an improperly released security clearance application to target Spanberger for her brief stint as a teacher at a Saudi Embassy school the ad calls “Terror High.” Spanberger went on to work as an undercover CIA operative, and spent years fighting terrorism. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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