An outside group cutting large checks to oust Nebraska’s senior GOP senator, while slamming her for “D.C. Swamp” ties, is heavily funded by a massive Democratic dark money group in Washington, D.C., and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety, a super PAC calling itself “a voice for the working people” in the deep red state of Nebraska, has spent $432,000 on ads opposing Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) and boosting Dan Osborn, a U.S. Navy veteran and industrial mechanic running as an independent, according to Federal Election Commission filings. But none of the PAC’s public war chest appears to have actually come from donors in the Cornhusker State.
Ahead of the election in November, Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety is seeking to link Fischer to the “Swamp,” declaring last week in a social media post, “Senator Fischer has spent 12 years grifting off the corporate corruption [in] Washington, D.C.” In May, the super PAC said the Republican’s “top donations are just a horror show of [the] D.C. swamp,” pointing to support she received from a PAC affiliated with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
But the effort to frame Fischer as affiliated with the “Swamp” could be a tough line of attack for Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety: The super PAC receives the bulk of its publicly available funding from Hoffman and Sixteen Thirty Fund, a Democratic dark money “heavyweight” linked to the larger Arabella Advisors dark money network in the nation’s capital.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund nonprofit group cut a $50,000 check to the super PAC in April following a $50,000 Hoffman donation last year to the group, financial disclosures show. Hoffman, a megadonor backing Vice President Kamala Harris, reportedly has a net worth of roughly $2.5 billion.
The super PAC’s third-largest publicly available donor, at $24,500, is Retire Career Politicians, a separate group in Washington, D.C., that received a $300,000 cash infusion in May from Sixteen Thirty Fund.
In turn, Retire Career Politicians, which launched in April of this year, has spent over $2 million since May supporting Osborn, records show.
‘Astroturfed operation’
The giving from Hoffman, Sixteen Thirty Fund, and Retire Career Politicians made up roughly 71% of all donations to Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety between November 2023 and June of this year, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal records. The PAC launched last fall, statement of organization documents show.
“This is just another Democratic astroturfed operation,” said Dan Backer, a campaign finance expert and attorney in Washington, D.C. “They’ll complain about the ‘Swamp’ while relying on dark money and literally the guy who started LinkedIn.”
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety treasurer and co-founder Michael Helmink said it’s difficult to interface with his out-of-state donors from his home in western Nebraska. More recent donations to Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety will become public in October.
“We do Zoom calls and things like that, you know?” Helmink, who noted that he co-founded the super PAC with the California-based political consultant Adriel Hampton, said in an interview.
DC is Broken. Send a Mechanic. pic.twitter.com/Ur7qJfYRus
— Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety (@NebraskaR4PS) August 30, 2024
Helmink, a longtime railroad worker and labor leader, said his donor contacts came from when he had his own exploratory committee last year to consider running for the Nebraska Senate seat.
“We reached out to pretty much anybody,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Anybody interested in rail safety, anybody interested in flipping the seat to an independent. Reaching out the Republican side has been tough. So what we ended up with was, you know, progressive Democrats — people trying to make changes in different areas.”
“That’s the kind of people that gravitated towards us,” Helmink said.
According to recent federal data, Texas led the way in the U.S. in 2023 with the most highway-rail grade collision crossings. Nebraska falls within the top 25 states for the most collisions at 21, just after Missouri and Iowa.
Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety supports “requiring two-person crews to protect against derailments” and “increasing fines for violating federal rail safety laws so these giant corporations take safety regulations seriously,” according to the group’s website.
‘We spend it like it’s our own’
To Republican political strategist Brad Todd, the group’s funding illustrates how national Democrats often keep the lights on for entities that present themselves as grassroots. It’s not necessarily an uncommon maneuver: In July, the Washington Examiner reported on how left-wing billionaires share ties to an astroturfed operation in states attacking House Republicans. The GOP also faces scrutiny for apparent astroturfed campaigns.
“If you follow the money here, it goes right back to the most hardcore, bare-knuckled liberal donors in the country,” Todd said.
National Republican Senatorial Campaign spokesman Philip Letsou said it’s “no surprise” Osborn is “being propped up by far-left dark money groups and Epstein-tied billionaires like Reid Hoffman.”
“Osborn is Chuck Schumer’s sock-puppet who wants to eliminate the filibuster and pass the Democrats’ radical agenda,” Letsou said. The Osborn campaign did not return a request for comment.
Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety has paid roughly $100,000 to the firm of its co-founder, Hampton, on ads boosting Osborn, the Nebraska candidate.
“He’s very good at digital media and video editing, things like that,” Helmink said of Hampton. “That’s what I rely on him for.”
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan elections tracker, rates the Nebraska Senate seat as “Solid Republican” in 2024. Still, public polling has found Fischer and Osborn neck and neck, with the Republican leading by just 2 percentage points in an August survey by YouGov among registered voters.
Another poll in August by SurveyUSA among registered voters found Fischer ahead by 1 point.
Hoffman did not return a request for comment through his venture capital firm, Greylock Partners.
Sixteen Thirty Fund did not reply to a request for comment.
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“We started this thing on a shoestring budget,” Helmink told the Washington Examiner. “Slowly, as support has come in, we’ve added staff, we’ve added research, and we’ve kind of upped our presence as the money allows. The big thing is we spend the money very wisely.”
“We spend it like it’s our own,” Helmink added.