The Act Blue Blues

Any fellow Democrats out there have this experience?

You hear a ding on your cell phone. You think it might be a friend. And it is, in fact, someone posing as a friend.

“Hi, Dave. This is Ron Smith. I’m running for an obscure House seat in rural Oregon. A Democrat hasn’t won here in a century. But this is the year, Dave! When I win this seat we’ll take back the House, American democracy will be saved, Putin will be overthrown, gas prices will plummet, Ozempic will be free, average Americans will be able to relate once again to Democrats and small market teams will be able to compete with the Dodgers. If I lose, we’ll all die in pathetic squalor and we won’t care because life will have become so pointless. But I can only save all our lives if you chip in five dollars before midnight! So, the choice is clear, Dave. The (strictly secular) Garden of Eden or the gulag. It all comes down to your five measly bucks.”

I have tried, oh God I have tried, to unsubscribe to Act Blue texts. I’m told I’ve been taken off the list. That works for less than a week. Then Ron, or his counterpart in Georgia or New Mexico or wherever, comes right back. I “delete and report spam” and that does absolutely nothing. This is like dry eye or male pattern baldness or any of the Kardashians. It never goes away. Long after I’m dead my phone will keep dinging. It’s the Democrats’ dooms day machine.

And it turns out there’s a scam-like quality to the whole damn thing. The Wall Street Journal ran a story last week detailing how Act Blue blows our money on fancy retreats and obscene salaries and perks for its staff. Here are some of the takeaways from that story.

• Regina Wallace-Jones, the executive director of Act Blue, pulls down $800,000 a year, well over twice what her predecessor made.

• After the 2024 elections, when Democrats got their asses handed to them, Wallace-Jones led a retreat at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco. She stayed at a two story penthouse suite and the whole affair cost Act Blue $700,000 — again, after the movement she was supporting got creamed in the election.

• Wallace-Jones has security that comports with her ego, if not actual threats. The organization used to spend $16,000 a year on body guards, etc. Under the oh-so-important Wallace-Jones it’s $2.8 million. Maybe she’s trying to protect herself against irate Democrats angered because she’s wasting their money.

• The year before Wallace-Jones took over, Act Blue spent $400,000 on employee travel. Last year it was $2.7 million. Act Blue execs now travel first class.

• Total operating expenses before Wallace-Jones were $42 million. Last year it was $87 million.

• You might think her board might consider replacing Wallace-Jones. Nope. Confronted with all this, her board chair expressed complete support for her.

Now, if you’re a Democrat, please consider joining me in this pledge. Repeat after me.

I will never again contribute a dime to any candidate or organization through Act Blue. Rather, I will go through the monumental effort of writing a personal check to the candidate or cause of my choice (something that old people will remember doing on a routine basis long, long ago). And in my nightly prayers I will pray for the demise of Act Blue as well as political consultants and fundraisers everywhere and of all stripes. So help me, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

That’s it for this week. Looks like it’ll be a nice weekend. Get out and enjoy.