A mysterious Super PAC has flooded upstate New York with attack ads trying to stop the insurgent campaign of brash businessman and political outsider Carl Paladino, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.
The donors to the group, named American Liberty Action PAC, will not be publicly known until after the upcoming Aug. 23 GOP primary where Paladino faces off against the more establishment-backed New York GOP chairman, Nick Langworthy, in a primary for New York’s 23rd congressional district. But the group has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars—$344,354 to be precise—attacking Paladino in the primary. It has also spent $9,400 in favor of Langworthy, per FEC filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Paladino blasted the secretive spending in a statement to Breitbart News ripping his opponent Langworthy for benefitting from it.
“Nick Langworthy has shamefully lied to voters about having President Trump’s endorsement,” Paladino said. “He has also told NY Republican candidates, according to Rudy Guliani, not to mention Trump’s name. Now, he is enlisting the help of a Never Trump-backed shady Super PAC, with dark money donors. This same Super PAC has ties to pro-impeachment members. The establishment is doing everything they can to oppose me, because they know I will fight for the America First agenda and unlike my opponent, I cannot be bought.”
Nearly half a million dollars in a congressional primary in an otherwise sleepy upstate New York district in the suburbs of Buffalo is a huge amount of spending and begs the question why some as-of-yet-unidentified parties are spending so much to stop Paladino. The group need not disclose its donors until after the primary election, so the best information available about it so far is based in documents it filed at its formation with the FEC declaring its Treasurer—which the group identified as a man named Charles Gantt.
Gantt, who works with FEC compliance outfit Bulldog Compliance and its affiliated firm Red Curve Solutions LLC, has been listed as the Treasurer for dozens of PACs over the years. This year, for instance, he was the Treasurer for a Super PAC that spent six figures backing outgoing Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI)—the establishment Republican who was one of 10 who backed former President Donald Trump’s impeachment and who just lost his primary in Michigan—and his LinkedIn page says he worked for the 2012 presidential campaign of then-former-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, now a U.S. Senator from Utah after he carpet-bagged his way out west to make a political comeback. Red Curve’s website brags of its founder Bradley T. Crate’s work for the “Romney-Ryan campaign” in 2012 and for Romney is his 2008 campaign.
But Red Curve’s website notes the firm also worked for Trump’s campaigns and several affiliated entities in both the 2016 and 2020 cycles. A huge story in November 2016 in the Salem News, a local newspaper in Massachusetts where the firm is based, detailed how big of a role the organization played in 2016 for Trump.
The Salem News’ Paul Leighton wrote on Nov. 4, 2016:
Red Curve Solutions is serving as the treasurer for the Trump campaign and two Trump fundraising committees that have combined to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars. The company had been paid at least $2.1 million for its work so far by the Trump campaign and committees, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Red Curve Solutions was formed in 2008 by Beverly resident Bradley Crate, who was then the deputy chief financial officer of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The company worked for Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and is serving a similar role this year for Trump. Crate is listed as the treasurer for both the Trump Make America Great Again Committee and the Trump Victory Committee, which are joint fundraising committees for Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, and various state Republican committees.
Based off this information alone, it is unclear who is funding the effort to try to kneecap Paladino. But the same PAC has, per FEC filings, also spent six figures attacking state Rep. Anthony Sabatini in Florida–a sign the organization is more establishment-aligned, as Sabatini is a hard-charging conservative outsider seeking the GOP nomination for Congress in Florida’s 7th congressional district.
Either way, it’s clear this race in upstate New York is getting nasty in the final weeks. In response to the attacks from the pro-Langworthy PAC, Paladino released a television ad of his own with six figures behind it mocking Langworthy for backing him back when he ran for governor:
Paladino, the former GOP nominee for governor of New York in 2010, is a businessman in upstate New York who employs thousands of people in Buffalo and the surrounding area. A brash political outsider in the mold of Trump, Paladino has been extremely aggressive in his critiques of current Democrat President Joe Biden. Paladino, for instance, said on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel earlier in the campaign that he would push for impeachment proceedings against Biden if elected.
Paladino has also had a close relationship with Trump over the years and both speak highly of each other. “I love President Trump—he’s a great friend of mine,” Paladino said in a recent video he released on his Twitter.
President Trump and I have been good friends for a long-time.
I’m happy to hear he feels the same way about me. pic.twitter.com/rBpmUIWvjH
— Carl Paladino (@CarlPaladinoNY) August 5, 2022
“Carl Paladino has been a friend of mine for a long time,” Trump said in the video too, which comes from a June fundraiser for House GOP conference chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). “I want to say hello to Carl—I heard you’re running for a certain office.”
Trump has not yet endorsed in the race, but his close relationship with Paladino would suggest that, if he were to back one of the candidates, Paladino probably has the inside track. Stefanik, another close ally of Trump, is all in for helping Paladino in the primary and has deployed vast resources and campaign help to back the upstate New York businessman in his primary as well.
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