The absurdity of attack advertising was taken to new heights on Friday when Crush MAGA PAC began a $532,000 ad campaign against Will Lawrence, an organizer running for Congress in Michigan’s Seventh Congressional District, calling him a Wall Street investor for owning a retirement account worth approximately $11,000.
It’s the first outside spending against Lawrence, who has led in nearly every poll made public in the race. Lawrence faces two establishment Democrats in the August 4 primary for the right to take on incumbent Republican Tom Barrett in the toss-up seat in and around Lansing, formerly held by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI).
His opponents, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink and ex-Navy SEAL and businessman Matt Maasdam, have generally fought each other and ignored him. But Lawrence’s viral ad about a proposed data center in the district must have caught the eye of Crush MAGA PAC.
Crush MAGA is affiliated with Save Democracy PAC, which has endorsed practically every frontline Democrat and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), a member of the House leadership, who has a testimonial on their website. Yet “Crush MAGA” now apparently means running attack ads against progressives that stretch credulity.
“What do we really know about Will Lawrence?” Crush MAGA’s ad begins. “He says he’ll stand up to corporate interests, but financial records show he’s invested thousands in Wall Street, Big Oil, and data centers.”
The records in question refer to Lawrence’s financial disclosure form, something all candidates file. It says that his total assets include a T. Rowe Price 2055 Retirement Fund worth between $1,001 and $15,000. The campaign has estimated its value at $11,000. It’s a 401(k) from a previous employer and his only source of retirement savings. The cost of running the ad is approximately 48 times more than the value of the account.
Lawrence’s two Democratic opponents own a combined four investment properties valued at over $1 million in Washington, where Brink lived until last year.
The spot also attacks Lawrence for “running a dark-money organization,” citing a 2021 article from the Prospect. That article was about 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations that don’t disclose donors and can engage in politics as long as they don’t comprise the majority of their activities. The Sunrise Movement, which Lawrence co-founded and left in 2020 before the article was published, is not mentioned in the article except in one place, when it did not respond to a request for comment about donor disclosure.
Lawrence was on the coalition-building side of Sunrise as director of strategic partnerships. In 2018, the last election cycle before he left, Sunrise spent a grand total of $2,477 on candidates, nearly all of it on one Democratic House candidate in Pennsylvania named Jess King.
Finally, the spot claims that Lawrence “campaigned against Democrats and was part of a movement that helped Trump win Michigan.” Lawrence voted “Uncommitted” in the Michigan primary in 2024 in protest of the Biden administration facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The candidate addressed this on social media after hearing about a push poll with the same language. “When [Kamala] Harris became the nominee, I was quick to support her and encouraged my friends, my family, and the public to vote for her, and I voted for her,” Lawrence said.
In a statement to the Prospect about the ad, Lawrence said, “Super PACs funded by right-wing billionaires are attacking me with dishonest smears because they see that I’m the strongest candidate to take on Tom Barrett in November.”
A recent poll from Data for Progress showed Lawrence polling better than his two opponents in head-to-head matchups against Barrett, with a 19-point lead among independent voters. Lawrence was the only one of the three to lead Barrett in the poll.
CRUSH MAGA PAC WAS SCHEDULED to run ads against Barrett before switching to the attack on Lawrence. The organization says on its website that it is an affiliate of Save Democracy PAC; clicking on “Watch Our Ads” at the Crush MAGA site takes you to Save Democracy’s site showing past advertising (including an anti-Barrett spot from 2024). Crush MAGA and Save Democracy (also called SD PAC) list the same address in Federal Election Commission disclosures. Save Democracy explicitly names Crush MAGA as an affiliate on that disclosure, along with two others, Democracy on the Line and Stop Project 2025.
None of them have done a whole lot this election cycle. Prior to the Lawrence spot, Crush MAGA had spent $507,977 this cycle on three races: a support campaign for California candidate Lauren Babb Tomlinson (who lost) and opposition campaigns against Ammar Campa-Najjar in California and Amish Shah in Arizona (Campa-Najjar lost; Shah’s race isn’t until July 21). Democracy on the Line hasn’t done any independent expenditures; Stop Project 2025’s main expenditure is a $425,000 transfer to Crush MAGA PAC, and it’s given PAC donations directly to a number of Democratic candidates.
Save Democracy PAC itself has only spent $161,495 on one race, a special election to replace the late Gerry Connolly in Virginia. Stella Pekarsky, Save Democracy’s candidate in that race, was unsuccessful.
Save Democracy PAC did receive $100,000 on May 20 from United Democracy Project, the affiliated super PAC of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. United Democracy Project has disclosed millions of dollars in transfers to other PACs this year, such as Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now, so-called “pop-up” PACs that boosted four female candidates in open-seat races in Illinois, as well as Elect Democratic Women (EDW) and Bold America.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for United Democracy PAC, strenuously rejected that his organization had anything to do with the Lawrence ad, or the ads involving Campa-Najjar and Shah that Crush MAGA PAC has run. “We have not been involved at all in any of the races you mention and we have not given any money to Crush MAGA PAC,” Dorton said.
Told that Crush MAGA is an affiliate of Save Democracy, which United Democracy Project did give money to, Dorton said, “Different entities are just that—different. I have no idea of the relationship between these super PACs but oftentimes different super PACs have different purposes and a different focus.”
Asked more than once why United Democracy Project transferred $100,000 to Save Democracy PAC and whether it was earmarked for a particular candidate or campaign, Dorton did not answer the question.
