The Lincoln Project’s implosion: A perfect time for Democratic donors to rethink their spending – By Jon Skolnik (Salon) / Feb 23 2021
If Democrats want to win elections, they need to start thinking bigger than the election cycle
For the past month, anti-Trump super PAC the Lincoln Project –– which promised to bridge America’s divides by bringing dignity back to the Republican Party –– has been put through the wringer and hung out to dry. First, allegations of sexual harassment by more than twenty people, including two minors, against Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver came to light in late January. According to various reports, several of the group’s prominent Republican founders knew about the allegations as early as March of 2020, yet no subsequent investigations were ever launched. Two weeks later, it was revealed that over two-thirds of the $90 million raised by the Lincoln Project was paid to firms run by the group’s founders, leaving only $27 million spent on the ad campaign in support of congressional Democrats and against Donald Trump it promised to run.
Additional allegations have since accused the Lincoln Project leaders of cultivating a toxic workplace rife with infighting, sexism, and homophobia. The Lincoln Project’s co-founders, Steve Schmitt and Jennifer Horn, as well as its senior advisor, Kurt Bardella, have resigned amid the turmoil, throwing the group into a chaotic state of disunity.
It’s easy to dismiss the organization’s dissolution as a failure of workplace ethics or compliance, but let us not forget: the Lincoln Project was also a failure of political strategy.
