To persuade voters, campaigns and PACs make their own news brands

Over the past 90 days, Senate Republicans' main super PAC and its affiliated dark-money group have spent more than $1.3 million on Facebook ads that attack Democrats through pages posing as news outlets. This cycle, the Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation, the primary outside groups supporting Republican Senate candidates, have run at least eight fake news websites in battleground states to serve as raw material for their digital advertising program. 

Voters in swing states from New Hampshire to Alaska are being served ads from Facebook pages like the “New Hampshire Daily” and “The Alaska Navigator.” No reporters write the stories these pages share, and none of them carry a byline. Instead, the advertisers are betting that social media users will never click past the negative headlines attacking Democratic Senate candidates.

When Democrats first started doing this back in 2018, reporters and political operatives considered it an avant-garde tactic. In 2026, though, strategists on both sides of the aisle treat it as just another way to reach voters.

Beyond the SLF/One Nation effort, there's also the Lincoln Media Network, a conservative dark-money group which runs a more sophisticated set of pro-MAGA news sites in battleground states. LMN's Facebook pages include the Longhorn Ledger (TX), California Courier (CA), Grand Canyon Gazette (AZ), Buckeye Bulletin (OH), Good Goose Gazette (MI), and True North News (WI). Although LMN's operators have spent far less on ads this cycle than their counterparts at SLF and One Nation, their pages draw much higher organic reach and engagement, and are intended to exist beyond one election cycle. 

On the Left, many major campaigns run at least one advertising page like this. For example, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s team has advertised through “Illinois Daily” for years, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ team has “Arizona Daily Briefing,” and former Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola’s campaign has the Alaska Brief. In Kansas, challenger Adam Hamilton’s campaign advertises under “The Kansas Bulletin,” while Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand is using “Iowa Updates.” That said, these Democratic campaigns generally stop short of what Senate Republicans are doing, since they don't build out entire websites stuffed with anonymously written posts designed to drive traffic.

Then there's the American Independent, a long-running paid media operation tied to the Democratic PAC American Bridge. On top of spending big on voter-targeted direct mail each cycle, the group has dropped more than $800,000 over the past three months from eleven state-branded Facebook pages. Unlike the brands manufactured on the Right, though, American Independent stories carry bylines and come transparently from progressive writers.

In an era where we tend to measure political influence by YouTube subscribers, TikTok views, or hours-long podcast appearances, the political side of Facebook doesn't get much love or attention. But older voters, who happen to be the people who actually show up in midterm elections, still rely on Facebook to seek out information from local groups, keep up with family, and argue about politics in the comments of AI slop posts. You may not have seen any content from these campaign news brands this cycle, but those folks definitely have.

We’ve entered the period of the election cycle where the fog of war has set in, and the winds of conventional political wisdom have blown across the land. One month out from Election Day, it seems like those winds have blown in Democrats’ favor, with nearly every hyper-online political reporter, pundit, and influencer from CNN to YouTube working from the assumption that Democrats will see a giant blue wave on Election Day. 

There’s now talk of Democrats surging in Mississippi’s Senate race, or flipping South Carolina and Kansas from Red to Blue. Is South Dakota in play? Some polls say so. What about Idaho? Not out of the question. Georgia? In the bag. For Democrats, I keep hearing that this could be like 2010 in reverse, when the bottom completely fell out for Democrats and Republicans won races in places they never expected. 

But 2010 was a very, very long time ago, and is that type of political shift even possible in our hyper-polarized, chaotic era? I’m skeptical, but I want to hear your thoughts. Are we in for a blue tsunami in November? Or will Democrats hit a hard ceiling in red states and districts that have repeatedly voted for Trump?

Regardless of if you work in politics or not, if you have thoughts to share, reply to this email and send me your take (just a few sentences!) and I might include them in next week’s newsletter.