Following Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in 2012, the Republican National Committee launched an effort — the media dubbed it an “autopsy” — to figure out what went wrong.
"When Republicans lost in November, it was a wakeup call,” then-RNC chairman Reince Priebus explained. “And in response I initiated the most public and most comprehensive post-election review in the history of any national party.”
The group’s final report came out in March 2013. “There’s no one solution,” Priebus sighed. “There’s a long list of them.” You can read the report here.
Let’s revisit a recommendation found on page 56: “An outside group… that focuses on research of Democrats should be established.”
According to Roll Call, this was a call for “a GOP version of American Bridge 21st Century, the third-party group that gathered voluminous research on Republican candidates and captured video of many of them on the trail during the 2012 elections.”
Sure enough, within days, three GOP operatives — Matt Rhoades, Joe Pounder and Tim Miller — launched America Rising, “a group devoted to candidate research, tracking, rapid response and digital tools to help the party define its opposition through research and proactive communication efforts.”
They launched two organizations, actually: America Rising LLC, to “conduct research and provide tracking as a product for Republican campaigns, committees and conservative advocacy groups,” and America Rising PAC, to focus on “rapid response, communications, social media and digital advertising campaigns.”
A few weeks ago, American Bridge 21st Century announced an opposition research unit aimed at House Republicans.
I wondered what America Rising was up to.
It appears another autopsy is in order.
Bueller?
On December 2, 2020, America Rising PAC posted this item:
A leading outside group that supportsRepublicancauses is firing up a new initiative to counter what it says will be the “far-left policies”of President-electJoe Biden‘s incoming administration.
The America Rising PAC on Wednesday announced it’s launching the “Biden Accountability Initiative,”which the group tells Fox News will be a “full-scale effort to fight back”against the incoming president, using what it says is access to its more than 3,000 pages of opposition research on Biden and nearly two years of tracking the former vice president on the campaign trail.
In their “Research Library,” you’ll find a link to the Biden Accountability Initiative. The most recent item is from December 6, 2022, about Biden skipping a visit to the US-Mexico border. That’s also the same date as the group’s final post on Twitter.
(The most recent item under “News” is a December 18, 2020 post about Biden’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra.)
The America Rising PAC leadership team appears to have scattered. The executive director is now the VP for communications of Coign, “America’s first credit card built by and for Conservatives.” The group’s National Press Secretary currently works for GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Another press secretary is over at the RNC.
I reached out to America Rising PAC’s “communications director” and never heard back. Perhaps that’s because he works for a South Dakota firm that provides “full-spectrum digital services that cut through the noise and put you in position to win critical policy and political debates.”
The Federal Elections Commission reports America Rising PAC made its last payment of $26.25 to Bulldog Compliance on June 30, 2023. Three weeks later, the group’s bank account was empty.
America Rising Corp. appears to be still in business, although its founders moved on long ago.
At the beginning of this year, America Rising Corp. reported $257,000 in “subscription” revenues from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to the FEC database. That’s not insignificant, but it doesn’t go very far.
According to the folks over at PoliScio Analytics, no one from America Rising (either the LLC or the PAC) has filed a Freedom of Information Act request since August 12, 2022.
I reached out to America Rising Corp. via its “Contact” link, and never heard back.
It made sense at the time to start America Rising, and they had some successes in the 2016 cycle and in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential race, which I’ll explore later. There were also some misfires.
It may be premature to declare this experiment over. But in just a few short years, America Rising appears to have gone from being the “unofficial research arm of the Republican party” to something more closely resembling a ghost ship.
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Opposition Research in the News…
Maryland State Prosecutor Charlton Howard III fined the 2022 gubernatorial campaign of John King $2,000 for distributing a 12-page oppo research report on his opponent, Wes Moore, from an email account that did not include required disclosure information.
