Last summer, two weeks after we both took a leap of faith, signing with this scrappy little start-up called Puck that hadn’t even launched, I found myself in San Francisco, where my new colleague Teddy Schleifer, was based, and heand I met up for brunch. We had never met and we were both excited and jittery and had absolutely no idea the amazing adventure that awaited us both.
In the year since, I’ve learned so much from Teddy. Not about tech or about intermittent fasting or the metaverse, but about how tech money has created a new donor class—and just how much they set the tune for what happens in our nation’s politics. Studies have suggested that, especially since Citizens United, the United States has become less of a representative democracy and more of an oligarchy. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Teddy’s reporting. It’s all about donors and dollars. Rarely, if ever, do the voters make an appearance. That is, it’s a scarily accurate picture of how American politics really work behind the scenes. And if you want to know the real story, you’d best be reading Teddy.
His dispatch this week (which took three reporters at the Washington Post to match) is about how Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley right-wing contrarian, is going head-to-head with Mitch McConnell over who is going to fund the floundering Senate races of Ohio’s J.D. Vance and Arizona’s Blake Masters. Both are Thiel’s proteges, and both landed the G.O.P. nomination in their states because Thiel spent $30 million on the two races, combined. But now, Thiel, who is quite frugal (I guess you don’t become a billionaire by being a spendthrift), wants McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund to spend them across the finish line. McConnell disagrees, and the result ain’t pretty.
But I’ll let you read Teddy’s masterful telling of it. In fact, I’m going to send you more of Teddy’s work in the future, because you can’t understand contemporary American politics without it. Oh, and if you don’t already subscribe to Teddy’s newsletter, aptly named The Stratosphere, you absolutely must (and can do so right here).
Enjoy your holiday weekend, and I’ll see you back here next week.
Julia
Can’t see the full story? You're receiving the free version of Tomorrow Will Be Worse at . For full access to Puck, and to each of my colleagues, you can subscribe here.
|
After a lengthy vacation in Europe, followed by a blowout PayPal reunion party at his mansion in Los Angeles last weekend, Peter Thiel has returned to reality to deal with more immediate concerns: How to elect his two Republican protégés to the U.S. Senate.
Thiel has had an incredible run in the 2022 midterms cycle, placing two $15 million bets in Ohio and Arizona to transform J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, respectively, from middle-of-the-pack primary candidates into G.O.P. Senate nominees. But behind the scenes, sources familiar with the talks tell me, Thiel’s team has spent the summer engaged in months-long, high-stakes, sometimes tense negotiations with allies of Mitch McConnell about who is going to finance the advertising barrage required to carry Vance and Masters over the finish line. As I previously reported, McConnell’s team reached out to Thiel around late April for another $20 million, to be deposited in McConnell’s super PAC, to boost the two candidates through November. That didn’t happen. Thiel, despite being worth some $7 billion these days, can be surprisingly frugal—and, apparently, highly sensitive to feeling extorted. After all, isn’t it McConnell’s job to elect G.O.P. nominees?... |