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About the Author

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American Muckrakers just filed another amendment in our ongoing Federal Election Commission complaint against Lauren Boebert, and this newest filing raises one very simple question:

Why did Beetlejuice Boebert’s campaign spend $35,000 tied to a Kid Rock rodeo concert weekend in Texas?

According to FEC records, Team Boebert Fundraising Committee paid Professional Bull Riders LLC:

$35,000 for “EVENT SITE RENTAL/TICKETS”

That payment came right before Kid Rock’s Rock N Rodeo at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

And here’s where things get interesting.

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Public VIP Suite Packages for the Event Cost… $35,000

Publicly advertised hospitality packages for the event included:

• luxury skyboxes,

• VIP entrances,

• catered food and alcohol,

• premium seating,

• private hospitality suites,

• parking passes,

• and exclusive club access.

Some premium packages were publicly marketed in the exact same pricing range as Boebert’s campaign expenditure:

$15,000–$35,000

What an incredible coincidence.

Because when normal people hear “tickets,” they think:

• county fair tickets,

• nosebleed concert seats,

• maybe a baseball game.

Lauren Boebert apparently hears “tickets” and thinks: private luxury suite with Kid Rock screaming into a microphone while donor cash pays the tab.

Boebert Keeps Asking Supporters for Money While Living Like a MAGA Influencer

This is the same Lauren Boebert who constantly emails supporters pretending she’s some struggling anti-establishment warrior fighting for “real Americans.”

Meanwhile:

• luxury resort expenses show up in filings,

• questionable reimbursements keep surfacing,

• and now there’s a $35,000 rodeo entertainment expense tied to a Kid Rock event weekend.

In a previous amendment to our FEC complaint, American Muckrakers documented more than $12,000 in campaign spending at a Palm Beach luxury resort, including charges made on dates where Boebert publicly appeared to be somewhere else entirely.

At some point this stops looking like “campaign activity” and starts looking like a divorced mee-ma speed-running a midlife crisis with donor credit cards.

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We Filed the Amendment Because Somebody Has To

The political media treats Boebert like a reality TV character because outrage gets clicks.

We treat her like a public official handling donor money.

That’s the difference.

American Muckrakers is demanding investigators subpoena:

• suite contracts,

• guest lists,

• ticket records,

• hospitality invoices,

• parking records,

• and communications related to the event.

We want to know:

• Who attended?

• Did family members benefit?

• Were friends or insiders invited?

• Was donor money used for booze and hospitality?

• Was this legitimate campaign activity or just another Boebert grift operation?

Because federal law is clear:
campaign funds cannot legally be converted into personal use.

The Boebert Grift Never Stops Unless People Start Paying Attention

Lauren Boebert built her political brand screaming about elites while vacuuming up donations from working-class conservatives.

Then the filings come out and suddenly everybody’s paying for:

• Palm Beach resorts,

• luxury entertainment,

• VIP hospitality,

• and a Kid Rock rodeo weekend in Texas.

That’s why American Muckrakers keeps digging.

Because somebody has to follow the money while the rest of Washington treats this circus like entertainment.

We’re not stopping.

And if you want us to continue exposing grifters who treat campaign donors like an ATM machine with a cowboy hat on top, support our work today.

Donate Here:

CLICK TO DONATE

Every dollar helps fund:

• investigations,

• FEC complaints,

• legal review,

• public records requests,

• research,

• and accountability work nationwide.

Read the full set of complaints here:

2nd Amended Complaint Vs Beetlejuice Lauren Boebert Mur 8930 (1)

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Am Muckrakers V Beetlejuice Lauren Opal Boebert

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers and a candidate for Clerk of Superior Court in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His views are his own, and written directly by David, with spell checking and minor edits with the help of his AI buddy. An essay or story is never independently generated by AI and posted. That would be just stupid. David successfully sued Beetlejuice Boebert for defamation in 2024.

Disclaimer

Paid for by American Muckrakers Independent Expenditure PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact, and it does not purport to describe evidence, discovery, or litigation strategy. This commentary is not intended to influence any pending judicial proceeding.

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The latest rupture comes from Weld County, where former Weld County GOP Chair Hunter Rivera was arrested in a child predator sting. Rivera faces felony allegations including soliciting a child prostitute, internet luring of a child, and attempted sexual assault on a child. Our reporting has also noted that Boebert had supported Rivera’s bid for county chair before later calling the allegations “vile and indefensible.”

That is the trap.

She helped elevate him. Then she had to denounce him.

And now, Colorado Republicans are asking why he was elevated in the first place.

Caroline Hancock, a verified conservative activist on Facebook, did not whisper her criticism. She wrote:

“Heads up, Weld County.”

Then she tied Boebert directly to the factional fight:

“The same county where Lauren Boebert showed up to help rig the local election and install ‘Pedophile Hunter’ Rivera into his seat.”

That is not Democratic messaging. That is the Colorado GOP eating itself in public.

Hancock continued:

“The same club, same problems for years, aren’t you sick of ALL of it?”

Then she accused the faction of already lining up Rivera’s replacement:

“Now, with former chairman Hunter Rivera out, they’re already propping up their next stooge: Adrienne Sandoval.”

The point is not that Hancock is automatically right about every claim. The point is that this is now the language Colorado Republicans are using about Boebert’s operation.

“Rigged.”
“Stooge.”
“Same club.”
“Same problems.”

That is not a healthy party. That is a precinct-level civil war.

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In another post, Hancock accused Boebert and Barbara Kirkmeyer of failing to support harsher penalties or the release of Tina Peters:

“Neither Kirkmeyer nor Boebert has ever lifted a finger to support the bills that hit the House floor every single year.”

She added:

“Boebert has shown zero support for freeing Tina Peters either.”

Then came the direct factional accusation:

“Both women helped install Hunter Rivera as Weld GOP chairman.”

Again, Boebert is not being attacked here by progressive activists. She is being attacked from inside the conservative ecosystem by people who think she is part of a corrupt insider club.

That matters because Boebert’s political brand depends on being the outsider.

If the grassroots starts seeing her as the machine, the whole act collapses.

The Rivera story is especially damaging because it intersects with the Republican Party’s favorite rhetorical terrain: children, predators, moral panic, and “protecting kids.” After Rivera’s arrest, Boebert said Republicans have “zero tolerance” for anyone involved in crimes against children.

That creates the obvious follow-up question:

If there is zero tolerance now, what was the vetting process then?

Colorado Times Recorder reported that GOP officials said there had been previous “concerns” about Rivera, including allegations involving sexual harassment, before the child predator sting arrest.

That is the ammunition.

Not merely that Rivera was arrested.
Not merely that Boebert condemned him afterward.
The issue is whether Colorado Republican insiders ignored warning signs while rewarding the right people inside the right faction.

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Brian Rantz then piled on, writing:

“Caroline Hancock princess Boebert is not to happy with me for sharing your post yesterday”

That matters because it shows the fight spreading beyond Hancock’s original post. Boebert’s reaction did not shut the story down. It amplified it.

The most revealing part of this mess is not just that Boebert was criticized. It is that Republicans are now mocking her for reacting badly to the criticism.

That is how an internal party fight becomes a public narrative.

Boebert wanted to live inside the circus.

Now the circus is biting back.

Colorado Republicans are no longer just questioning Hunter Rivera. They are questioning the people who helped put him in power. And in Weld County, that means Lauren Boebert.

The screenshots tell the story: Hancock accuses Boebert of helping install Rivera. Boebert lashes out. Rantz mocks her reaction. The fight spreads.

That is not damage control.

That is combustion and Beetlejuice Boebert deserves every bit of fire thrown her way.

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and founder of VoteROI, a donor intelligence platform built on 86.9 million FEC records covering federal races from 2000 to 2026. American Muckrakers has been firing fools since 2021.

Disclaimer

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact.

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In the summer of 1840, the Whig party ran a presidential candidate named William Henry Harrison against the sitting Democratic president, Martin Van Buren. Van Buren had won in 1836. He had Andrew Jackson’s blessing. He had the Democratic Party machine. He had four years of incumbency.

The Whigs had Harrison, an aging general with a reputation for living in a log cabin, and they had a campaign tune called “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”

That tune is what people sang at every rally, every barbecue, every cider party from Maine to Mississippi. It named the candidates. It mocked the opposition. It had a chorus you could remember after one hearing and shout while drunk. The Whigs handed it out in pamphlets and got it picked up by traveling fiddlers.

Van Buren had no song.

Harrison won 234 electoral votes to 60.

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Horace Greeley, the Whig editor, wrote at the time that the songs were doing more good than anything else his side was running. He was not being romantic. He meant it as analysis. The professionals on the ground believed they were winning because they had a hit single.

This is a strange story to tell about a country that prides itself on rational politics.

It is even stranger when you notice that it happens again.

And again.

And again.

Five Encore Performances

Skip forward 92 years.

The Great Depression has driven unemployment to 25 percent. Herbert Hoover is the incumbent, running on his 1928 slogan from when things were good. Franklin Roosevelt has adopted “Happy Days Are Here Again,” a song from a 1929 movie that nobody in the America of 1932 actually felt happy enough to mean.

The song was absurd to the present moment. It promised a future the country could not yet see.

FDR won 472 to 59.

Skip to 1980.

Jimmy Carter has diagnosed the country’s “malaise” in a televised speech the press has been mocking ever since. Ronald Reagan is offering a movie-set vision of an America that does not technically exist but might. The popular music of the actual year was Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and Blondie’s “Call Me,” sad and tired music for a sad and tired country.

Reagan won 489 to 49.

Skip to 2008.

Will.i.am has released a YouTube video called “Yes We Can” that sets Barack Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech to music with celebrity cameos. The video is watched 26 million times in its first month. Jay-Z performs at Obama rallies. Bruce Springsteen plays for him.

John McCain’s campaign cannot get a single artist to license a song. They try ABBA. The artist sends a cease-and-desist letter.

Obama won 365 to 173.

Skip to 2024.

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A country song called “Try That in a Small Town” reaches number one in July 2023, and a Virginia farmer named Oliver Anthony debuts at number one a month later with “Rich Men North of Richmond.”

Both songs become rally fuel for the populist right. Trump plays them constantly. The Harris campaign uses Beyoncé and Charli XCX, both genuinely popular but in a different country than the country those two songs describe.

Trump won the popular vote and 312 electoral votes.

That is five elections, across 184 years, in which the candidate whose musical mood matched the country’s musical mood won decisively.

You can dismiss any one of these as coincidence.

Dismissing all five at once requires more confidence than I have.

The Quiet Body of Evidence

There is also actual academic literature on this, which is the part that makes the story go from cocktail-party anecdote to actual question.

In 1991, a psychologist named Harold Zullow published a study in the Journal of Economic Psychology. He had content-analyzed the lyrics of 1,344 Billboard top-40 songs from 1955 to 1989 for two specific psychological traits: rumination about bad events, and pessimistic explanatory style.

Then he checked whether those traits predicted anything.

They did.

Pessimistic rumination in pop lyrics led GNP growth changes by one to two years. In May 1990, Zullow used the model to publicly call the 1990-91 recession before economists did.

He was right.

A year earlier, Zullow and his collaborator Martin Seligman, the Penn psychologist who would later become famous for “learned helplessness” and positive psychology, had published a related finding. They had measured the optimism in presidential nomination acceptance speeches from 1900 to 1984.

The more optimistic candidate won 18 of 22 elections.

The optimism gap predicted the size of the Electoral College margin with eerie precision.

Seligman was so confident in the model that he bet 17,000 dollars of his personal savings on Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election.

He lost.

We will get to why.

In 2009, a psychologist at Coastal Carolina named Terry Pettijohn put forward what he called the Environmental Security Hypothesis: in threatening economic and social times, the popular songs that climb to the top of the charts get longer, more meaningful, more romantic, and more focused on the future.

In safe times, hit songs get shorter, sillier, and more individualistic.

He found the pattern across every Billboard number one from 1955 to 2003.

In 2018, an economist named Hisam Sabouni discovered that the average emotional positivity of music being streamed on Spotify in a given week leads the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index by several days.

People are streaming the country’s mood several days before the country can articulate it to a pollster.

In 2012, a finance professor named Philip Maymin published a paper showing that the rhythmic variance of Billboard top 100 songs is negatively correlated with stock market volatility.

When listeners want steady music, the markets are about to get turbulent. When listeners want turbulent music, the markets are about to get steady.

The signal is statistically significant and the trading edge it produces is worth roughly 2.5 volatility points per year.

This is, to be clear, peer-reviewed academic work in respectable journals.

Not folklore.

Not Halloween-mask theory.

Not whatever the Washington Redskins were doing to the polls in the 1990s.

Real social science showing that the sounds Americans choose to listen to encode information about the country’s psychological state that arrives on the chart before it arrives anywhere else.

Where It Falls Apart, A Little

The Seligman finding has a problem, and the problem is the interesting part.

After 1988, the optimism model stopped working.

Every presidential nominee from George H. W. Bush forward had read the same political science Seligman had read, and they all rewrote their convention speeches to sound optimistic.

Bob Dole proclaimed himself “the most optimistic man in America.”

Bill Clinton ran as “the man from Hope.”

Obama ran on hope literally.

The optimism gap between nominees collapsed to nothing, and the model collapsed with it.

The lesson is unsettling.

The thing that was predictive lost its predictive power the moment it became operational. Once the campaigns optimized for the metric, the metric stopped meaning anything.

This is a recurring pattern in social science forecasting and it should make anyone selling a music-predicts-elections framework slightly nervous.

There are other rough edges.

The popular music of 2016 was Drake, Adele, Justin Bieber, none of it grievance-coded, and the grievance country canon that would later dominate 2023 did not yet exist. A purely chart-based model would have called 2016 for Hillary Clinton.

She lost.

The 1992 election looks like a clean Clinton music story, Fleetwood Mac, saxophone on Arsenio Hall, until you notice Ross Perot ran as an independent and took 19 percent of the popular vote, mostly out of George H. W. Bush’s pocket.

Without Perot, music probably loses that one.

The 1948 election looks like a country music story until you notice that Hank Williams’s first hit was in early 1949, after the election was over.

So the model is interesting.

The model is also imperfect.

The model fails specifically when campaigns figure out what it is measuring and start gaming it.

Which is also a clue.

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The Bigger Question

Here is what I cannot stop thinking about.

If the popular music of a country, the songs that bubble up to the top of a chart through millions of uncoordinated individual choices, can encode psychological information that leads consumer sentiment, GNP growth, market volatility, and at least some election outcomes, then music is not a fluke.

Music is a sensor.

It is a sensor that measures something Americans will not say to a pollster, do not yet know about themselves, and cannot easily fake.

The Billboard chart cannot be reweighted by a likely-voter screen.

The chart cannot be ghost-called by an autodialer to a dead landline.

The chart is what 100 million people actually did with their attention last week.

The only way to fake it is to change what 100 million people are actually doing with their attention.

If that is true of music, the obvious next question is:

What else?

What other things do Americans do with their bodies, their wallets, their cars, their evenings, that might encode the same psychological information faster and cleaner than any poll?

The TSA turnstile cannot be spun.

The vasectomy rate cannot be talked over.

The silver coin sitting in a vault in West Point does not care what the cable news cycle wants you to feel about the economy.

Polling has had its worst decade in living memory.

Response rates are in the single digits.

Likely-voter screens have failed in three consecutive presidential cycles.

The industry that built itself around landline calls in the 1970s is trying to read a 21st-century mood with a 20th-century tool, and it is failing.

What if the music study is the canary?

What if there are a hundred of these sensors, sitting around in plain sight, each measuring a different facet of the national mood, and the only reason we have not assembled them into a unified national vibe-meter is that nobody has bothered?

That is part two.

Coming In Part Two

The hundred-indicator national mood index.

The post-Dobbs vasectomy boom and what it actually means.

Why backyard chicken coop permit applications might be a leading indicator of something nobody wants to admit.

What the TSA passenger volumes say about Florida that the polls do not.

The U-Haul migration index.

The lipstick-shaped recession signal.

The license-plate-frame map of America.

Five or six things you have been doing without realizing you were also voting.

For now, file this away:

The songs of an era seem to know things about that era’s politics that the era itself does not yet know it knows.

That alone is worth a few more weeks of attention.

I will see you in part two.

A Note On What This Essay Is And Is Not

This is a thought piece.

It is not a forecast.

The author runs a political data firm that is, as of this writing, building a behavioral mood index inspired by the questions raised here. The first public version of that index launches soon and you’ll be notified.

None of the forecasts on that site are presented as anything other than experimental.

Where the model is wrong, the dashboard says so, on the same page where the prediction was made.

That is how forecasting should work.

DBW

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers, the political accountability organization best known for exposing hypocrisy, corruption, and public foolishness wherever it hides.

He has spent 40 years building businesses, working in more than 50 countries and all seven continents, and occasionally annoying powerful people who richly deserved it. He writes about politics, accountability, misinformation, civic decay, and the strange patterns hiding in plain sight.

Disclaimer

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact, and it does not purport to describe evidence, discovery, or litigation strategy. This commentary is not intended to influence any pending judicial proceeding. Nothing herein waives any rights, concedes any legal position, or limits the author’s ability to pursue or defend lawful claims in any forum.

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We were early supporters of Rep. Jolly and we’re in for the long haul to help him win. But we do need your help now, not in October.

American Muckrakers had him on MUCK YOU! because we saw what is now becoming obvious: he is doing the hard work it takes to win.

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Not the performative work.
Not the cable-news work.
The real work.

Jolly has earned this 46% through blood, sweat, and tears.

He has shown up. He has made the case. He has done the grinding, unglamorous work required to make Florida competitive again as a new Democrat.

And yes, he has joined us on MUCK YOU!

You can hear him here:

MUCK YOU! American Muckrakers Podcast with Guest Rep. David Jolly, Candidate for Governor of Florida 2026

MUCK YOU! Anthony Scaramucci & David Jolly

This poll matters because a four-point lead is real, but it is not safe. Nutjob Byron Donalds and the MAGA machine will come hard.

That is why early support matters now.

Read more and support David Jolly here.

American Muckrakers was early.
Jolly did the work.
Now the numbers are showing it.

DBW

Source: Change Research, May 2026

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers and a candidate for Clerk of Superior Court in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His views are his own, and written directly by David, with spell checking and minor edits with the help of his AI buddy. An essay or story is never independently generated by AI and posted. That would be just stupid. David successfully sued Beetlejuice Boebert for defamation in 2024.

Disclaimer

Paid for by American Muckrakers Independent Expenditure PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact, and it does not purport to describe evidence, discovery, or litigation strategy. This commentary is not intended to influence any pending judicial proceeding.

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It is about eyelids.

When a person lies, the way they blink changes. Not a little. Measurably. And it has been documented in peer-reviewed psychology journals since the 1970s.

We ran the numbers on a recent Lauren Boebert sit-down with Newsmax (the topic was Donald Trump’s threats and the Thomas Massie endorsement). We tagged every blink. There were 138 of them in roughly 9 minutes on camera. Her rate worked out to 38 blinks per minute. Honest people sit closer to 15 to 20.

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Before you decide what that means, let us walk through the science.

What the research actually says

A normal adult, sitting in a relaxed conversation, blinks somewhere between 15 and 20 times per minute. That is the baseline that gets cited across the literature. It changes a little with lighting, fatigue, and contact lenses, but the range is pretty stable.

The interesting part is what happens to that rate under deception.

The most-cited modern work comes from Sharon Leal and Aldert Vrij at the University of Portsmouth. In a 2008 study published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, they put subjects through a mock crime task and recorded their blink behavior on video. Liars produced a measurable pattern:

1. Blink rate dropped during the moment of the lie. The researchers attributed this to cognitive load. The brain is working harder when it is fabricating, and it suppresses blinks to keep visual focus locked on the listener and the cues coming back from them.

2. Blink rate spiked immediately after the lie. Leal and Vrij called this the compensatory effect. Once the cognitive load drops, the eyelid catches up. Often it overshoots.

That two-phase pattern (suppression during, spike after) has held up across replications. Leal and Vrij confirmed it again in a 2010 follow-up using a Guilty Knowledge Test paradigm. Other research groups have found related effects: Fukuda (2001) and Seymour, Baker, and Gaunt (2013) documented blink-rate increases during lying. Porter and ten Brinke (2008) and ten Brinke and Porter (2012) found the same general pattern in studies of high-stakes deception.

The consistent finding, across every methodology, is that blink rate deviates from baseline when someone is lying. The deviation is large enough to be detected by eye alone in many cases, and large enough to be classified by machine learning at meaningful accuracy.

In 2020, Monaro, Gamberini, and Sartori at the University of Padua trained a computer-vision blink detector on 68 videos of liars and truth-tellers. Using only blink-rate features and response timing, their classifier hit 70 percent accuracy at distinguishing liars from truth-tellers. That is not a coin flip. That is a real signal.

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What 38 blinks per minute means

Now apply that to Lauren Boebert.

Her sustained on-camera rate during the Newsmax interview, measured by the same kind of automatic blink-detection method the Padua team validated, was 38 per minute. That is roughly double the honest baseline. It is consistent with the compensatory spike Leal and Vrij described, sustained across an interview where she was being pressed on her continued endorsement of Thomas Massie despite Donald Trump’s public threats to withdraw his support.

Caveat where it is honest to add one: an elevated blink rate is not a polygraph. Stress, dry eyes, contact lenses, certain medications, and bright studio lighting can all push the rate up. We are not claiming Boebert is hooked up to a courtroom-admissible lie detector.

What we are saying is this. The published deception research has documented for fifty years that blink rate deviates predictably when people lie. Boebert’s rate deviated. By a lot. On camera. In front of a national audience. While she was defending a position that her own party’s nominal leader was publicly torching her for.

You can watch every one of those 138 blinks counted in real time, below.

Why this matters

Lauren Boebert is one of the biggest liars in Colorado. She has been one for years. The pattern is on the record, from her résumé inflation to her shifting stories about restaurant safety incidents to her flip-flops on Trump endorsements. What is new is that the science has caught up. The eyelid does not lie even when the mouth does, and now anyone with a video file and an algorithm can count.

American Muckrakers PAC is going to put this video in front of every voter in her district before the next election. We do that with email lists, paid digital, and earned media. All of it costs money.

If you want her constituents to see what we just measured, chip in at voteroi.com/support. Every dollar buys more impressions. Every impression is one more voter who watches the counter tick from 0 to 138 and decides for themselves.

DBW

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Sources

• Leal, S., and Vrij, A. (2008). Blinking during and after lying. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 32(4), 187 to 194.

• Leal, S., and Vrij, A. (2010). The occurrence of eye blinks during a guilty knowledge test. Psychology, Crime and Law, 16(4), 349 to 357.

• Fukuda, K. (2001). Eye blinks: new indices for the detection of deception. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 40(3), 239 to 245.

• Porter, S., and ten Brinke, L. (2008). Reading between the lies: Identifying concealed and falsified emotions in universal facial expressions. Psychological Science, 19(5), 508 to 514.

• Seymour, T. L., Baker, C. A., and Gaunt, J. T. (2013). Combining blink, pupil, and response time measures in a concealed knowledge test. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 614.

• Monaro, M., Galante, C., Spolaor, R., et al. (2020). Using blink rate to detect deception. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12183.

• Marchak, F. M. (2013). Detecting false intent using eye blink measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 736.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations to American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes. This article is First Amendment protected political commentary on a sitting public official. The video and analysis referenced are the property of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler; no commercial use is permitted without written consent. Oh, and Boebert never sued Wheeler. He sued her and won.

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The Countdown to Accountability

It’s been a bleak couple days. So, we built a countdown clock as a light at the end of the tunnel.

It ticks down to January 3, 2027 at noon ET. That’s the moment the 120th Congress is sworn in. When Democrats win back the House and Senate this November, that’s when the hammer drops on Donald Trump and every co-conspirator who looted the treasury, buried the Epstein files, and funneled taxpayer cash to themselves and their cronies.

Until then, every day on this clock is a day they’re still getting away with it.

Watch it. Embed it. Share it. Then get to work.

👉 voteroi.com/countdown

Drop the iframe on your site, Substack, Wix, or Squarespace. One line of code. For X, Facebook, LinkedIn: share the link. The preview card carries the message.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

DBW

P.S. If you like what we’re doing, please consider a donation. The cupboard is pretty bare, and every dollar goes straight into the fight. Chip in here.

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SPRUCE PINE, NC. May 17, 2026. Hunter Rivera, the sitting chairman of the Weld County (Colorado) Republican Party, has been arrested in a Larimer County law-enforcement sting and is facing felony charges involving alleged efforts to buy sex from a child.

Per Colorado Politics, Larimer County Sheriff’s Office investigators posed as minors online. Several dozen people responded. Two men showed up at the agreed location to pay for sex with a child and were arrested on the spot. Rivera was one of them.

The booking record (Case No. D0352026CR000697) is brutal:

• 18-7-402: Soliciting for Child Prostitution (F3)

• 18-3-405(1): Sexual Assault on a Child, Statutory Rape, No Force (F4)

• 18-3-306(1)(3): Internet Luring of a Child with Intent for Sexual Contact

• 18-5.5-102(1)(h): Cybercrime, Solicits or Offers to Arrange a Situation with a Minor

• 18-2-101(4): Criminal Attempt to Commit a Class 4 Felony

Rivera posted a $6,500 cash bond and walked out. First court appearance: Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 7:30 AM, Courtroom 5A, Fort Collins Justice Center, Laporte Avenue.

Sheriff John Feyen put it plainly: “Children are not property to be bought or sold.”

Boebert Does Not Get to Play Bystander

On February 7, 2025, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-04) declared, in writing, for the world to read:

“I will proudly be supporting Hunter Rivera for Weld County GOP Chair.”

She did not say it quietly. She did not hedge. She said “proudly.” She put her name, her office, and her brand behind him. Weld County Republicans followed her lead and made him chairman by acclamation.

Now she has sprinted toward the fire extinguisher. Per Colorado Politics, Boebert calls the allegations “vile and indefensible,” says she is “angry and disgusted,” and demands Rivera’s removal.

Fine. Good. Correct. Not enough.

This was not a stranger Boebert bumped into at a rope line. This is the man she “proudly” promoted into the chair of the most consequential GOP county in her district. That is not distance. That is proximity. That is not “who could have known?” That is “you put him in the chair.”

Return the Money

American Muckrakers PAC formally calls on the Weld County Republican Party to take these actions within 72 hours:

1. Publicly disavow Hunter Rivera and pull every slate card, mailer, email, and event listing tied to him.

2. Account for every dollar Rivera donated to the Weld County GOP, bundled for it, solicited on its behalf, or steered into its committees, candidates, clubs, and affiliated PACs.

3. Refund the money to donors where practical. Where refund is not practical, donate the equivalent amount to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

4. Publish the receipts. Open the books. Let the voters of Weld County see who took his money and where it went.

Anything less is complicity.

And Boebert should lead the demand. If she had the political weight to elevate Rivera to chair, she has the political weight to force a clean financial accounting now. She should demand the records, demand the refunds, demand the NCMEC donation, and identify every campaign, candidate, or committee that benefited from Rivera’s fundraising or organizing.

That is what accountability looks like.

Questions Boebert and the Weld GOP Must Answer Today

1. How much did Hunter Rivera donate to the Weld County GOP?

2. How much did he raise, bundle, or solicit for Weld GOP events, clubs, candidates, or committees?

3. Did Rivera raise or organize funds connected to Lauren Boebert or her political operation?

4. Will Boebert publicly demand every Rivera-linked dollar be refunded or donated to NCMEC?

5. Will the Weld County GOP publish a full accounting within 72 hours?

6. How many other hand-picked candidates has Boebert “proudly” endorsed without basic due diligence?

These are not complicated questions. They are only uncomfortable.

No More “Protect the Children” Theater

The Republican brand is built on moral panic. Drag queens. Libraries. Teachers. School boards. Books. Bathrooms. Pronouns. Every week, another staged outrage about children.

But when a sitting county GOP chair is arrested in a child predator sting, the same people suddenly want process, quiet, grace, and carefully worded statements.

No.

Children deserve protection from actual predators, not campaign slogans about imaginary ones.

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Help Us Put Him on the Record

American Muckrakers wants Hunter Rivera on tape. He is out on bond. He has not yet been arraigned. The window to ask him hard questions, in person, before his attorneys fully lock him down, is open right now.

If we can raise the funds within 72 hours, we will dispatch a reporter to Colorado to interview Rivera and ask the questions Boebert and the Weld County GOP do not want answered:

1. What is the full extent of your relationship with Lauren Boebert? Endorsements, fundraising, joint events, private communications, coordinated organizing. All of it.

2. Did Lauren Boebert, her campaign, or her political operation raise money through you, or benefit financially from your work at the Weld County GOP?

3. Will you seek a pardon from Donald Trump? (For the record: a U.S. president cannot pardon Colorado state offenses. We still want him to answer on tape.)

4. Will you ask Lauren Boebert to intervene on your behalf in any way, public or private?

Donate now at voteroi.com. Every dollar that comes in over the next 72 hours, restricted to this story, will go directly to travel, on-the-ground reporting, and getting Hunter Rivera on the record before his lawyers shut the door.

We do not need much. We need it fast.

The Bottom Line

Hunter Rivera is entitled to due process in court.

Lauren Boebert is not entitled to political amnesia.

The Weld County GOP is not entitled to keep one dollar raised through a chairman now facing felony charges involving alleged crimes against children.

They backed him. They elevated him. They benefited from him.

Now they can clean it up.

Return the money. Donate the rest to NCMEC. Publish the receipts.

Anything less is just another sermon from the party of family values, delivered from the bottom of a very dirty barrel.

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and founder of VoteROI (voteroi.com), a donor intelligence platform built on 86.9 million FEC records covering federal races from 2000 to 2026. American Muckrakers has been firing fools since 2021.

Disclaimer

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact.

Charges are allegations. Every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The endorsement, the quote, and the booking record are matters of public fact.

This work may not be used for commercial purposes without the express written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

Tips: tips@americanmuckrakers.com

And, Lauren Boebert never sued me.

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Democrats made giving easy.

That was useful.

Then we confused easy with smart.

As we argued in Stop Donating Blind, the central problem in Democratic fundraising is not that donors lack passion. It is that too much passion is routed through too little strategy. Money moves fast. Judgment moves slowly. Consultants, unfortunately, invoice at the speed of light.

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ActBlue is one of the most successful pieces of Democratic infrastructure ever built. Let’s say that plainly before anyone faints into a reusable tote bag.

Since 2004, ActBlue has helped Democratic candidates, progressive organizations, and causes raise billions of dollars. It gave campaigns a common set of donation rails. It helped turn small-dollar giving into a habit. It made online giving simple enough that millions of ordinary people could participate in politics without hiring a bundler, attending a wine cave reception, or pretending to enjoy small talk with a consultant named Chip.

That mattered.

ActBlue built a machine.

The problem is that Democrats built the machine and then, somewhere along the way, started treating the machine like a strategy.

That is where things went sideways.

A donation button is not judgment. A payment processor is not political intelligence. A familiar platform that lets donors give to almost anyone with a “D” next to their name is not the same thing as telling people whether their next dollar can still move a race.

ActBlue made giving easy.

Democrats still have not made giving smart.

The Beautiful Trap

The genius of ActBlue is also the trap.

It is easy. It is familiar. It works. A campaign can spin up a page quickly. A consultant can plug it into an email program. A donor can click, give, save a card, and go back to trying to survive the daily psychosis of American politics.

Convenience matters. Friction kills donations. ActBlue removed friction.

But friction is not the only problem in political giving.

Sometimes friction is the moment where a donor might stop and ask the only question that matters:

Should I actually give to this race?

ActBlue’s job is not to answer that question.

ActBlue’s job is to process the donation. It does that very well. Its official pricing page lists a 3.95 percent processing fee on contributions, along with other fundraising and campaign tools.

Fine.

But at scale, that fee is enormous. On a hundred dollars, 3.95 percent feels small. On a billion dollars, it is $39.5 million. On billions, it is real money.

More importantly, the platform gets paid whether the donation is brilliant, useless, sentimental, strategic, panicked, or inspired by an email subject line that sounds like a raccoon wrote it during a thunderstorm.

It gets paid if you give to a toss-up race that needs late money.

It gets paid if you give to a safe incumbent who does not need your money.

It gets paid if you give to a doomed campaign because a fundraising email made you feel guilty.

It gets paid if you give to a candidate who is inspirational, photogenic, doomed, and about to lose by double digits while the consultants invoice like champions.

That is not a conspiracy.

That is the model.

The machine does not ask whether the race is worth funding.

The machine asks whether your card clears.

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Plumbing Is Not Strategy

Democrats love to congratulate ourselves for building infrastructure, and ActBlue really is infrastructure.

But plumbing is not strategy.

Plumbing moves water. It does not tell you whether the house is on fire. It does not tell you whether the foundation is cracked. It does not tell you whether you are watering a garden or flooding the basement.

ActBlue moves money.

It does not tell you whether the money matters.

That distinction is everything.

A giant wall of donation pages does not help a donor understand whether a race is winnable. It does not explain whether the candidate has a track record. It does not tell you whether the opponent is vulnerable. It does not compare the marginal value of your $50 in North Carolina against your $50 in a glamorous but hopeless House race with a great launch video, perfect lighting, and the electoral prospects of a houseplant.

The platform gives you access.

It does not give you judgment.

And that is how Democrats can raise oceans of money while still starving the races where another dollar might actually matter.

The Dreamy Candidate Problem

This is where everyone gets uncomfortable, which is usually where the truth is hiding.

Democratic donors love dreamy candidates.

You know the type. Great story. Great video. Great hair. Great moral clarity. Great line about democracy. Great photo with their kids, dog, grandmother, or rescue animal of unusual emotional intelligence.

They say the thing we wish more Democrats would say. They give us a little dopamine hit in the middle of a dark political year.

Then they lose by 14 points.

And the donor money is gone.

We have written about this before in Stop Donating Blind: admiration is not strategy. A campaign can be noble, brave, articulate, and structurally doomed at the same time. Politics is unfair that way. So is gravity.

Not because the candidate was bad.

Not because the cause was wrong.

Not because the donors were fools.

Because admiration is not strategy.

This is the sentence Democrats hate:

A good candidate is not always a good investment.

Some long shots are worth funding. Some are not. Some difficult races are structurally movable. Some are just political daydreams with ActBlue pages.

The problem is not that Democrats care too much. Caring is good. The problem is that too much of our donor culture converts emotion into money without passing through analysis first.

Republicans are not sentimental about power. MAGA has built a money train full of billionaires, small-dollar rage donors, dark money, media ecosystems, legal networks, and grievance merchants who understand that money must land where it produces power.

Democrats too often fund the candidate who makes us feel something.

That is how you lose winnable races while feeling noble about unwinnable ones.

The Donor Trust Problem

There is another issue Democrats should not ignore: donor trust.

ActBlue has faced scrutiny, litigation, congressional investigation, and public criticism. Some of that scrutiny is obviously political. Republicans would love to weaken one of the few Democratic infrastructure projects that actually works at national scale.

That part is not subtle. It is not even wearing a fake mustache.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued ActBlue over alleged donation-practice issues. ActBlue has countersued, calling the Texas action unconstitutional retaliation and political harassment. House Republicans have also investigated ActBlue over donor verification, including questions about CVV requirements, prepaid cards, gift cards, and foreign-origin transactions.

ActBlue has denied wrongdoing, defended its compliance systems, and said it uses fraud-detection tools to review contributions and protect the platform.

Those are allegations and disputes, not final findings.

But donor trust is not a partisan issue.

Verification matters. Transparency matters. Security matters. Internal governance matters. If Democrats are going to ask millions of people to send money through a central platform, donors have a right to know how that platform protects them, how it protects campaigns, and how it protects the system.

Not because Ken Paxton says so.

Because donors deserve it.

Republican bad faith does not excuse Democratic complacency.

That sentence should be printed on a coffee mug and thrown through several conference-room windows.

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The Labor and Governance Tension

There is also a labor story here, and Democrats should not pretend it does not matter.

In 2023, ActBlue laid off 54 employees, including union members. Union representatives criticized the cuts. ActBlue later reached a collective bargaining agreement with its tech workers union.

That does not make ActBlue evil. Organizations have budgets. Revenue changes. Management makes hard calls. Anyone who has ever run anything larger than a group chat knows that.

But Democrats should be honest about the tension.

A Democratic institution cannot live forever on worker-power branding, union language, and movement rhetoric while treating labor as expendable when the spreadsheet gets tight.

If our side’s fundraising infrastructure asks working people for money, it should be ready to explain how it treats working people inside its own walls.

That is not a Republican talking point.

That is a Democratic values test.

The For-Profit Question

There have also been reports of internal concern about whether ActBlue could move toward, or explore, a more commercial model.

To be clear: I have not seen a confirmed public filing, announcement, or official ActBlue statement saying it is converting to a for-profit company.

ActBlue still describes itself as a nonprofit.

But even the discussion is revealing. ActBlue has become so central to Democratic politics that questions about its business model, executive compensation, fees, governance, and future direction are no longer inside baseball.

They are donor questions.

They are party-infrastructure questions.

They are movement questions.

If a platform is indispensable, it should also be accountable.

Those two ideas are not enemies.

They belong together.

The Blind-Giving Industrial Complex

The Democratic fundraising universe has become very good at extracting money and much less good at explaining strategy.

The formula is familiar.

Find the outrage. Package the urgency. Add a countdown clock. Add a match. Add a terrifying subject line. Add a candidate photo. Add a little hope. Add a little doom. Shake vigorously. Send to list.

The donor clicks.

The platform processes.

The consultant reports a great quarter.

The race still loses.

Then everyone acts surprised when donors get tired.

Some donors have never given because the whole thing feels rigged, noisy, and manipulative. Some used to give and stopped because they watched their money vanish into races that had no path. Some still give out of habit, friendship, guilt, or fear, but they have stopped asking where the money lands.

That is not donor stupidity.

That is system failure.

The system was built to make giving easy, not to make giving wise.

Why This Keeps Costing Us Key Races

Democrats do not lose key races because of ActBlue alone. That would be too easy and too dumb.

We lose because of bad maps, weak local parties, poor candidate recruitment, billionaire Republican money, media asymmetry, voter suppression, bad messaging, bad timing, bad luck, and sometimes candidates who could not find a normal voter with both hands and a field plan.

But donor waste is real.

When money pours into celebrity races, it does not go somewhere else.

When donors fund hopeless campaigns because the candidate is inspiring, that money does not fund a winnable race in a cheaper media market.

When national attention turns one race into a donor magnet, quieter races with better marginal value get starved.

That is the opportunity cost nobody wants to talk about at the cocktail reception.

Every dollar has a next-best use.

If Democrats are serious about winning, we have to care where the dollar lands.

Not just whether it was raised.

What Donors Deserve

Donors deserve to know what they are funding.

They deserve to know who the candidate actually is.

They deserve to know the candidate’s track record.

They deserve to know whether the race is competitive.

They deserve to know whether the opponent is vulnerable.

They deserve to know whether their donation is funding voter contact, rural radio, digital noise, consultant fees, legal defense, ballot access, or another “we are almost there” email.

They deserve to know whether a race is a strategic long shot or a political fantasy.

They deserve to know whether their money still has marginal value.

That is the phrase that matters:

Marginal value.

The donor question should not be, “Do I like this candidate?”

The donor question should be, “Can my next dollar still change anything?”

Those are different questions.

Democratic fundraising keeps pretending they are the same.

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Give the Money a Job

We started building VoteROI because, as we wrote in March-April: What we built, what we see, and the race we can win, too much Democratic money keeps flowing into races without enough regard for whether the next dollar can actually change the outcome.

That is not strategy.

That is political aromatherapy.

The point is not theoretical. In our Whatley Failed Western NC campaign, we explained exactly what a donor dollar would buy: billboards and rural radio in Western North Carolina calling out Michael Whatley’s failure to deliver Helene recovery.

That is what donor intelligence should look like.

Not “give because we yelled.”

Not “give because the clock is red.”

Not “give because democracy will die at midnight unless you chip in $7.”

Give because the money has a job.

A donor dollar should not be a scented candle for your anxiety.

It should be a tool.

Stop donating blind, damnit.

DBW

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers and a candidate for Clerk of Superior Court in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His views are his own, and written directly by David, with spell checking and minor edits with the help of his AI buddy. An essay, image, or story is never generated by AI and posted. That would be just stupid.

Disclaimer

Paid for by American Muckrakers Independent Expenditure PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact, and it does not purport to describe evidence, discovery, or litigation strategy. This commentary is not intended to influence any pending judicial proceeding. Nothing herein waives any rights, concedes any legal position, or limits the author’s ability to pursue or defend lawful claims in any forum.

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Politics attracts two kinds of fools.

The first fool believes only in feelings. This person watches a candidate give one good speech, post one beautiful launch video, or say something brave on television, and suddenly we have found the next Obama, the next Fetterman, the next AOC, the next savior of democracy, the next person who will finally explain rural broadband in a way that makes MSNBC cry.

The second fool believes only in numbers. This person sees a prediction market, a poll average, a model output, or a tidy little probability score and decides the future has been revealed from on high.

Both are wrong.

Feelings are not strategy. Markets are not God.

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The truth is harder, messier, and far more useful. Political judgment requires data, context, timing, local knowledge, skepticism, and humility. A prediction market can tell us something important about what people with money at risk think may happen. It can help us see where expectations are moving. It can puncture fantasy. It can also miss the story entirely.

A market cannot see every local scandal before the locals start whispering about it at the diner. It cannot feel whether a candidate is actually working. It cannot know whether a district is sleeping, shifting, or waiting for somebody to show up with a real message and enough money to deliver it. It cannot tell whether a race is dead, neglected, misunderstood, or mispriced.

That is why VoteROI uses prediction markets carefully.

Not as commandments.

As signals.

What A Prediction Market Actually Is

A prediction market is basically a place where people put money behind what they think will happen.

Instead of asking a pundit, “Who do you think wins this race?” a market asks a better question: “What price are people willing to pay for a contract that pays out if this candidate wins?”

That price can be translated into an implied probability. If a contract trades around 60 cents, the market is roughly saying the event has about a 60 percent chance of happening. If it trades around 20 cents, the market is saying the outcome is possible but unlikely. If it trades around 90 cents, the market thinks the result is close to baked in.

That can be useful.

A prediction market can aggregate scattered information quickly. It can react faster than formal polling. It can capture what politically engaged people, analysts, bettors, obsessive weirdos, insiders, and semi-insiders think is changing before that change shows up in a public model.

It can also discipline wishful thinking.

If every donor on Twitter thinks a race is tied, but the market prices that candidate at 12 percent, that does not end the conversation. But it should start one.

Maybe the market is wrong. Maybe the market is thin. Maybe the market has not caught up to a real shift. Maybe the candidate is being underestimated.

Or maybe the campaign is selling hope because hope raises money.

That is the point.

A prediction market is not valuable because it tells us what to think. It is valuable because it gives us something to interrogate.

The Gap Between The Story And The Price

Political campaigns are story machines.

Every campaign says it is surging. Every fundraising email says the race is close. Every consultant has a poll. Every candidate is apparently one more ad buy, one more mail piece, one more viral clip, one more emergency midnight deadline away from shocking the world.

And sometimes that is true.

Sometimes a campaign really is being underestimated. Sometimes the smart money is late. Sometimes national analysts miss what locals already know. Sometimes a candidate with a weak-looking number is actually building something real.

But sometimes the campaign is just selling a story.

That is where markets can help. They force us to ask whether the story and the price match.

If a candidate is supposedly on the verge of winning, but the market still treats the candidate as a severe long shot, donors should slow down and ask why. Not because the market is automatically right. Because the gap itself is interesting.

The useful question is not, “Should we obey the market?”

The useful question is, “What does the market see, what does it miss, and why does that matter?”

That gap is where intelligence lives.

Why Markets Are Useful

Markets are useful because politics is full of noise, and Democrats are very good at creating noise that sounds like momentum.

A campaign can manufacture buzz. It can buy ads. It can push a flattering internal poll. It can flood inboxes. It can make a race feel more competitive than it is. It can turn one good debate clip into a national donor fantasy. It can convince thousands of people that a heroic candidate is one money bomb away from flipping a district that still votes like it was carved out by a man wearing a Reagan button.

A market, at least in theory, asks people to put money on the claim.

That matters.

Not because markets are pure. They are not. Not because bettors are geniuses. Many are not. Not because money always finds truth. Please look around America and reconsider that sentence.

Markets matter because they create a different kind of signal. They ask what people are willing to risk, not just what they are willing to say.

That signal should not be worshiped.

But it should not be ignored.

Why Markets Are Not God

Prediction markets can be wrong in all the usual human ways, plus a few extra dumb technological ways.

They can be thinly traded. If only a small number of people are participating, the price may reflect a narrow crowd rather than deep knowledge.

They can be distorted by attention. High-profile races attract more money, more speculation, and more noise. Low-profile races may be badly priced because almost nobody is paying attention.

They can lag local reality. A candidate knocking doors in rural counties, a local scandal, a weak incumbent, a toxic endorsement, a county-level turnout operation, or a late organizing surge may not show up in a national-facing market until much later.

They can mistake probability for inevitability. A candidate with a 70 percent chance of winning still loses 30 percent of the time. A candidate with a 20 percent chance is not dead. That number means hard, not impossible.

Markets can also inherit the blind spots of the people trading them. If the crowd is narrow, coastal, over-online, male, crypto-heavy, finance-heavy, politically weird, or trapped in the same media bubble, then the market may simply convert a shared blind spot into a price.

That is not prophecy.

That is groupthink with a ticker.

So no, I do not worship markets.

Nobody should.

A prediction market is a thermometer, not a doctor. It can tell you something about the temperature. It cannot diagnose the whole patient.

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The Donor Question Is Different

This is where most political donors, consultants, and amateur election prophets get tangled up.

The question is not only, “Who is likely to win?”

That is an interesting question. It is also not always the most important donor question.

The better donor question is:

Where can another dollar still matter?

Those are not the same thing.

A candidate with a 90 percent chance of winning may be wonderful, important, and morally correct. But your donation may not matter much. The race may already be functionally decided. Giving there may feel good, but it may not be the best use of scarce political money.

A candidate with a 5 percent chance may be brave, admirable, and exactly the kind of person you wish represented more of America. But your donation may also not matter much if the race is structurally unwinnable.

In Landman, Billy Bob Thornton’s character, Tommy Norris, talks about oil prices needing to live in a sweet spot: high enough for producers to keep drilling, low enough that regular people do not feel punched in the face every time they fill the tank. That is exactly how donors should think about political markets. A number can tell you where the pressure is. It can tell you whether the system is too cold, too hot, or somewhere in the useful middle. But the number is not God.

The sweet spot is where the signal, the reality on the ground, and the opportunity for action all meet. That is what VoteROI is trying to find in politics: not the hottest race, not the loudest race, and not the one that makes donors feel the best, but the race where the price, the odds, and the moment suggest another dollar can still do real work.

The sweet spot is often somewhere in the middle: races where the outcome is uncertain, the candidate is credible, the opponent is vulnerable, the funding gap is real, and additional money can still buy meaningful communication, organizing, persuasion, or turnout.

That is opportunity.

VoteROI is built around opportunity, not just probability.

We are not trying to help donors chase obvious winners after everyone else has already noticed them. We are trying to help donors find races where support can still affect the path. That’s the difference between strategic donating (VoteROI) and blind giving (Actblue).

That is a different project.

And frankly, it is the project Democrats should have built years ago.

Probability Is Not Opportunity

Win probability and donor opportunity are related, but they are not twins.

A race can be close but already saturated with money. Another $50 may disappear into an ocean.

A race can be a long shot but still worth funding because early money could define the candidate, expose a weak opponent, build name recognition, or create infrastructure before the national committees wake up.

A race can look promising in a market but still be a poor donor target because the candidate is already well funded, the media market is too expensive, or the campaign lacks the operation to turn money into votes.

A race can look weak in a market but deserve attention because the market has not caught up to local facts.

This is the distinction too many fundraising emails refuse to make. They want every race to be urgent, every candidate to be viable, every donation to be heroic, and every deadline to be the last one before civilization collapses into a puddle.

That is not strategy.

That is theater with a donate button.

How VoteROI Uses Markets

VoteROI uses prediction markets as one input in a larger donor-intelligence process.

We look at markets because they help measure outside expectations. They can show whether a race is being treated as competitive, hopeless, overlooked, or mispriced. They can reveal movement. They can show when a candidate’s perceived chances are rising or falling.

But we do not stop there.

Markets are combined with polling, fundraising data, candidate quality, district context, national environment, race importance, donor sensitivity, and marginal-dollar value.

That last phrase matters.

Marginal-dollar value means we are asking whether the next dollar can still do work. Not whether the candidate is lovable. Not whether the race makes us feel noble. Not whether the email subject line scared us into clicking.

Can the next dollar still move something?

Can it help reach voters who have not been reached? Can it fund rural radio where nobody else is talking? Can it close a gap in a race that is actually close? Can it help define an opponent before the opponent defines themselves? Can it force the other side to spend? Can it turn a neglected race into a live one?

That is what donors should want to know before they give.

Donors Are Busy, Not Stupid

Most donors do not have time to read every FEC report, compare market movement, parse polling methodology, analyze district trends, examine turnout history, evaluate candidate quality, and then decide whether a race is actually viable.

That does not mean they are dumb.

It means they have lives.

They have jobs, families, mortgages, businesses, kids, parents, health problems, and all the other daily joys of being alive in a country where half the political class appears to have been raised by raccoons in a parking lot.

So donors rely on shortcuts.

A trusted friend. A viral clip. A dramatic email. A candidate who feels right. A party committee. A headline. A poll. A market. A model.

Shortcuts are unavoidable.

The question is whether we can build better ones.

VoteROI is an attempt to build a better shortcut. Not a perfect shortcut. Not a magic shortcut. A more honest shortcut.

It gives donors a way to see where a race stands before they give. It gives them a way to compare races. It gives them a way to ask whether a donation is likely to be useful, not merely satisfying.

That matters especially for people who have never donated before, and for people who stopped donating because they felt burned.

Skeptical donors are not the enemy.

They are exactly the people we need back.

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Why This Matters After Years Of Blind Giving

Democrats have a bad habit of confusing fundraising with winning. I wrote about that in a prior post.

We look at a giant quarterly number and treat it like proof of momentum. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is just proof that a campaign hired a good email vendor and discovered how many times a donor will tolerate being told democracy dies at midnight.

Money matters, but where the money lands matters more.

A million dollars in the wrong race can be a bonfire. Fifty thousand dollars in the right race can be the difference between silence and voter contact. I’ve written about this in a prior post too. Ten thousand dollars at the right moment can help define an opponent, fund a rural radio buy, hire organizers, or keep a campaign alive long enough to catch a break.

That is why prediction markets matter, but also why they are not enough.

Markets can help tell us how the world is pricing a race. They cannot tell us whether a particular donation has strategic value.

That is the missing layer.

That is what VoteROI is trying to build.

The Edge Campaign Connection

This is also why American Muckrakers created the Designated Edge Campaign label.

The label is not a guarantee.

It is not a coronation.

It is not a statement that the market, the model, or I have discovered the will of God while drinking coffee and yelling at a spreadsheet.

It means we believe a race deserves donor attention because the combined evidence suggests money may still move the outcome.

At voteroi.com/edge, we list a curated slate of these races. Each card gives donors a starting point: the candidate, the office, the win-probability estimate, the opportunity score, the fundraising goal, and a short explanation of why the race deserves attention.

Curated matters.

We are not trying to list every Democrat. That already exists. We are trying to help donors think through where their money may still do work.

Some races will appear. Some will drop off. Some will improve. Some will fade. That is not a bug. That is the point.

Politics changes. The page should change with it.

Smart Giving Is Not Cynicism

None of this means we should abandon courage, long shots, or candidates who are early, underfunded, or underestimated.

Quite the opposite.

Better donor intelligence can help us spot the right long shots sooner. It can help us separate races that are difficult from races that are dead. It can help us fund candidates before the national committees wake up. It can move money into neglected races where the next dollar has more force.

That is not cynicism.

That is respect.

Respect for donors. Respect for candidates. Respect for the stakes.

Cynicism says nothing matters.

Discipline says some things matter more than others.

VoteROI is built for discipline.

Look At The Signals Before You Give

Prediction markets are useful. Polling is useful. Fundraising data is useful. Candidate history is useful. Local context is useful. None of them is enough alone.

That is the point.

Do not donate because a market moved.

Do not donate because a model blinked.

Do not donate because a campaign screamed.

Do not donate because a candidate made you feel good for ninety seconds.

Look at the signals together. Ask whether the race can move. Ask whether the candidate can use the money. Ask whether the opponent is vulnerable. Ask whether the district is reachable. Ask whether the next dollar still matters.

Then decide.

The values are yours. The judgment is yours. VoteROI just tries to put better information in front of you before the money leaves your account.

Markets are not God.

But ignoring data is not virtue.

We beat the MAGA money train by getting smarter about where our money goes. That means fewer blind donations, more disciplined giving, more honesty, more context, and more donors who know what they are funding before they fund it.

That is why we use prediction markets.

That is why we do not worship them.

And that is why VoteROI exists.

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers and a candidate for Clerk of Superior Court in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His views are his own, and written directly by David, with spell checking and minor edits with the help of his AI buddy. An essay or story is never independently generated by AI and posted. That would be just stupid. David successfully sued Beetlejuice Boebert for defamation in 2024.

Disclaimer

Paid for by American Muckrakers Independent Expenditure PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact, and it does not purport to describe evidence, discovery, or litigation strategy. This commentary is not intended to influence any pending judicial proceeding. Nothing herein waives any rights, concedes any legal position, or limits the author’s ability to pursue or defend lawful claims in any forum.

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This Substack reaches a lot of different people. Let me try to connect with all of you.

Some of you have never given a dollar to politics. Not because you don’t care. You do. You don’t trust where the money goes, you can’t tell a real candidate from a placeholder, and the whole machine feels rigged to extract from you without ever telling you what you bought.

Some of you used to give. You maxed out in 2018. You bundled friends in 2020. Then you watched some of your money go to candidates who couldn’t have won if their opponent had been caught on tape. The rest went to consultants whose biggest skill was sending you more emails. You’re not cynical. You’re tired. There’s a difference.

Some of you are still writing checks every cycle, on autopilot, because somebody you respect asked. You haven’t stopped giving. You’ve just stopped looking at where it lands.

Some of you aren’t Democrats at all. You’re independents, refugees from a Republican Party you no longer recognize, or simply people who can read a poll and understand which way the country is tilting. You want a place to put money that doesn’t require swallowing a brand.

And some of you are here for the data, not the donate button. You like the modeling, the FEC numbers, the donor flow analysis. You may never click give. That’s fine. The math is for you too.

All of you are why we built VoteROI.

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Why We Built This

You should know what you are donating to. Who the candidate actually is. What their track record looks like. Whether your $50 is the marginal dollar in a race that’s genuinely close, or emotional support for a foregone conclusion. Both are choices a donor is allowed to make. But you can only make them if someone shows you the math.

ActBlue Won’t Show You the Math

ActBlue won’t show you the math. ActBlue will show you anyone with a “D” next to their name, take a 6% cut, and leave you to figure out the rest. We charge 2.75%, and we do the upstream work: polling, fundraising data, win-probability modeling, marginal-dollar elasticity. You see, before you click donate, what your money is actually buying.

While we are on the subject: a full history of ActBlue is coming in a future post on this Substack. The fees are the least of it. It ain’t pretty. Stay subscribed.

The Quiet Truth

Here is the uncomfortable thing nobody says out loud at Democratic events. If we don’t stop pouring money into hopeless races run by dreamy candidates, we will never stop the MAGA money train. The Trump scam are actually disciplined about where their dollars go. We are not. They fund the seats that flip and let everyone else fend for themselves. We fund the candidates who make us feel something or we wish would win. One of those patterns actually wins elections.

Crypto, Done by the Book

We are also the first Democratically-focused donor platform to accept crypto. We do it strictly under current FEC rules, and every contribution is immediately converted to US dollars on receipt. No tokens sit on our books. No exposure to price swings. Just a clean, compliant on-ramp for donors who hold their wealth in crypto and want to put it to work. We did this because that pool of people is real, and growing, and nobody on our side was bothering to meet them where they are. The Republican ecosystem has been doing it for two cycles. We caught up.

What VoteROI Is Not

A note on what we are not. We are not telling you who to vote for. We are not ranking candidates by virtue or purity or by whatever theory of change you happen to hold. We are telling you what the numbers say about where a dollar moves the needle. The predictive markets may be data-driven, but they are not god. Our model is a tool. The values are still yours.

Where to Start

If you want a place to start, American Muckrakers has formally designated a small slate of 2026 D races as Edge Campaigns. These are the ones where our modeling says donor dollars still meaningfully shift the outcome. They live at voteroi.com/edge. One page. Curated, not exhaustive. Win probability, opportunity score, fundraising goal, and a short story on each card explaining why this race and not some other race.

Go look. If you decide to give elsewhere afterward, that’s fine. At least you will have done it with the math in front of you.

That is the whole pitch. Know what you’re funding. Stop wasting dollars on races we cannot win. Start landing dollars on races we can. We do not beat the MAGA money train with hope. We beat it with discipline.

DBW

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers and a candidate for Clerk of Superior Court in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His views are his own, and written directly by David, with spell checking and minor edits with the help of his AI buddy. An essay or story is never independently generated by AI and posted. That would be just stupid.

This essay constitutes protected speech and commentary, opinion, and advocacy on matters of public concern under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a legal pleading, sworn statement, affidavit, or admission of fact, and it does not purport to describe evidence, discovery, or litigation strategy. This commentary is not intended to influence any pending judicial proceeding. Nothing herein waives any rights, concedes any legal position, or limits the author’s ability to pursue or defend lawful claims in any forum.

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Eighteen months ago, Hurricane Helene tore Western North Carolina apart. Two hundred and thirty people dead. Sixty billion dollars in damage. The worst natural disaster in the history of this state. I lived through it and had $200,000 in damage to my home.

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In January 2025, Donald Trump flew to Asheville, stood in front of survivors, called FEMA “a disaster,” and personally appointed Michael Whatley, then chair of the RNC, now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, to be North Carolina’s “Helene Recovery Czar.”

That was Trump’s promise. Whatley was the man.

Eighteen months later, here is what Whatley has delivered:

• Trump’s FEMA denied North Carolina’s request to keep paying 100 percent of debris cleanup. That single decision cost the state $200 million that should have gone to Yancey, Mitchell, McDowell, Madison, Avery, Watauga, and Buncombe counties.

• Whatley publicly claimed that “$9 billion” in federal money has flowed to Western NC since Trump took office. The state’s own tracking data does not back that number up. Not even close.

• Last month, nearly 200 Western North Carolina residents, neighbors, business owners, storm survivors still living in trailers, publicly called for Whatley to be removed as recovery czar. They have watched him from the front row. They are not impressed.

Roy Cooper walked Chimney Rock and Swannanoa in mud-caked boots in the days after the storm. Michael Whatley issued press releases from a podium and ran for the Senate.

That contrast is the entire race. We just have to make sure every voter in North Carolina sees it.

Why this race will be closer than people think

Roy Cooper has won every statewide race he has ever entered, but he has never, not once, won by a comfortable margin.

He won the governor’s mansion in 2016 by 10,277 votes out of 4.6 million cast — a 0.2 percent margin and the closest gubernatorial race in the country that year. He won re-election in 2020 by 4.5 points, once again the closest gubernatorial race in any U.S. state, in a state Donald Trump carried twice. As Attorney General, his races against Dan Boyce, Joe Knott, and Bob Crumley were competitive every time.

That is the Cooper Pattern. He wins. He grinds. He never blows anyone out.

A March Carolina Journal Poll has Cooper up 7.8 points on Whatley. By Labor Day that lead will be inside four. By Halloween it will be inside two. It always is. Whatley was the chair of the Republican National Committee. He can raise nine figures. The air war hasn’t even started.

The single most powerful thing Democrats can do right now, before Whatley’s money lands, before he gets his story straight, before swing voters tune in, is define him. Lock in the frame:

Michael Whatley was Trump’s hand-picked Helene Czar. He failed.

If that sentence is the first thing voters in Hickory, Boone, Marion, Burnsville, and Hendersonville hear when they hear his name, this race is over before it starts.

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What your money buys

When you give through voteroi.com/rc that donation goes to one purpose:

Billboards and rural radio in Western North Carolina calling out Michael Whatley for the Helene relief he was put in charge of and never delivered.

• Billboards along the I-40 corridor, Highway 19, Highway 64, Highway 226, and the secondary roads that thread through the counties Helene hit hardest. Every commute. Every grocery run. Every drive to church. Where’s our Helene relief, Whatley?

• Rural radio — country stations, gospel stations, AM news in Mitchell, Avery, Yancey, Madison, McDowell. The stations the Asheville consultants forget exist. The stations Helene survivors actually listen to in their trucks, on their job sites, and over morning coffee.

This is not a TV buy in Charlotte. I’ve run for office out here and know what lands and moves voters. This is a ground-truth campaign in the places that lost the most and have heard the least from Trump’s recovery czar. We are going where Whatley does not want this conversation to happen.

Why VoteROI?

VoteROI charges 2.75% to route your donation. ActBlue charges 6%.

That’s more than double the fee, gone before your dollar ever does any work. Through VoteROI, more of your money makes it onto the billboard. More of your money shows up in the speakers of a pickup truck on Highway 226. More of your money becomes the message that defines this race.

The window is now

We are not asking you to wait for Labor Day. We are not asking you to wait for the debates. We are asking you to act before Whatley spends the first dollar of his Senate war chest, while his record as Helene Czar is still raw, still documentable, and still ours to define.

Cooper closes. He always does. Our job, and your job, is to make sure he has the runway to close in country he can win.

Chip in to fund the billboards and radio →

Helene survivors are still waiting. Don’t make them wait through another failed Republican Senator.

DBW

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers, an organization dedicated to accountability and transparency. He has spent four decades creating jobs, launching global initiatives, and working across all seven continents. He is also the founder of Election Integrity Watch (eiw.americanmuckrakers.com) and VoteROI.com.

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed are protected under the First Amendment and reflect commentary on matters of public concern.

And, Lauren Beetlejuice Boebert still hasn’t sued us.

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It’s because we see a path to win.

Graham Platner has that path right now.

With Janet Mills stepping aside, this race changed overnight. What was theoretical is now real. And in this window, early money matters more than anything else.

We look at races through one lens:

Can money move the outcome?

Most of the time, the answer is no. Billions get poured into races that were never winnable. That’s the broken system we built VoteROI to fix.

This race is different.

Here, early capital determines:

• Who defines the narrative

• Who builds momentum

• Who becomes inevitable

Platner checks the boxes:

• Clear path

• Real opening

• Immediate leverage

That’s why we’re not just endorsing.

We’re acting.

The Objective

Raise $10,000 this week. The proceeds, minus 2.75% admin fee, will be sent directly to Platner’s campaign. That fee is more than one-half less than the 6% Actblue admin fee charged to campaigns.

Not for optics. For impact.

Enough to:

• Lock in early positioning

• Build initial reach

• Signal strength to everyone watching

Cam…

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Happy Saturday! We’ve made several major improvements to VoteROI.com.

It’s faster. Cleaner. More accurate. And a lot easier to use.

Now we need real users and donors. Our hook is more of your donation goes directly to the candidate, not Actblue overhead.

👉 Go here: https://www.voteroi.com

Click around. Search races. Try the donation flow. Push it a little. See what happens. Make a donation to a candidate you support.

If something feels off, tell me.
If something works, tell me that too.

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👉 www.voteroi.com

The idea is simple:

Political donations shouldn’t be guesswork.
They should be smarter, more targeted, and actually matter.

Right now, most money in politics is spent inefficiently. We’re trying to change that.

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March and April weren’t about noise. They were about building.

Here’s exactly what we’ve been doing and why it matters.

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