State Sen. Bill Eigel, R-St. Charles, sits on the Senate floor on Friday, May 15, 2020, during the final day of the legislative session in the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City.
JEFFERSON CITY — In his quest for Missouri governor, state Sen. Bill Eigel has found financial support in faraway places. One of them is Salome, Arizona, an unincorporated community nearly 100 miles west of Phoenix, where Susan Comer resides.
Comer, 59, in May donated $10 to a political action committee supporting Eigel, records show. Eigel has pointed to thousands of small donations such as Comer’s as evidence of grassroots support.
“For every special interest check or endorsement received by my opponents, a thousand people donated to my message and cause,” Eigel said in July.
But there’s a problem: Comer, who said she lives on a fixed income of less than $1,000 a month, reported Thursday she has never heard of Eigel and doesn’t follow Missouri politics.
“I don’t know who he is,” she told the Post-Dispatch. “I can’t afford it.”
Though she doesn’t know what prompted her to donate to Eigel, Comer and her life partner, David Pinol, 62, said they are supporters of former President Donald Trump and complained of underhanded political fundraising tactics in a stream of messages they both receive.
An Aug. 2 email could help explain why Eigel has attracted so much small-dollar support from across the country, including from Comer.
The email, paid for by Eigel’s BILL PAC, solicited support for Trump, who had just been indicted for the fourth time, and asked “pro-Trump patriots” to “Stand with Trump,” sign a petition and make a donation. But the money would go to Eigel’s campaign, the email said in small type.
The email illustrates the nationwide battle underway for a limited number of small-dollar GOP donors, one in which digital fundraising firms can blast out pitches to masses expressing support for a certain cause — all while directing money to a specific candidate, whom the donor may not know.
“They take the candidate that we are known to have supported and they use that candidate’s image and that candidate’s quotes and that candidate’s policy opinions and then they sneak in, you know, their own candidate in the fine print,” Pinol said.
Trump’s campaign in March told 10 GOP consulting firms the former president likely wouldn’t endorse a candidate paying a digital fundraising vendor “that routinely fundraises off of his (Trump’s) name, image and likeness without his authorization,” Politico reported.
Records show BILL PAC has paid one of the firms that received the letter, Arlington, Virginia-based Targeted Victory, nearly $300,000 this year for work described as consulting and project management.
“When you deceive the President’s donors and usurp his brand for your own profit, you drain him of the financial resources his campaign needs to defeat Joe Biden and Make America Great Again,” the Trump campaign officials wrote earlier this year, Politico reported.
Eigel and a spokesman for Targeted Victory did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Disabled, retired give to Eigel
Many of thousands of donors to Eigel’s PAC, which is allowed to coordinate fundraising efforts with his campaign, appear to be living on fixed incomes.
More than 40 donors to Eigel’s BILL PAC this year entered “disabled” and/or “disability” in the employer/occupation fields when they made donations, according to a review of state records.
Combined, those donors have given hundreds of dollars in small donations, many of them recurring, since the beginning of January.
They aren’t the only group giving big amounts of small donations to the state senator: an army of thousands of retirees is also donating to Eigel’s PAC.
Potential donors received this email, from an account named “TRUMP ARREST UPDATE” with the subject line “Biden DOJ moves in for the kill.” When the recipient clicks on the link at the bottom, the email opens to a donation page …
This year, Eigel’s political action committee has raked in more than $386,000 from people who listed “retired” as their employer/occupation, records show.
Those donors are the targets of emails, such as the one sent on Aug. 2. That email was sent by an account named “TRUMP ARREST UPDATE” and had the subject line “Biden DOJ moves in for the kill.”
The fundraising plea warns: “At any moment, Biden’s DOJ could move to put Trump in jail for the rest of his life!”
“The Democrats are abusing their power to take down their #1 political rival, and NO RED-BLOODED American can stand for this.”
On the second page of the email sent by “TRUMP ARREST REPORT,” in which donations are solicited, appears a small line of type: “Your contribution will benefit Eigel for Missouri.”
“We can still do something, but we have to act NOW because prosecutors are coming down hard on Trump with everything they’ve got.
“Only a massive GOP response right now will work!”
The email then says “500,000 names needed” and presents a link that says “denounce this witch hunt … stand with Trump.”
Recipients who clicked that link were directed to a page where they can sign a petition and then check a box indicating a donation amount.
Only then does it say “Your contribution will benefit Eigel for Missouri.”
The form goes on to ask for the person’s occupation, their phone number and payment information.
Donors must uncheck a box to opt out of recurring donations. The bottom of the page says it was paid for by BILL PAC.
‘Deceptive’
Comer, the Eigel donor from Arizona, said she would be inclined to donate to a pro-Trump cause referencing the former president’s struggle against President Biden’s Department of Justice “witch hunt” and its moving “in for the kill.”
“I think it’s extremely deceptive,” said Pinol, who works as a repair man.
He called it “extremely underhanded for these PACs to use the candidate’s name and image and words and quotes and all that.”
Pinol has urged Comer to be more careful with the fundraising solicitations in her email inbox.
“Since he pointed things out to me and showed me things, I’m very careful now,” Comer said. “Every time it says a certain thing, I immediately delete it.”
Eigel will face Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe in the GOP primary in 2024. House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Democrat, is also running.
Missouri Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, denounces the leadership’s decision to put his proposal to end personal property taxes on the back burner as the Legislature ends its session. Video editing by Beth O’Malley
Beth O’Malley
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