Dark money refers to political spending by nonprofits not required to disclose their donors. Since Citizens United opened the floodgates in 2010, billions have flowed into elections through opaque channels — and local races, where budgets are modest and financial oversight is thin, are especially vulnerable. A single well-funded dark money operation can drown out genuine grassroots organizing at the city council, school board, or courthouse level, and most voters never know who’s behind it.
Ever wonder where a “grassroots” message actually comes from? If you start pulling at the surface of certain political campaigns, you may find that the grass underneath isn’t real at all. Dark money and the astroturfing operations it funds have become reliable features of American political life — and they show up most consequentially not in presidential races, but in the local ones most people aren’t watching.
What Is Dark Money?
Dark money refers to political spending by nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose their donors. These groups, typically classified under sections 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) of the tax code, can receive unlimited contributions and spend those funds to influence elections — all without revealing the identities of the people or institutions funding them. Voters receive the messaging, the mailers, the social media campaigns, and the public comments at city council meetings without any way of knowing who is actually behind them.
The Rise of Dark Money: Citizens United
The 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is the inflection point. It opened the floodgates for increased political spending by corporations and unions, leading directly to the surge in dark money operations that followed. Since then, billions have been funneled into elections through opaque channels, with a significant and deliberate portion targeting local races where financial oversight is often less stringent and where relatively small investments can produce outsized influence.
Some states have pushed back. Alaska implemented a law requiring greater disclosure of political donations, a measure upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024. Arizona passed Proposition 211, mandating that donors contributing over $5,000 to political campaigns disclose their identities. These are meaningful responses to the dark money problem — but they are the exception, not the rule.
Astroturfing: Fake Grassroots, Real Manipulation
Astroturfing is the specific tactic that dark money funds most effectively at the local level. It is the deliberate creation of the appearance of grassroots support for a candidate, policy, or position — using manufactured community organizations that spring up overnight, mass-produced letters to the editor and calls to action posing as organic citizen activity, coordinated social media campaigns designed to look spontaneous, and public comment flooding at city council or zoning board meetings.
These efforts are orchestrated and funded by specific interests — real estate developers, fossil fuel companies, law enforcement unions, corporate lobbyists — who are using dark money to mask their involvement. Reputation management firms frequently design and execute these operations. The result is that genuine community voices get drowned out by well-funded, performative noise, and public officials receive a distorted picture of where their constituents actually stand.
In local elections, where a few thousand dollars can be the difference between winning and losing, dark money doesn’t just influence — it overwhelms. An influx of outside funding can overshadow years of genuine organizing with a single targeted advertising campaign. Elected officials who benefit from that funding may feel more accountable to anonymous donors than to the constituents they were elected to serve.
How to Identify Artificial Influence Campaigns
If the same phrases, hashtags, or talking points appear word-for-word across different accounts, articles, or comment sections — especially from people who don’t appear connected to each other — that is a meaningful red flag. Genuine grassroots efforts produce diversity of voice and perspective. Astroturfing produces uniformity.
Astroturf operations frequently rely on recently-created accounts with thin engagement history, accounts that post exclusively about one issue or consistently promote the same source, and websites with recent domain registrations tied to opaque organizations. Tools like WhoIs for domain lookups and social media audit tools can surface credibility indicators that are often missing entirely from artificial campaigns.
Astroturfing serves specific interests. When funding, endorsements, or promotional behavior can be traced back to a PR firm, lobby group, or well-funded initiative rather than authentic community members, the appearance of grassroots support is almost certainly manufactured. Campaign finance databases, organizational disclosures, and domain registration records are the tools — transparency is consistently absent from genuine astroturf operations because transparency would end them.
Dark money poses a genuine threat to the integrity of local elections by allowing undisclosed donors to exert influence over political outcomes that voters cannot trace or evaluate. The antidote is both structural — advocating for greater disclosure requirements — and individual: learning to recognize artificial influence operations before they shape the political landscape of the community where you live and vote.
Sources
Williams, Rita, Dark Money in Local Elections: What It Is and Why It Matters, Clutch Justice (May 22, 2025), https://clutchjustice.com/2025/05/22/dark-money-in-local-elections-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/.
Williams, R. (2025, May 22). Dark money in local elections: What it is and why it matters. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/05/22/dark-money-in-local-elections-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/
Williams, Rita. “Dark Money in Local Elections: What It Is and Why It Matters.” Clutch Justice, 22 May 2025, clutchjustice.com/2025/05/22/dark-money-in-local-elections-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/.
Williams, Rita. “Dark Money in Local Elections: What It Is and Why It Matters.” Clutch Justice, May 22, 2025. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/05/22/dark-money-in-local-elections-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/.
