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Outside Money Dominates Sugar Maple PAC · Commentary - TJ Meadows

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  Speaker 1: Thomas Klingenstein, New York City Broadway address finance man Jeff
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  Speaker 1: Yass born in Queens, professional gambler turned Wall Street titan,
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  Speaker 1: built a trading firm where poker isn't a hobby, it's
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  Speaker 1: training his traders. Three World Series of Poker titles, three bracelets.
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  Speaker 1: Sean Feiler, father of six, devout Catholic hedge fund manager,
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  Speaker 1: lives in Connecticut. His wife teaches economics at Yale. Different lives,
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  Speaker 1: different paths, but they share one thing in common. They're
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  Speaker 1: all investing in West Virginia politics, each writing large figure
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  Speaker 1: checks one hundred thousand from Klingenstein, one hundred grand from Yas,
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  Speaker 1: fifty thousand from Filer into a political action committee tied
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  Speaker 1: to Governor Patrick Morrissey, the Sugar Maple Pack. In just months,
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  Speaker 1: the pack has pulled in more than half a million dollars.
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  Speaker 1: But here's the part that turns heads. Less than eight
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  Speaker 1: percent of that money came from West Virginians. The rest
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  Speaker 1: out of state, New York, Florida, Utah and the like.
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  Speaker 1: And Jeffyass, with more than sixty billion dollars, isn't just dabbling.
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  Speaker 1: Reports say the world's twenty eighth richest man, dropped another
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  Speaker 1: one million dollars this week in a Tennessee governor's race. Now,
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  Speaker 1: none of this is illegal, not even unusual. The courts
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  Speaker 1: have been clear. Money is speech and people can spend it.
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  Speaker 1: But it raises a question, why here? Why West Virginia?
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  Speaker 1: Consider this? Our state is a small state, small electorate,
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  Speaker 1: lower cost, which means outside dollars stretch further. A few
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  Speaker 1: thousand here can move a race there. And maybe, just maybe,
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  Speaker 1: those donors aren't investing in people, They're investing in ideas.
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  Speaker 1: Because in politics, states are testing grounds. You pass a
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  Speaker 1: law in one state, it gains traction, spreads to others,
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  Speaker 1: and suddenly what started local becomes national. So ask yourself.
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  Speaker 1: Has Jeff Yes ever sat down with a candidate running
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  Speaker 1: for anything in West Virginia? Has Sean Filer had coffee
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  Speaker 1: in Charleston with a legislative hopeful. Probably not. And yet
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  Speaker 1: their money is here shaping races, influencing outcomes. And that
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  Speaker 1: leaves you, the voter, with the final question does it matter?
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  Speaker 1: And that's a question only you can answer.