Tales From the Swamp: How a Republican Senator’s Son Partnered With a Liberal Dark Money Group To Sink Voter ID Expansion

Andy Blunt / WikimediaCollin Anderson • May 18, 2022 5:00 am

A George Soros-linked dark money behemoth has a peculiar partner in its bid to sink voter ID expansion in Michigan—a group of Republican operatives led by a sitting Republican senator's son.

Over the past year, liberal dark money group Sixteen Thirty Fund has spent $2.5 million opposing a Republican-led petition drive to expand Michigan's voter ID requirements. Nearly $400,000 of that money has gone to Groundgame Political Solutions, a shadowy consulting firm that a trio of Republican operatives—including Sen. Roy Blunt's (R., Mo.) son, Andy Blunt—privately launched in May 2021, corporate filings show.

The firm, which Blunt first registered in Delaware before expanding it to 10 other states, functions as a stealthy subsidiary to Blunt's public-facing canvassing company, HBS+. The setup has allowed Blunt and his partners, fellow Republican operatives Gregg Hartley and Meghan Cox, to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from deep-pocketed liberals without alienating their conservative clients.

The revelation shows just how far liberal operatives are willing to go to tank the ongoing voter ID expansion effort in the Great Lakes State. In at least one case, for example, the Sixteen Thirty Fund used its Republican allies at Groundgame to pay canvassers tens of thousands of dollars not to work on the issue.

That ploy saw Groundgame reach a November agreement with a Michigan petition gatherer that paid him $50,000 not to work on any "election reform" issue. Cox personally signed the contract, which the petition gatherer called a "scheme to pay off circulators not to engage" in the voter ID initiative. Just one day before Cox sealed the deal, Groundgame received a $56,000 payment from an equally shadowy political action committee, Protect MI Vote, that the Sixteen Thirty Fund bankrolls to fight voter ID in Michigan. According to campaign finance disclosures, that payment went to Groundgame through a Jefferson City, Mo., address registered to Blunt's consulting firm, Husch Blackwell Strategies.

Blunt, Hartley, and Cox did not return multiple requests for comment. All three have professional ties to Blunt's father. Blunt managed his father's Senate campaigns in both 2010 and 2016, while Hartley from 1997 to 2003 served as then-congressman Blunt's chief of staff. Cox, meanwhile, has directed field efforts for the Republican senator, her online bio states.

The three operatives teamed up to launch...

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