Thread by @IlhanMN

This is what happens when rightwing Twitter trolls are treated as authorities on campaign law.

Let’s clear the air.

1. The gov't doesn't fund my campaign. Grassroots donors do.

2. Everything we spend is used for a legitimate expense and paid at fair market value. (Thread)

Will Hailer and Tim founded eStreet after working on Keith Ellison’s campaign for years. Will, who is from MN, managed Keith’s Congressional campaign two cycles and helped increase voter turnout in #MN05.

His work played a major role in keeping Minnesota blue under President Obama, helped defeat an anti-voter statewide constitutional ID, elected a blue state legislative delegation from our district and laid the groundwork that allowed us to keep it blue in 2016.

My husband Tim was Keith’s national fundraiser for a decade – raising millions of dollars across the country to support Keith – and is an expert in the business.

Will reached out when I announced my Congressional run in June of 2018, the day that Keith Ellison announced he was running for Attorney General.

We had roughly eight weeks to build a campaign and win a primary against more financially well-connected opponents. As a new candidate running in the Fifth, they were critical to getting a progressive like me with few resources elected.

eStreet isn’t just a consulting company to our campaign, they specialize in MN and are essential to the work we and other campaigns do every day.

Between design, digital ad creation and buys, social media and email content creation, mailers, fundraising, video production and political support, eight or more people could be doing campaign work for us on a given day.

If the trolls looked at the our campaign finance reports, they would see a substantial portion is for digital buys, print and advertising which are costs that get passed on.

The second thing they would see: we pay fair market value for these services, but spend relatively little on fundraising compared to how much we raise, allowing us to invest more in organizing work to pass a bold progressive agenda.

My relationship with Tim began long after this work started.

We consulted with a top FEC campaign attorney to ensure there were no possible legal issues with our relationship. We were told this is not uncommon and that no, there weren’t.

As a family, we are committed to the practice of joy, compassion and love in our politics. And we are giving ourselves the permission to be happy and hope others will as well.

It’s disappointing that reporters would rather amplify the baseless claims and misinformation of rightwing Twitter instead of talking to actual experts on the law.

This is everything wrong with media coverage in 2020.