# State-Branded Super PAC Template **State-Branded Super PAC Template** is the vault's name for a formation pattern that became the dominant shape of new federal committee registration in the closing weeks of the 2026 midterms: committees named after a state or region, registered in clusters of two or three on a single day, sharing one mailing address and one treasurer drawn from a small compliance practice, often with a matching domain already purchased, and disclosing no money at the time of registration. The name on the door is local. Everything behind it is a Washington PO box. ## What the pattern looks like Five features, all visible on the face of a Form 1: 1. **A place name with no place in it.** "Gem State," "Great Plains," "Cornhusker," "Lone Star," "The Maine Standard" — state nicknames and regional shorthand, chosen for recognition rather than registration. The committee's actual address is almost never in the state it is named for. 2. **Cluster registration.** Two or three committees filing within hours of each other, sequentially numbered, from the same box. 3. **A shared treasurer.** One person signs for every committee in the cluster, usually as both treasurer and custodian of records, usually at a compliance firm rather than a campaign. 4. **Pre-purchased domains.** A committee with no money and no spending already owns `gemstatefuture.org` and `greatplainsvoices.org` — which means the branding decision preceded the legal formation. 5. **No disclosed money.** At registration there are no receipts and no expenditures. The funding and the spending both arrive later, and often in the same week. ## The 2026 instances | Committee | FEC ID | Registered | Treasurer | Address of record | |---|---|---|---|---| | [[The Maine Standard]] | C00961342 | ~2026-09-14 | **[[Trevor Kowalski]]** | Bangor, ME | | [[Cornhusker Majority]] | C00961227 | ~2026-09-14 | **[[Trevor Kowalski]]** | Scottsbluff, NE | | Alabama Truth PAC | C00961904 | 2026-09-19 | third treasurer, unverified | not yet verified in vault | | [[America Together PAC]] | C00961961 | 2026-09-21 | **Christopher Koob** | Washington DC | | [[Gem State Future PAC]] | C00961987 | 2026-09-21 | **Christopher Koob** | Washington DC | | [[Great Plains Voices PAC]] | C00961995 | 2026-09-21 | **Christopher Koob** | Washington DC | | [[Western Crossroads]] | C00962001 | 2026-09-21 | Erinn Larkin | 1235 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington DC | | [[Mobilizing Americans for Real Change and Opportunity PAC]] | C00962019 | 2026-09-21 | Thomas Datwyler | Hudson, WI | | [[Louisiana in Common PAC]] | C00962126 | 2026-09-22 | Amy Gray | New Orleans, LA | | [[Buckeye Freedom PAC]] | C00963017 | **2026-10-05** | **[[Thomas Datwyler]]** | Hudson, WI | | [[Red Alaska PAC]] | C00963025 | **2026-10-05** | **[[Thomas Datwyler]]** | Hudson, WI | | [[WY Action]] | C00963041 | **2026-10-05** | **[[Thomas Datwyler]]** | Hudson, WI | | [[Northshore Justice]] | C00963066 | **2026-10-05** | **[[Thomas Datwyler]]** | Hudson, WI | | [[Last Frontier PAC]] | C00875278 | pre-cycle | Kirsten Quick | 421 Office Park Drive, Mountain Brook, AL | | [[Stronger Maine]] | C00922294 | pre-cycle | [[Les Williamson]] | 1305 W 11th St #217, Houston, TX | | [[Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund]] | C00809483 | 2022-03-17 | [[Les Williamson]] | 1305 W 11th St #213, Houston, TX | The Alabama Truth PAC row comes from the vault's daily money digest of 2026-09-19 and has not been re-verified against its Form 1; every other row is read directly from a filing cited in this page's sources. **The Maine Standard and Cornhusker Majority rows were verified on 2026-10-03** — addresses and treasurer read from Form 24 files 2016518 and 2016519, which is also when both committees first appeared as live spenders. > [!important] 2026-10-03 — the template stopped being a registration pattern and started spending > On receipt date **2026-10-02** both Kowalski committees filed Form 24 notices on the same day: > [[Cornhusker Majority]] **$1,804,841.44** against [[Dan Osborn]] in [[NE-Sen-2026]] (file 2016519) and > [[The Maine Standard]] **$1,442,664.96** against [[Troy Jackson]] in [[ME-Sen-2026]] (file 2016518) — > **$3,247,506.40** across two states, both carrying expenditure date 2026-09-30. > > **And the vendors are the [[Senate Leadership Fund]]'s.** Flexpoint Media, Alamo Intelligence LLC and > FCG Media Strategies LLC appear on the Cornhusker notice; [[MHB Media Inc]] took the whole Maine notice. > All four are on SLF PAC's $22,530,483.71 filing of the same receipt date — see > [[SLF 22.5M Senate IE October 2026]]. In Maine the two committees hit the same candidate on the same > day through the same buyer: **$5,191,680.14**. > > This is the first direct evidence in the vault that the state-branding layer and the national committee > share procurement. It establishes no coordination and does not need to. > [!note] The pattern is in use on the Democratic side too > [[Protecting Alaska Fishermen]] (C00962100, treasurer Jud Brown) filed its first notice on the same > receipt date — **$1,416,276.83** against [[Dan Sullivan]] in [[AK-Sen-2026]] (file 2016253). Same > template, opposite direction: an in-state constituency name, a Capitol Hill mail-drop address in > Washington DC, no spending history, and Democratic-side media buyers (MVAR Media LLC, The Pivot Group). > The three Republican-side instances above carry in-state addresses; this one does not. **On 2026-09-21 alone, three committees registered from a single Washington PO box under a single treasurer, two of them with domains already in hand.** Two more registered the same day from two other compliance shops. That is the density worth recording. > [!important] 2026-10-06 — the cluster record broke, and the shared treasurer now has money moving between his committees > Two findings from e-file receipt date **2026-10-05**, both of which sharpen this page rather than > restate it. > > **(1) Four committees in one filing session — the largest cluster in the vault.** The previous record > was three from one Washington PO box on 2026-09-21. On 2026-10-05, **four** independent-expenditure > committees registered from **Hudson, Wisconsin** with the **same treasurer, Gmail > address, phone number and depository on all four Form 1s**, sequential FEC IDs, sequential file > numbers, and **no money disclosed on any of them**: [[Buckeye Freedom PAC]] (Ohio), > [[Red Alaska PAC]] (Alaska), [[WY Action]] (Wyoming) and [[Northshore Justice]] (no geography stated > anywhere on the form). With [[Mobilizing Americans for Real Change and Opportunity PAC]] of > 2026-09-21, that is **five committees from one address inside fifteen days**. Full build: > [[Datwyler Four Super PAC Formation Cluster October 2026]]. > > Feature 2 of the pattern above said "two or three committees filing within hours of each other." It is > now **four**, and feature 4 — pre-purchased domains — was **not** present on any of them; these four > registered with a Gmail address, not a committee domain. > > **(2) A disclosed transaction between two committees of one treasurer.** This is new in kind. > [[Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund]] (C00809483, **1305 W 11th St #213**, Houston) was disclosed as the source > of **$1,000,000** to [[Who Stands For Us]] (C00958512, Arlington VA) on Schedule A line **SA11C** of > file **2017177**. **Both committees list [[Les Williamson]] as treasurer**, and so does > [[Stronger Maine]] at **#217 of the same Houston building**. See > [[Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund 1M Who Stands For Us October 2026]]. > > The "shared treasurer is a vendor, not a money trail" caution below **still applies** and this is why > it needs restating rather than retiring: the caution is about not inferring a network from a > letterhead. Here there is no inference — **money actually moved between two of the committees**, and > that is a disclosed fact about them, not about their treasurer. The caution governs what you may say > about *Williamson*; it does not govern what the Schedule A row says about the *committees*. ## What the pattern is not > [!warning] A shared treasurer is a vendor relationship, not a money trail > Compliance firms sign for hundreds of committees. Christopher Koob signing for three committees means > three clients hired the same firm, or one client opened three committees — and the filing cannot tell you > which. The same caution the vault applies to Cabell Hobbs at [[Texas PAC]] and to Charles Gantt at > [[MAGA Inc]] applies here with equal force. > > **Do not write a treasurer cluster as a network.** The 2026-09-17 and 2026-09-18 digests built a > three-day theory about a "Gantt/Beverly network" that turned out to be a vendor, Bulldog Compliance, and > had to be retracted. The pattern below is about *form*, not about a common funder. What the shared infrastructure does establish is narrower and still useful: these are **professionally administered committees, not grassroots ones**. Somebody with money hired a Washington compliance practice before there was anything to comply with. ## Why it works A super PAC's disclosure obligations attach to **money**, not to **branding**. A committee can register, name itself after a state it has no presence in, buy a domain, and sit dormant — and until it receives or spends, there is nothing to disclose and nobody to name. When the money does arrive, the committee already exists, already looks local, and can be spending within days. The timing is the point. A committee registered on **September 21** with a **quarterly** filing obligation does not disclose a single donor until **October 15**, and one registered later may not disclose until after election day. Voters in Idaho who see an ad from "Gem State Future" in the second week of October can discover that the committee exists; they cannot discover who paid for it until the votes are counted, or at all. This is the same structural gap the vault records under [[Dark Money]], arrived at by a different route: not by hiding the donor behind a 501(c)(4), but by putting the spending in front of the disclosure calendar. The local name is doing separate work. Outside spending is more persuasive when it appears to come from inside the community it is aimed at, which is the mechanism catalogued under [[Astroturfing]]. A Washington-administered committee called "Louisiana in Common" is not lying about anything on its registration — it simply looks like something it is not. ## What to watch The pattern's value to the vault is predictive, and the triggers are specific: - **First receipt or first Schedule E line** from any committee in the table. That is when the pattern stops being a formation curiosity and becomes traceable money. - **A fourth committee at Washington DC under Christopher Koob.** Three in one day suggests a program rather than a client. - 🔴 **A sixth committee from Hudson WI under [[Thomas Datwyler]].** Five in fifteen days is already a programme rather than a client list. - 🔴 **The first Schedule E line from any of the four committees registered 2026-10-05.** None has spent a dollar; nothing about them is traceable until one does. - **A third committee at 1305 W 11th St, Houston TX**, or a fourth [[Les Williamson]] committee anywhere. - **Any committee in the table spending in a state other than the one it is named for.** That would settle what the branding is for. - **Whether the cluster is partisan.** Nothing in these registrations establishes alignment, and this page deliberately does not assert one. Several of the 2026-09-21/22 registrations in the broader tranche were plainly Democratic-side. **The template is a technique, not a faction** — and the vault should resist the pull to code it as right-wing before the spending says so. That last point is the discipline this page exists to enforce. The Right Wing KB tracks the right-wing ecosystem, but a formation technique is not an ideology, and recording it accurately means recording that both sides use it. ## The 2026-10-06 tranche — and the counter-example that bounds the pattern Three more registrations landed on e-file receipt date **2026-10-06**, and they are useful together because they do not all fit. | Committee | FEC ID | Filed from | Signer | Fits the template? | |---|---|---|---|---| | [[Save Our Montana]] | C00963157 | **Athens GA** | [[Paul Kilgore]], [[PDS Compliance]] | **Yes** — Montana name, Georgia compliance address, no money, quarterly filer | | [[Heartland Majority]] | C00963173 | 2200 1st Ave North Apt 3E, Birmingham AL | Steve Hallmark, titled **Founder**, Gmail, bank at the same apartment | **Partly** — regional name, no money, but no compliance shop and no professional treasurer | | [[Building Nebraska's Future]] | C00963181 | **Gretna NE** | James Houlihan, local phone, local ISP email, Omaha bank | **No** — every identifier is in-state | 🔴 **[[Building Nebraska's Future]] is the counter-example, and it matters.** The template's diagnostic signature is a state name attached to an **out-of-state** compliance address. A committee whose address, treasurer, phone, email and bank are all inside the state it is named for is the pattern's negative case. [[Wyoming Way Action PAC]] was the first; this is the second. **So the template is a tendency, not a rule, and an in-state filing is a weak exculpatory signal — not proof.** A local address establishes nothing about who funds a committee. Both of these are still quarterly filers that registered four weeks out and can spend the closing stretch without naming a donor. What the counter-example forbids is the inference running the other way: **a state-branded name is not by itself evidence of a shell.** The address is what carries the finding. [[Heartland Majority]] sits between the two and is recorded as an outlier rather than an instance. Note also that its Birmingham address is **not** the 421 Office Park Drive cluster in Mountain Brook, and nothing connects them beyond the metropolitan area — recorded so the coincidence is not rediscovered as a finding. **Running count: nineteen committees catalogued against this pattern in three weeks**, of which two are negative cases. ## See Also - [[Datwyler Four Super PAC Formation Cluster October 2026]] · [[Thomas Datwyler]] · [[Les Williamson]] - [[Buckeye Freedom PAC]] · [[Red Alaska PAC]] · [[WY Action]] · [[Northshore Justice]] - [[Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund]] · [[Who Stands For Us]] · [[Stronger Maine]] · [[Last Frontier PAC]] - [[Gem State Future PAC]] · [[Great Plains Voices PAC]] · [[America Together PAC]] - [[Western Crossroads]] · [[Mobilizing Americans for Real Change and Opportunity PAC]] · [[Louisiana in Common PAC]] - [[Astroturfing]] · [[Dark Money]] · [[Super PACs]] · [[Independent Expenditure]] - [[Texas PAC]] — the vendor-caution precedent, at scale - [[MAGA Inc]] — Bulldog Compliance, the retracted "network" reading - [[Citizens United v. FEC]] · [[Federal Election Commission]] - [[2026 Midterms Hub]] · [[2026 Senate Races Hub]]