Patagonia’s Ties To A Dark-money Operation Bankrolling Democratic Candidates

The newest front in dark money’s war on election transparency shares an address with Patagonia, according to a new complaint.

The outdoor clothing company known for its high quality, high prices, and liberal leanings may have funded illegal campaign donations over the summer, a watchdog group alleged this month.

The Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that a mysterious corporation made $1.4 million in what appear to be illegal “straw donor” contributions to funds supporting Democratic candidates within days of its creation. The ultimate source of the money was likely Patagonia, the Campaign Legal Center says.

The complaint is the second of its kind this year involving Patagonia, raising fresh questions about whether left-leaning donors at ideological odds with “dark-money” groups on the right should resort to similar tactics.

For Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, the donations also highlight the need for swifter action from the FEC, which has yet to take action against another alleged “straw donor” that made donations to a right-wing Senate candidate two years ago.

“The amounts of money involved, the brazenness of setting up a company and making a seven-figure contribution almost immediately — it shows that this tactic is alive and well, and I don’t see any reason for that to change unless the FEC starts enforcing the law and dishing out penalties,” Ghosh said.

Ties to Patagonia

Neither Patagonia nor the entity in question, Save our Home Planet Action, responded to requests for comment. But to hear the Campaign Legal Center tell it, linking them together was a straightforward detective job.

Save Our Home Planet Action was incorporated in Delaware on August 6. Within 10 days, it began doling out money to campaign organizations: $450,000 to the Senate Democratic campaign fund, $425,000 to the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, $450,000 to House Democrats, $50,000 to a super PAC supporting Kamala Harris, and $50,000 to a committee supporting Democrats in state races.

Why would a newborn company go on a campaign spending spree? Ghosh alleges that the answer lies in a web of evidence tying Save Our Home Planet Action to Patagonia.

Save Our Home Planet Action uses the same mailing address, and its name also matches a slogan that Patagonia has used in marketing materials and on clothing for years.

“These circumstances plainly suggest that Patagonia and/or one or more of its owners, executives, or employees may, in fact, be the unknown true source(s) that provided sufficient funds to SOHPA for it to contribute over $1.4 million while concealing their identities,” the Campaign Legal Center complaint states.

Corporate filings in California unearthed by The Intercept indicate that Save Our Home Planet Action has the same CEO, Greg Curtis, as the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit organization that owns 98 percent of Patagonia. Curtis, who did not respond to a request for comment, previously worked as corporate counsel for Patagonia.

The Holdfast Collective was created under the direction of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard in 2022. Using what the trade publication Inside Philanthropy called “a complex and unconventional structure,” Holdfast and a network of affiliated trusts redistribute money earned from Patagonia sales to environmental causes.

“That might work for environmental causes, but it undermines the transparency the law requires for money spent influencing elections.”

The California filings reinforce the theory that Patagonia is the ultimate source of the contributions, Ghosh said.

“Curtis’s involvement here, alongside his role as the CEO of the Holdfast Collective, is interesting, since it suggests that SOHPA was designed to operate in a similar vein — namely, the distribution of corporate profits to finance philanthropy. That might work for environmental causes, but it undermines the transparency the law requires for money spent influencing elections,” Ghosh said.

Steering corporate profits to super PACs and campaign committees aimed at boosting environmental causes would not run afoul of federal laws. The nonprofits associated with Patagonia, which are known as social welfare groups and are legally allowed to make campaign donations, have disclosed spending money on conservation projects and even on a Democratic super PAC before.

But using what are known as “straw donors” — people or corporations designed to mask the original source of funds — to make campaign contributions would be illegal. Such entities often argue that they are legitimate corporations that just happened to have enough money to make big donations, Ghosh said.

According to the complaint, there is “reason to believe” that “unidentified person(s)” violated straw donor laws, and that Save Our Home Planet Action did the same when it “knowingly permitted its name to be used to effect contributions of one or more other persons in its own name.”

The complaint says the FEC “should find reason to believe” that straw donor laws were violated “and conduct an immediate investigation” under its enforcement powers.

A Growing Pattern?

In its complaint with the FEC, the Campaign Legal Center notes that Save Our Home Planet Action does not appear to maintain a website or a social media presence, leaving the reason for its creation something of a mystery.

Patagonia has long worn its politics on its sleeves — and once on a tag stitched into the rear of a pair of shorts, which read “Vote the assholes out.”

In the case of Save Our Home Planet Action, however, much of the money went to committees such as the House Majority PAC and the Senate Majority PAC, which supported some candidates with views at odds with the environmental movement, such as supporters of fracking in Pennsylvania and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit that owns most of Patagonia, the Holdfast Collective, was already under scrutiny in the form of a February FEC complaint from the conservative group Americans for Public Trust for allegedly misidentifying the source of political contributions. Patagonia has previously stated that the errors in that case could have been on the part of the entities that received the money. Caitlin Sutherland, that group’s executive director, told The Intercept she was still waiting for a determination from the FEC.

The election commission, which is supposed to act as watchdog for violations of campaign finance law, is deadlocked along partisan lines and notoriously reluctant to take action.

These days, many of the biggest donations to federal campaigns are routed through what are known as “dark-money” groups, which take advantage of the federal tax code to wrap their donors in anonymity.

Although liberals have been far more critical of developments in campaign finance that opened the spigots on corporate spending, there are dark-money groups operating from both the left and the right to influence American politics, ranging from the Koch brothers network to George Soros.

“These corporate entities and other ‘social welfare’ nonprofits have extremely smart lawyers to figure out how to game the system,” said Aaron Scherb, the senior director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, a nonprofit group pushing for more disclosure. “That, combined with an FEC in which half the commissioners refuse to enforce disclosure laws, ends up yielding a very unhealthy system in which voters can’t fully understand in many cases who is trying to influence their votes.”

While the Campaign Legal Center believes alleged “straw donor” groups should be investigated because the donations appear to be illegal, the FEC has been slow to crack down on them. Two years ago, Ghosh’s group filed an FEC complaint against an alleged straw donor called the Leadership Action Fund, which sent more than $600,000 to a Republican Senate candidate in Oklahoma.

The Campaign Legal Center is still waiting on a response, Ghosh said. Increasingly, he believes, corporations are making a “risk calculation” of whether to follow the law or to violate it.

“There’s the upside, in their mind, of not disclosing their political spending, and then the potential downside, which is really quite minimal. These schemes in most cases will either go undetected or unpunished,” he said.

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