Choose Freedom Would Prefer You Not Choose The Callback Option

Two outside groups have spent about $9.5 million attacking David Hatley, the conservative independent running against Republican Marsha Blackburn for Tennessee governor. Tennessee Freedom Fund accounts for $3 million; Choose Freedom accounts for $6.5 million, according to the Tennessee Lookout.

The spending is very interested in telling Tennesseans about a candidate. Some of the people supplying it are considerably less available for introductions.

Choose Freedom’s Tennessee PAC registered on September 18, received $4.2 million that day and spent the same amount that day on ads attacking Hatley. On October 13, it received another $2.3 million and spent that exact amount, again on the same day.

Impressive service. Millions can go from arrival to public denunciation before a normal bank has finished asking whether you meant to buy a sandwich in another ZIP code.

Who supplied the money? The records lead to Choose Freedom Inc., a political nonprofit. They do not identify the individual behind the contribution. We have followed Choose Freedom to Choose Freedom, which is the financial equivalent of a forwarding address that says here, but more privately.

The Lookout emailed the PAC’s listed representative and received no response. Its reporter called the listed number and got a message saying it could not receive calls.

Could not receive calls.

A political organization capable of pushing $6.5 million worth of opinions toward the public has encountered a devastating technical obstacle in the opposite direction. The telephone has a mouth but no ears.

What a magnificent piece of campaign infrastructure. Broadcast the warning. Buy the airtime. Distribute the accusation. Then, when a journalist tries to ask who is speaking, reveal that freedom is a one-way street and the return lane is decorative landscaping.

The nonprofit’s address is registered to accounting and compliance firm Red Curve Solutions, whose clients include MAGA Inc. OpenSecrets’ Brendan Glavin told the Lookout that the arrangement looks more like distancing the spending from partisan activity than merely hiding a donor. He said Choose Freedom wants its attacks viewed as a legitimate issue rather than partisan meddling.

So the political message would like to enter wearing a visitor badge that says Not Political. Just a concerned $6.5 million that happened to be passing through Tennessee and noticed a gubernatorial candidate it strongly disliked.

Please don't make this awkward by asking who invited it.

Hatley is not an underfunded innocent being introduced to campaign advertising for the first time. He has loaned nearly $12 million to his own campaign. His campaign reported $3.9 million on hand with a week remaining, compared with Blackburn’s $1 million. Outside spending against him helps a Republican frontrunner facing a well-financed rival courting conservative voters. Blackburn’s campaign did not respond to the Lookout’s questions either.

Fine. Powerful people can argue about another powerful person. That is an election. But the sheer choreography of the availability here: the money is ready, the ad is ready, the warning voice is ready, and the contact number has chosen a contemplative life far from human interruption.

I'm not asking the fucking telephone to disclose its childhood. Just receive a call. Perform the single activity for which we have maintained telephones as a category of object.

Choose Freedom can apparently spend millions telling you who someone is.

To find out who is telling you, please enjoy the silence after the tone.