By Erica C. Barnett

A group called Washingtonians For Ethical Government filed a complaint against Let’s Go Washington and right-wing influencer Brandi Kruse on Tuesday, claiming that the conservative PAC failed to disclose in-kind contributions from Kruse, who has spent hours advocating for LGW’s latest ballot initiatives on her podcast and spoken at their rallies as a supporter.

Let’s Go Washington, which is financed by hedge-fund investor Brian Heywood, has two initiatives on this year’s November ballot.

The first would ban trans girls from participating in children’s sports. The second would give parents the right to inspect all their children’s school records, including notes from mental health counseling sessions, among other new rights. Opponents say the latter initiative would make it dangerous for kids to confide in counselors about problems at home, reveal that they’re LGBTQ+, or ask about reproductive health care.

The second would expand the so-called “parents’ bill of rights,” a Heywood initiative the state legislature passed with some alterations last year, to give parents unfettered access to their children’s school records, including counseling and medical records that might reveal whether a student was LGBTQ+ or asked a school staffer about birth control or abortion.

The complaint centers around Kruse’s activities in favor of the initiative, which WEG says constitute contributions to the campaign that need to be reported on campaign finance reports. The group has tallied up 159 incidents in which they say Kruse engaged in “political advertising” for the initiatives, calculating their value at between $345,000 and $1.25 million based on estimated ad rates for Kruse’s podcast and the reach of her social media posts.

Pam Stuart, the spokeswoman for Washingtonians for Ethical Government, said at a press briefing Tuesday that the difference between editorial advocacy and advertising is that people get paid to advertise specific products. Kruse’s “unDivided” podcast is sponsored, in part, by Project 42, a Heywood-funded group that pays Kruse to cover certain topics.

“If I were a sign maker… [and] I were to make signs for Let’s Go Washington and give them to them, I would have to file [that as] an in-kind donation, because I’m taking the services that I normally get paid for in my daily job, and I’m donating those to influence people to vote a certain way,” Stuart said.  “As a paid online influencer, Ms. Kruse is donating her online influencing services to this particular cause.”

Unlike sign makers, some journalists do support specific issues and causes.  Stuart said Kruse is no longer a journalist, but acknowledged that deciding who counts as a journalist and who is a mere “online influencer” can be a slippery slope. PubliCola, for example, primarily produces traditional journalism, but we also have values and a point of view that’s reflected in much of our coverage; we also publish opinion pieces that are clearly labeled as such. It feels obvious that what we do is journalism, while Kruse’s activities (including her widely mocked participation in a Trump praise circle at the White House) are not. But does that make her advocacy against trans children and kids’ privacy advertising rather than editorial commentary?

Stuart said that’s for the Public Disclosure Commission to decide,. “According to the PDC, advocacy tends to become in kind donations when three things occur: The speaker or the person doing the work normally charges for that service. … the content promotes or opposes a candidate or ballot measure,” and the person doesn’t receive any payment, she said.

” I think the difference is: Is this really just her expressing an opinion, or is this really a coordinated effort with a campaign?”

Kruse has gone back and forth about whether she is a journalist or, as she put it repeatedly on X, “not a journalist.” In an email Kruse forwarded to the media on Tuesday, she accused Washingtonians for Ethical Government of attacking the First Amendment, and appeared to threaten to sue them for defamation and slander.

“I have never received any form of funds or contribution—undisclosed and unreported or otherwise—from Let’s Go Washington,” Kruse wrote. “The claim that I have violated state disclosure law is therefore false and defamatory as a factual matter, and further ignores that state law explicitly makes clear that political commentary and editorials do not constitute political advertising.”  

“Tread very carefully,” Kruse wrote.