Joe Wiederien was an unlikely candidate to challenge a Republican congressman in one of the most competitive districts in the country.
Wiederien, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, was a registered Republican until a few months ago when he suffered a severe stroke that left him unable to drive and a felony conviction that prevented him from voting for some time.
But he arrived at the Iowa Capitol last month with far more than the 1,726 petition signatures needed to qualify for the ballot as a conservative candidate to replace one-term Republican Rep. Zach Nunn.
Similar incidents are happening across the country.
Over the past year, a group called Run Patriots Project has been recruiting Trump supporters to run as independents in battleground districts where they could flip votes from Republicans. In addition to the two Iowa districts, the group has also recruited candidates in Nebraska, Montana, Virginia and Minnesota. All six candidates described themselves as retired, disabled or both.
The group’s activities offer few clues about its operations, funding or motivations, but interviews, text messages, emails, business reports and other documents reviewed by The Associated Press show it has spent billions of dollars, some of which can be traced back to the Democratic Party.
Dirty tricks are as old as American elections, but this year’s efforts could have significant implications for the battle for control of Congress that is expected to be decided by a handful of elections.
“I thought it would be nice to be in Congress and work with President Trump,” Mr. Wiederien, 54, recalled in an interview outside the VA hospital in Des Moines, where he was recovering from bleeding incisions in his head from previous brain surgery. “Now it seems like a dirty ploy.”
Mr. Weiderien withdrew from the race last month after it became clear he had been encouraged to run. Like the other candidates, his story began on Facebook, where the Patriots Run Project ran a series of pro-Trump pages that used apocalyptic rhetoric to attack establishment politicians in both parties and ran ads encouraging conservatives to run in November.
Once recruited, they communicated with a small number of operatives via text message, email and phone. Direct contact was limited. Run-Patriot Project advised them on what paperwork to fill out and how to submit the required paperwork.
In at least three precincts, petition signatures for ballot eligibility were circulated by a Nevada firm that works closely with Democratic consulting firm Saul Strategies, according to text messages, draft contracts and documents from the firm’s co-founders. In Iowa, another Democratic firm ran a poll to test the attacks on Nunn and present Wiederien as a true conservative.
Nunn on Monday called the effort a plot to “steal the election.”
“It infuriates me to see people preying on hard-working Iowans and defrauding voters,” he said.
Despite the Democrats’ corporate ties, little documentation remains to determine who is overseeing the effort.
Patriots Run Project is not a registered corporation in the United States, is not registered as a nonprofit with the IRS, and has not filed paperwork to form a political committee with the Federal Election Commission. The only concrete identifying information listed on the organization’s website is a post office box inside a UPS store in Washington, DC.
Messages left at email addresses and phone numbers for the group’s operatives went unanswered.
Jason Torchinsky, a prominent Republican election lawyer and former Justice Department official, said investigators should be concerned. “There could be a wide range of federal and state criminal violations,” he said.
In Iowa, it is a crime to defraud or deprive voters of a “fair and fairly conducted election process,” and in Virginia, “conspiracy against the rights of citizens” is a felony.
Thomas Bowman, a 71-year-old disabled kidney transplant survivor, said he believed he was likely recruited to run against Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig to split the conservative vote and help Craig get re-elected in her suburban Minneapolis district. But the self-described constitutional conservative expressed gratitude for the unpaid help gathering signatures.
“They put me on the ballot,” Bowman said, “and if I had to do it all on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
In Montana, Dennis Hayes was recruited by the Libertarian Party to run against Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who said the group found donors who paid $1,740 for his candidacy filing.
Robert Reed, a widowed retiree running against Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans in southeastern Virginia, said he was contacted by the Patriots Run Project after posting his opinion on Facebook. Reed’s only in-person encounter was when a man arrived at his home in a Mercedes SUV to deliver a completed petition form.
In Nebraska, Army veteran and Trump supporter Gary Berra said he was asked to run as an independent against Republican Rep. Don Bacon, whose district includes Omaha and is the state’s most battleground district. Plans were quickly changed last month when he was informed he had not gathered enough signatures to qualify.
In Iowa, the group recruited longtime Republican activist Stephanie Jones to run as an independent against Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, 20. Jones said the group paid to gather signatures for her but ran out of money.
Wiederien wants to investigate the Patriots Run project.
The group convinced Wiederien to switch political affiliations from Republican to Independent to qualify, assured him his 2013 felony conviction would not disqualify him, and arranged for a company to collect signatures throughout the district.
The signatures were collected by Common Sense America, a Nevada limited liability company formed in February. A Colorado corporate disclosure form, which requires signature gatherers to register, lists the phone number of a co-founder of Democratic consulting firm Saul Strategies.
“We work very closely with Common Sense America,” said co-founder G. Cohen-Sanchez.
Last month, a pollster attacked Nunn, calling him a “runner for the one-party elite,” while portraying Wiederien as a pro-Trump conservative in the race.
A spokesman for Dynata, the company that ran the poll, said its client was Patinkin Research and that the company has “helped dozens of Democratic candidates win elections.”
When it was time to submit his petition, Wiederien was driven by a Patriots Run Project operative to Des Moines, where he met a man in an office near the Capitol. The man handed him a binder full of papers and signatures. All Wiederien had to do was sign the papers.
Shortly thereafter, he withdrew his name from the ballot after being persuaded by Republicans that he had been misled into thinking the Patriots Run Project was endorsed by Trump.
Foley and Slodisko contributed to The Associated Press. Slodisko reported from Washington.
