The Grift That Tied the Room Together

Man. They raised a billion dollars, ran the ads, lost the election, and somehow ended up in debt. The consulting firm and the ad-buying firm? Same building. Same boss. Different invoice.

Man.

Let me walk you through something. And I want you to stay with me here because there are a few moving parts, but I promise it’s not complicated. It is, in fact, extremely simple. That’s kind of the whole problem.

There is a political consulting firm called GMMB. They make the ads. They advise the candidate. They have been the beating heart of Democratic presidential campaigns going back to Bill Clinton in 1992. Obama. Biden. They are, by any measure, the most powerful firm in Democratic politics.

There is also a firm called Waterfront Strategies. Waterfront buys the airtime for the super PACs that support the Democratic candidates. In 2024 they handled $858 million in ad placements. The pro-Harris super PAC Future Forward alone sent them $383 million.

Now here is the thing.

Waterfront Strategies was founded by the principals of GMMB. They share the same Washington D.C. address. They share the same managing partner. They share board members. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, one GMMB employee signed advertising purchase forms for GMMB, Waterfront Strategies, and a third affiliated entity called Great American Media.

Same guy. Three letterheads. Multiple checks. Plenty of sea-side second (and third) homes.

GMMB tells the campaign what ads to make. GMMB makes the ads. Waterfront — which is GMMB with a different name on the door — buys the airtime for the super PAC running the same ads in support of the same campaign.

This is legal. There is a “firewall.” The firewall is that the people on each side of the firewall are not supposed to talk to each other. The Campaign Legal Center describes this constraint as, and I am quoting a senior counsel here, “pretty ridiculous and modest.”

So that’s the structure. Now let’s talk about the math.

Kamala Harris raised over one billion dollars. It was a historic fundraising achievement. They had more money than they knew what to do with. They ran ads in places Democrats hadn’t seriously contested in years. They bought time on the Sphere in Las Vegas. They targeted, per one firm’s Snapchat data, demographic segments including “Beauty Mavens,” “Reality TV Fans,” and “Battle Combat & FPS Gamers.”

When it was over, the campaign was in debt.

A billion dollars in. Debt out. The remaining invoices are expected to be passed along to the DNC, which is currently trying to rebuild a shattered party. So the consultants got paid, the super PACs got billed, the ads ran, Harris lost, and the party is now holding the tab.

Here is the other thing worth knowing. Some of these same Democratic consulting firms have, in between election cycles, taken money from interests actively working against Democratic policy priorities. One major firm was paid nearly $800,000 by a group called the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future — a nonprofit specifically formed to kill Medicare for All and resist Democratic universal healthcare efforts.

So to recap: the consultants advise Democratic campaigns. They or their affiliates buy the ads for the super PACs supporting Democratic campaigns. They sometimes also work for people trying to prevent Democratic policies from becoming law. And because FEC filings frequently lump media production costs together with ad placement costs, it is functionally impossible to see how much they are pocketing in commissions off the buys.

The Democrats spent decades complaining that Citizens United would corrupt politics. They were right. They just didn’t mention that some of the corruption would flow directly to the firms on their own speed dial.

Nobody got fired. The 2026 contracts are already being signed.

The Dude abides. The consultants invoice.