Red-boxing is a tactic used by American political candidates to coordinate with their political action committees (PACs) in a way that circumvents campaign finance laws. Political campaigns place statements or requests on public campaign websites which are then used by PACs to support the candidate. The name for the practice comes from the red-colored box that often surrounds the instructions for PACs on campaign websites.[1][2] It is used by both major American parties, but was noted for its use by Democratic candidates in primary elections in 2022.[3]
Campaigns will use boxes to focus PACs' attention on certain aspects of opposing candidates' biographies, including past controversies. They often include detailed instructions on what type of ad to use, what areas to target, and what age, gender, or ethnicity to appeal to.[1] Red boxes are most often located in the "Media Resources" or "Media Center" sections of a campaign website where political operatives know to look.[1] Instructions sometimes use terms like "hear" for radio ad requests, "read" for direct mail, "see" for television, and "see while on the go" for digital ads.[1]
I learned about this technique because my former Congressman, Joe Morelle, did it on his website, and he’s been the beneficiary of mailers sent by a pro-AI superPAC. Here are all the details from former reporter, now County Legislator Rachel Barnhart. Here’s what a red-boxed page looks like on Morelle’s campaign site.
The thing here is that Morelle didn’t need to put a red box on his website. He’s facing a primary challenge from Robin Wilt, who’s kind of a perennial candidate around Rochester. She’s progressive. I believe that she was on the town board of Brighton, a Rochester suburb, for a while, though that’s not in her campaign bio. She’s raised $40k compared to $1.5 million for Morelle. There’s another candidate running, Sherita Traywick, and she’s raised around $12k. I don’t know anything about her.
Morelle put the red box on his site and is now beholden to PAC money out of fear, convenience or just plain old inertia. This kind of casual corruption is so common that it probably would have gone unremarked if Barnhart hadn’t picked up on it. Local media in the Rochester market is pretty moribund. Morelle is in a D+10 district in a bad year for Republicans. His opponent in the general is someone with zero political experience that I can find. She’s raised $26K. Republicans clearly have written off NY-25 as a no-hoper, correctly.
So now you know what red boxing is, and why I hope that Joe Morelle gets a real primary challenger next cycle.
(Since I have some time at the airport I’m pre-writing posts. This post was written on Thursday.)
