DARK MONEY: "Virginia's George Soros" is Backing Abigail Spanberger for Governor
The commonwealth's top dark money mega-donor is quietly pouring money into committees that support the radical Democrat's bid for Virginia governor this November.
Michael Bills, a little-known mega-donor to Virginia Democrats, has poured at least $315,000 into groups that support Abigail Spanberger's campaign for governor this November, filings show.
Most of that money was funneled through an obscure but extremely well-funded committee associated with Bills, Clean Virginia. Bills' wife, Sonjia Smith, gave the Spanberger campaign another $50,000 in December.
Taken together, that makes the couple Spanberger's top non-PAC donor, second only to billionaire and fanatic NeverTrumper Reid Hoffman.
Spanberger faces Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the first female to hold that office and the first black female elected to statewide office in Virginia.
Restoration News first exposed the obscure ex-Goldman Sachs vice president and hedge fund partner ahead of Virginia's 2023 General Assembly elections, when the ironically named Clean Virginia became the top donor to Democrat Susanna Gibson—better known as the X-rated sex streamer "HotWifeExperience."
Gibson regularly live-streamed herself having sex with her husband on the platform Chaturbate, encouraging her 5,700 followers to send the couple tips (“raising money for a good cause”) in exchange for whichever sex acts the tipper desired. “I like being choked. I like being hit. I do,” she said in one video while bragging about cheating on her husband.
Clean Virginia gave her $46,000 to run for a competitive House seat in Henrico County, just outside Richmond. She narrowly lost, despite outspending her Republican opponent by $534,000.
Bills, who lives in Charlottesville, has given over $27 million to Virginia Democrats and leftist groups since 2004, making him the commonwealth's single largest individual political contributor.
(RELATED: Meet the Goldman Sachs Millionaire Bankrolling Virginia Democrats)
Also on that list: Clean Virginia Fund, which has netted $23 million of the $27 million Bills has pumped into state politics.
Clean Virginia has poured another $400,000 into the Attorney General race backing Jay Jones, a former delegate from Norfolk running against Republican incumbent Jason Miyares.
Clean Virginia was also the top donor to Jones' failed 2021 Attorney General race, gifting him $542,500.
Profits Over People
Despite its obvious partisanship, Bills' group calls itself "independent and bipartisan"—yet 45 of the 51 candidates it's endorsed for the House of Delegates this year are Democrats. In 2023, it endorsed 57 Democrats… and only one Republican.
Clean Virginia's endorsement of Spanberger claims she "has always rejected corporate PAC money" as part of her "strong stance against special interests' influence in politics."
Key word: "PAC." Besides Bills, a former vice president for Goldman Sachs, Spanberger's list of donors is dominated by corporate mega-donors:
- $350,000 from Reid Hoffman, the Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who got caught visiting Jeffrey Epstein's island and has poured millions of dollars into coloring Virginia blue;
- $127,000 from James Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft;
- $105,000 from David C. Frederick, a white shoe law firm partner representing Morgan Stanley and other major banks;
- $200,000 from Liz Simons, daughter of a billionaire hedge fund manager, and her husband Mark Heising, a private investment mogul and major donor to leftist groups through their Heising-Simons Foundation;
- $250,000 from Glen E. Tullman, a former Big Health executive and investor;
- $180,000 from Robert Hardie, a private investment firm executive;
- $150,000 from Martha Samuelson, a financial services executive;
- $140,000 from Thomas J. McInerney, president and CEO of New York investment firm Altaba
- And $127,000 from Shannon Hunt-Scott, a Silicon Valley political operate who chaired the California fundraising arm of Kamala Harris' presidential campaign and an abortion rights group.
This a list of her top donors, incidentally. And the list goes on.
It'd be more accurate to say Spanberger is the candidate of choice for special interests and corporate Big Money interests, many of whom don't even live in Virginia.
Spanberger, recall, is a former CIA agent from New Jersey who more represents the D.C. swamp than real Virginia. Her successor in Congress, Eugene Vindman, helped lead the Democrats' unconstitutional impeachment coup against President Trump over the January 6 riot. Her only experience in the private sector is working as a contractor for the government consultancy EAB in Washington, D.C., which has raked in a fortune in federal contracts.
Sears, in contrast, is an immigrant and successful electrician from Jamaica who served first in the U.S. Marine Corps and later in the Virginia House of Delegates. She was appointed to the Virginia State Board of Education, U.S. Census Bureau, and Advisory Committee on Women Veterans to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Who best represents real Virginians?
(READ MORE: Abigail Spanberger Doubles Down on Restricting Gun Rights If Elected)
