How a secretive group recruited a pro-Trump activist to play spoiler candidate in Iowa congressional race

• Stephanie Jones, a GOP activist, was targeted by the Patriots Run Project, a group aiming to recruit Donald Trump supporters to run as spoiler candidates in key swing districts against Republicans.
• Jones was asked to run as an independent in southeast Iowa’s 1st Congressional District against Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, despite not living in the district.
• The group has been accused of violating campaign finance law.
• Republicans have called out the group as unethical and possibly illegal, suggesting the effort was evidence of election interference by Democratic operatives to run spoiler candidates to siphon votes away from GOP incumbents.
• Jones believes those behind the effort were genuine, and said there’s no information to substantiate claims that Democrats were involved in the effort to recruit her to run against Miller-Meeks.

Longtime GOP activist Stephanie Jones was scrolling through Facebook when she saw a targeted ad from a group “wanting to help get Patriots elected.”

The group behind the ad, the Patriots Run Project, was looking to recruit Donald Trump supporters to run as independent candidates in key swing districts against Republicans in races that could determine which party controls the U.S. House next year — an effort that could help Democrats.

A former volunteer with the Trump campaign in 2020 and other GOP campaigns in the state, Jones said she filled out an online form “to help get patriots elected.”

Jones is a Knoxville native now living in DeSoto, about 25 minutes west of Des Moines. She said the group asked her to run as an independent in southeast Iowa’s 1st Congressional District against Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, even though Jones does not live in the district.

Federal rules don't require members of Congress to live in the district they represent, just to reside in the same state.

Jones said she called the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office to confirm that she could run for the seat, and filed paperwork in April with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) registering her principal campaign committee to run as a candidate unaffiliated with a political party in Iowa’s 1st District.

She had phone conversations over the ensuing months with operatives who identified themselves as “Will Haywood” and “Johnny Shearer.”

Jones said the group paid Common Sense America, a Nevada limited liability company, to gather nominating signatures on her behalf to get her on the ballot, unbeknown to her, but fell short. She also unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Party nomination with an operative’s encouragement.

The group also recruited Trump supporter Joe Wiederien to run against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn in Central Iowa’s 3rd District. But Wiederien later dropped out after realizing he had been duped.

The secretive group, the Patriots Run Project — and Widerien’s and Jones’ stories — were the subject of an Associated Press report that revealed the group's operatives scouted conservative candidates online and aided their efforts to qualify for the ballot to run as third-party spoiler candidates in some of the nation's most competitive congressional districts, including Iowa’s 1st District.

The AP’s reporting detailed how little is known about the group — which is not registered as a business, political committee or nonprofit organization. The group has been accused of violating campaign finance law in a complaint filed Tuesday with the FEC.

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The AP story provoked a swift reaction from Republicans. House Speaker Mike Johnson this week called out Patriots Run Project as a shady group resorting to unethical — if not illegal — tactics to manipulate Iowans to run as potential spoiler candidates to siphon votes away from Nunn and Miller-Meeks.

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Johnson, Nunn and Miller-Meeks have suggested the effort was evidence of election interference by Democratic operatives. Patriots Run Project allegedly had ties to several Democratic consulting firms, according to the AP’s reporting.

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Miller-Meeks, in a statement, accused Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan, a former state lawmaker and University of Iowa law professor, “of leaning on a desperate — and possibly illegal — effort by Democrat operatives to buy her a seat in Congress.”

Bohannan’s campaign manager said it had no involvement or knowledge of the effort. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats’, and House Majority PAC, the Democrats’ congressional super PAC, also told the Associated Press they had no knowledge or involvement.

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“I don’t’ think there’s any information that substantiates that claim,” Jones said of Democrats being involved in the effort to recruit her to run against Miller-Meeks. “I don’t know who the funder was (behind the effort to gather signatures to place her on the ballot) — Republican, Democrat or independent. I have no idea.”

Jones said she believes those behind the effort were genuine, and does not believe she was being manipulated or duped into siphoning votes away from Miller-Meeks to help Democrats.

“I didn’t get any impression like that at all,” she told The Gazette.

Jones said she responded to the Patriots Run Project because she viewed Miller-Meeks as a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, and part of the “uniparty.”

Jones and the far-right claim there are not two major parties in the United States, but one conglomeration of politicians in Washington who are ignoring the desires of the American people. The term disparagingly links supposedly apostate Republicans to Democrats across the aisle, despite evidence that the parties in Congress have steadily drifted further apart ideologically.

Jones, who ran for Iowa State Senate District 14 in the 2012 election and lost to Amy Sinclair in the Republican primary, in part cited Miller-Meeks’ support of an independent, bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to support her claim.

Miller-Meeks was one of just 35 House Republicans to vote with Democrats to form a review committee. The effort ultimately failed in the Senate. The measure would have set up a 10-member commission evenly split between Democrats and Republicans and modeled after the panel that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Miller-Meeks has said she voted for a bipartisan commission to support the Capitol police officers who defended the building and those inside as an angry mob of pro-Trump supporters breached the halls of Congress.

“All of the people that were on that committee were literally against Trump,” Jones said of the House select committee that was ultimately formed to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Miller-Meeks, however, voted against the resolution establishing the select committee, which featured seven Democrats and only two Republicans. Asked, by The Des Moines Register in 2022 of her appraisal of the work of the Jan. 6 select committee, she said she was “not in favor of a commission that has only a singular focus.”

Jones said she sought to challenge Miller-Meeks to be the true conservative patriot to represent Iowa’s 1st District.

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“There are people within the party who don’t like her,” Jones said. “ … There were multiple individuals as I was gathering signatures that don’t like either option that’s available and want more options on the ballot.”

Miller-Meeks fended off a primary challenge in June, defeating an underfunded candidate with little name recognition outside of the Quad Cities. A passionate right-flank campaign and low turnout helped propel Davenport prayer breakfast organizer David Pautsch to within a surprisingly close 12 percentage points of the GOP incumbent.

Jones said she wanted to “cure” what she sees as government corruption in Congress.

“I want to stop letting our country get sold out to corporate America, because Americans are hurting right now,” Jones said. “We have middle-class Americans who are struggling (from) more debt (and) more stress.”

A couple weeks after being told the group was working to gather signatures to get her on the ballot, Jones said she called “Will” to get an update and was told all the group’s “pages on Facebook got nuked.”

“All their pages got removed, and now they don’t have a funding source to collect signatures for me,” Jones said. “I honestly, through the whole thing, I didn’t think I was being ticked. … From my impression of what we were doing was to actually win to help take our country back.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com