Campaign finance rules, especially those covering 'Dark Money' are almost non-existent in the United States, so when news that someone was offering to pay influencers $1500 a post for attacking the former journalist for left-leaning Media Matters, Kat Abughazaleh, it was assumed it was a national organization with deep pockets, such as AIPAC. Then there was some possibility that it could have been through her main opponent, Daniel Biss. That was denied by the Biss campaign. As of this writing, we still don't know who was behind it. The special election to replace retiring Jan Schakowsky is on March 17.
Source: MS Now
A week out from a crowded and contentious Democratic primary in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, Amanda Informed, an online influencer in Florida received an email with an offer: one negative post about candidate Kat Abughazaleh on Instagram and TikTok, for $1,500.
The request, which came from a secretive political organization called Democracy Unmuted, was forwarded to her by Matt Anthes, founder of Advocators, a digital marketing agency focused on politics and advocacy through micro-influencers.
The job offer, reviewed by MS NOW, came with a brief explaining how the group wanted Amanda — who declined to give her real name, citing privacy concerns — to post for her roughly 100,000 followers. Democracy Unmuted explained that it wanted creators to “engage voters” and encouraged them “to look past viral personalities and ask real questions about who is running and why.”
MS Now then goes into a detailed account of what they found that's interesting, but the gist of which is above.
Democracy Unmuted’s website, registered two weeks ago, seems to be a slapdash effort at a political advocacy website. It has no “about” section and no contact information.
One interesting aspect is that Democracy Unmuted has since updated their slapdash website to attack the reporter for MS Now, because she was once on a podcast with Chris Hayes in 2020.
And here's one of the creators who took them up on their money, but deleted his post after it came out what he was doing.
Here's one creator, The Woke Ginger, reciting specific attacks from the brief. He urges followers “to look past viral personalities and ask who is running and why," matching a suggested quote. It's not clear if he was offered payment for his post but he took it down after being… pic.twitter.com/a8UENMFInD
— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) March 13, 2026
This joker, with about a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, is a Missouri creator named Justin Kralemann. He later apologized, saying, “I want to sincerely apologize to Kat Abughazaleh and wish her the best of luck in the upcoming primaries.”
