Weeks after lawmakers passed new regulations on the sports-betting industry, a Colorado political spending committee funded by DraftKings and FanDuel has dropped more than $1.1 million to influence several statehouse primary campaigns.
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The bulk of the money — nearly $900,000 — has been spent on Democratic primaries, with a smaller amount spent in Republican races. The Democratic spending has flowed from American Future, a vaguely named state-level political action committee that has reported just one donor — a federal PAC of the same name that, in turn, has been bankrolled exclusively by Win for America. That super PAC has received $43 million in donations from DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics.
Colorado’s gamble on sports betting
Without federal campaign finance reports, it would otherwise be unclear which interests were paying for the mailers and advertisements distributed under American Future’s name.
The ads don’t mention gambling or the candidates’ positions on the practice, and the federal PAC’s website contains only vague allusions to Democratic-adjacent policy positions. The state PAC’s description of itself provides no clarity, either, detailing its purpose as “supporting Colorado state legislative candidates who focus on pressing issues facing everyday people.”
The industry’s campaign spending comes barely a month after state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 131, a first-in-the-nation law that was sharply opposed by the sports-betting industry. The measure, signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis on June 1, limits the number of daily deposits a gambler can make and bans push notifications intended to solicit bets or deposits, among other new regulations.
The spending has not targeted the bill’s sponsors, none of whom face primary opponents later this month, and has even supported some lawmakers who voted in favor of SB-131. The companies’ PACs have donated to candidates across the political spectrum, including in some races with a clear favorite.
Other groups have been spending big in statehouse primaries this year, with much of it continuing a battle to tilt the Democratic majority in a more moderate or progressive direction.
The sports-betting-aligned state PAC reported nearly $215,000 in donations from its parent group as of June 15, along with $282,000 in spending. But in the weeks since then, it’s posted hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional spending, bringing its total spending in Democratic primaries to more than $878,000 as of Monday afternoon, according to campaign finance records.
Final totals won’t be clear until after June 30, which is primary election day.
On the GOP side, American Conservative Fund, which has also received money exclusively from Win for America, has donated $250,000 to a state-level PAC supporting Republican statehouse candidates. That PAC is funded by other outside business groups as well.
Like its Democratic counterpart, American Conservative Fund’s website lists several Republican-sounding buzzwords among its priorities, with no additional information about its backers.
Messages sent to the three gambling companies were not returned Monday. Nathan Click, a spokesman for American Future, referred The Post to a previous statement, first sent to Axios in April. In that statement, the PAC said it was seeking candidates “who will thoughtfully approach regulation and ensure legal sports betting can continue to support communities through billions in tax revenue and jobs across America.”
But the ubiquitous spread of sports betting has raised significant regulator interest amid growing fears about problem gambling, The Denver Post reported in a recent special series.
Since Colorado voters legalized the practice in 2020, residents have wagered more than $30.6 billion on games and athletes. More than $154 million has been collected in taxes, much of it for water-focused preservation and conservation projects. At the same time, more than 45,000 people in the state have called a hotline set up for gamblers who may need help, and 1,245 are now on the self-exclusion list that bans them from betting for at least five years.
Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who sponsored SB-131 earlier this year, said he wasn’t surprised the industry was getting directly involved in campaigns. He said the industry did not like SB-131 and had been active in several other states. Axios reported that the federal PAC planned to spend money in as many as 15 states by November
Ball said he’d heard that lawmakers backing sports-betting regulations in other states had faced threats that the industry would back their primary opponents. But none of SB-131’s sponsors has a primary challenger this year, and the Democratic primaries in which the companies’ PACs are participating are in mostly safe blue seats located in the metro Denver.
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“I’m not surprised that they’re spending this directly,” Ball said — but how they’re spending has surprised him.
“Some of it is a little hard to read,” he said. “I don’t understand why they are spending in the races they are spending in, because they are spending in races across the political spectrum.”
On the Democratic side, the money has been spent on roughly a dozen primary candidates, most of them running for soon-to-be-empty seats.
The PAC cannot coordinate with candidates’ campaigns, and it’s unclear why the gambling PAC chose the candidates that it did. While several Democratic hopefuls are moderates and have been backed by other outside business interests, at least two are progressives endorsed by the left-wing Working Families Party. Some are in contentious races, while others are comfortable favorites.
The two Working Families Party-endorsed candidates, Justine Sandoval and Gena Ozols, have both released statements on social media noting that the mailers came from an outside group that wasn’t authorized by their campaigns.
Sandoval, who is running for a Denver-based House seat and has received more support from the sports-betting PAC than nearly any other candidate, said she was unfamiliar with the group’s backers until recently.
Her campaign has raised $25,000 — more than $100,000 less than what American Future has spent to support her from the outside against primary opponent Sterling Thomas Simms. Sandoval said she was generally opposed to unrestricted outside spending.
She met with DraftKing’s lobbyist in March or April, and the lobbyist was “curious” about her position on sports betting. She wasn’t opposed to gambling, she said, but was concerned about it being unregulated. She didn’t hear anything else from the group.
Then the mailers and advertisements started flowing.
Sandoval figured that the group was backing her because its leaders thought she’d win. She also noted that the district she hopes to represent, House District 5, will soon include all three of Denver’s largest sports venues if the Broncos build a stadium in Burnham Yard.
“So, there’s some kind of investment thought there,” she said.
Ball speculated that the spending was a “goodwill” donation in support of candidates who are either likely to win in contested races or don’t have a serious primary challenge at all. Three of the Democratic candidates that American Future is supporting are incumbents seeking a return to office. While they each have primary challengers, all are expected to comfortably win their contests later this month. And all three voted in favor of SB-131.
State Sen. Adrienne Benavidez, who has received more than $150,000 in outside support from American Future, said she wasn’t familiar with the group or its funders until informed by a reporter Monday morning. She said she’d never had contact with the PAC or the companies supporting it.
She welcomed support from anyone, she said, and was pleased that the ads had been positive support for her, rather than negative against her opponent, Alex Ryckman.
“It was totally out of the blue,” said Benavidez, who previously served in the House before earning a vacancy appointment to the Senate earlier this year. “I don’t know anything about them. The contributions coming from those companies — I was not aware until you just told me that. I’ve never had any contact with them, I know nothing.”
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