Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Lippman. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Eli The White House-blessed dark money group "Building Back Together" brought in about $41 million last year and spent about $28 million of it on advertising. That's according to a new 2021 tax filing obtained by West Wing Playbook, which also shows which political consulting firms benefited from BBT's haul during the first two years of JOE BIDEN's presidency. The big winner was GMMB, the Democratic firm that helped lead Biden's digital advertising during the 2020 general election. It received $14.8 million from BBT in 2021, according to the filing. The other main beneficiaries of BBT were Sage Media ($4.18 million), Precision Strategies ($3.7 million), 50+1 Strategies ($2.4 million), and Solidarity Strategies ($989k). About $291,000 went to fundraising firms. The tax filing underscores the degree to which anonymous money (BBT did not publicly disclose its donors) is fueling Biden's political ecosystem, even as the president himself calls for greater transparency in campaign financing. But it also reveals the extent to which the 501(c)(4) advocacy largely focused on paid advertising rather than grassroots organizing. While BBT hired DANIELLE MELFI, a Democrat with extensive grassroots field experience, to lead the organization, less than 2 percent of their 2021 expenditures were grants to grassroots groups that year. With the 2022 election over, the future of Building Back Together is unclear. Biden officials and allies are still mulling what role the group will play — if any — in the next election cycle. Unlike the Obama-era outside group Organizing for America, BBT was not set up as a re-election campaign in waiting. In fact, this very week, Building Back Together canceled the surrogates call it regularly hosts. RACHEL IRWIN, a BBT spokesperson, said the group deferred to the Democratic National Committee, which held a call of its own in light of Donald Trump's campaign announcement on Tuesday night. Another hint that BBT may be winding down came from a GMMB spokesperson, who said the firm had not done any ad buys for the nonprofit in the last few months. Irwin said the group had placed ad buys within the last few months, just not with GMMB. Still, BBT said it spent more on advertising in 2021 than it did in 2022. In 2021, BBT provided grants to other progressive groups but its biggest transfer went to Future Forward USA Action, another nonprofit left-leaning dark money group. That grant — $1.25 million — was more than double all the 2021 grants for grassroots groups combined. Irwin maintained that the tax filing did not represent a complete picture of the group's work and that the payments to consulting firms included the costs of the ad buys those firms made. Indeed, the GMMB spokesperson said that the vast majority of the $14.8 million in 2021 went to ad buys. BBT's mission is to communicate the president's agenda to the public and is one of the top paid media spenders, Irwin said. BBT has worked closely with partners on the ground, she maintained. "As far as the future of BBT, we're incredibly proud of the work we've done since our inception in 2021 to help pass the Biden-Harris agenda and communicate about the President's historic legislative accomplishments, and we will continue to support the President's policy agenda and uplift the positive impacts of these policies with the American people," Irwin said in an emailed statement. Officials at Sage Media, 50+1 Strategies, and Precision did not return requests for comment. White House deputy chief of staff JEN O'MALLEY DILLON co-founded Precision Strategies, which also produced the 2020 Democratic National Convention, but she has since divested her stake and left the firm during the 2020 campaign. Solidarity Strategies is a D.C. consulting firm founded by CHUCK ROCHA, a former adviser to BERNIE SANDERS ' presidential campaign. In a statement, Rocha said the firm produced and placed English and Spanish digital and radio ads to reach Latino audiences. He also said he worked on the "Latino Always On" initiative, a Building Back Together program focused on Latino media outreach. "I'm proud that my firm, Solidarity Strategies, had the opportunity to work with Building Back Together from day one to communicate with Latino audiences across the country about President Biden's policy accomplishments and the historic impact they have had on the Latino community," he said. MESSAGE US — Are you a BBT VENDOR? We want to hear from you! And we'll keep you anonymous. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com .
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