The family of a broadcast television company that has supported Thiru Vignarajah for political office used a super PAC to provide him with hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra support in his losing bid to become Baltimore’s next state’s attorney, new campaign disclosures show.
Four members of the Smith family, who are associated with Hunt Valley-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, were joined by Orioles chairman and CEO John Angelos and a lawyer in donating a combined $220,000 to a group that spent the money on ads promoting Vignarajah just before he lost the July primary to Ivan Bates.
Sinclair, which operates WBFF-TV, known as Fox 45 in Baltimore, as well as nearly 200 other stations across the country, is a frequent presence in Baltimore politics.
Its executive chairman, David Smith, almost entirely funded a group that recently gathered signatures attempting to get two ballot questions in front of city voters this fall — one that would have established recall elections for city politicians and another that would impose two-term limits for the mayor, council members and comptroller. Only the term-limit effort was successful.
A new campaign report filed Tuesday revealed David Smith’s children, who are adults, also were aggressively involved in this year’s primary.
Blake Smith, Devon Smith and Jacqueline Smith each donated the maximum $6,000 to Vignarajah earlier this year in his bid to unseat two-term Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.
But in July, they and another sibling, Matthew Smith, each donated $50,000 to A Safer, Stronger Baltimore PAC, a group originally launched to help Vignarajah in his failed bid for Baltimore mayor in 2020 — a race in which the Smiths also supported him.
The PAC’s spending was disclosed immediately in July. Three disclosures filed in the days before the primary indicated it spent $227,000 on television ads opposing Bates in those final days of the race. Two other disclosures showed it spent another $6,250 to support Vignarajah earlier this year.
At least $69,000 of the spending went to ads on Fox 45, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Communications Commission.
But the source of that funding was opaque.
As an “independent expenditure” group that campaigns to support candidates without coordination with the candidates themselves, the PAC only disclosed its spending earlier. The latest filing Tuesday required the group to disclose both sides, revealing who was behind the anti-Bates ads.
Beyond the Smiths’ donations, Angelos donated $10,000. So did Terry Giles, a Houston-based lawyer involved in Republican Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential campaign. The dates of all the donations are between July 8 and July 18, which was after the last regularly required campaign finance disclosure deadline July 4.
The outside spending likely was intended to buoy Vignarajah, who raised a hefty $601,000 after entering the race in mid-March but tapered off his fundraising in the final six weeks of the primary, raising about $27,000 in that time.
Just days before the July 19 primary, he poured $40,000 of his own money into his campaign account, the latest report filed Tuesday shows.
In the final two weeks of the race, Vignarajah spent nearly $259,000 on television and online ads after already spending $335,500 on such ads in June.
By Aug. 23, his campaign account had a balance of $68,413 with $200,000 in debt owed to himself from years of putting his own money into it.
Bates, who also partially self-funded his campaign with $128,000 of his own money, also saw a last-minute influx described as a $100,000 loan, not from himself, but from a trust that has the same address as Continental Realty Corp. in Baltimore. The corporation’s co-chairman, real estate entrepreneur Jack A. Luetkemeyer, previously lent money to Bates, including about $14,800 in 2021, Bate’s campaign records show.
Bates also raised about $48,000 from donors and other political groups in the final two weeks of the race after raising more than $500,000 earlier in the year, records show.
Like Vignarajah, Bates spent most of his money on television and other media-related ads such as online and radio spots — spending $286,000 just before the primary and another $236,000 in the weeks leading up to early voting, the records show.
Entering the general election in which he is expected to win handily and succeed Mosby, Bates had $57,543 left in his account as of Aug. 23, with $242,816 in debts.
Without the same kind of financial backing as her opponents while she sought a third term under federal indictment, Mosby spent less and almost down to the last penny before her primary loss, her latest report shows.
Her most significant voter outreach spending in the race came in the final weeks as she poured nearly $144,000 into television and online ads, video production and robocalls.
After raising about $106,000 and spending almost $265,000 total since early June, she had just under $13,000 left in her campaign as of Aug. 23.
