Politics

ActBlue CEO: We shouldn’t have stayed so quiet amid GOP salvos

Published

1 year ago

May 21, 2025

The largest Democratic fundraising platform has found itself in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs. And its CEO is coming out against the “authoritarian” tactic — while acknowledging ActBlue needs to “build some new muscles” to fight back.

Trump signed a presidential memorandum last month ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the use of online fundraising by foreign actors to make so-called “straw donations” influencing American elections. ActBlue, by far the largest online fundraising platform for Democrats, was the only one named in the memo.

“We almost were in a, ‘This can’t be real, this can’t be serious. These are not serious people, these are not serious allegations,’” Regina Wallace-Jones, ActBlue’s CEO, said in an interview with Blue Light News. “And instead held on for a very long time to our traditional posture.”

That posture was to stay out of the spotlight even as the platform has faced increased scrutiny, and accusations of fraud, from Republicans for years. House Republicans have been investigating ActBlue over a range of fundraising practices since 2023, and that probe remains ongoing. An interim report released by the committee weeks before Trump’s memorandum accused ActBlue of allowing donation fraud, though its only examples of attempted fraud were those identified by the company itself in internal documents.

Now ActBlue has realized it can no longer keep a low profile. Wallace-Jones, who took the helm at ActBlue in early 2023, appeared on BLN in April when the Trump memorandum first came out, and has made the media rounds in recent weeks, doing interviews with Pod Save America and activist Aaron Parnas. And she told Blue Light News that — while she’s confident investigations into ActBlue will lead “nowhere” — she now sees the need to tell the public more about what ActBlue actually does. That new stance puts the fundraising platform in rarefied company – one of the few progressive forces fighting against administration policies instead of acquiescing to its demands.

“It’s only now that we are taking the position that our silence is actually hurting the perception of who we really are,” Wallace-Jones said. “And so could we have been more vocal sooner? Sure.”

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your reaction to the president’s memorandum?

This is something that was not expected. But it was also unsurprising in the sense that there has been a slow crescendo from grassroots individuals all the way up through various legislative bodies, on the Republican side to look at ActBlue.

We are an organization that wants to do fundraising right. It’s a first principle of ours, and we are always interested in things that can make us even better.

The targeting of ActBlue is deeply political in nature. It is clearly not oriented towards cleaning up fundraising in general, but specifically targeted toward the largest and most successful fundraising organization in the Democratic space, and I see that for what it is. It is an attack on the power of the grassroots. It is an acknowledgement that we do this better.

I don’t see it at all as a way to improve anything, but rather to exercise an authoritarian tactic to try to push out opposing voices. And we are not in a world where that would ever be OK for us.

In hindsight, now that it’s gotten to this point, do you feel like there’s anything ActBlue could have done or should have done over the past few years that could have addressed these lines of attack?

Listen, we have always seen ourselves as such a good actor in this space. And because of that, I think that we almost were in a, ‘This can’t be real, this can’t be serious. These are not serious people, these are not serious allegations.’ And instead held on for a very long time to our traditional posture, which is to be background plumbing.

It’s only now that we are taking the position that our silence is actually hurting the perception of who we really are. And so could we have been more vocal sooner? Sure. It took us a bit of time to actually embrace the idea that this is just a political attack, and in response to that, to build some new muscles.

That’s what we’re doing right now, and that’s what we will continue to do until this navigates exactly to the place that it should have been to begin with, which is nowhere.

We’ve seen obviously over the last 5 to 10 years that political attacks can sometimes still have consequences. I’m curious if you’ve heard from organizations or campaigns that use ActBlue if they’ve been concerned about where all this could lead, and what is your message to them?

Bad-faith attacks have real consequences for real people. And part of that for ActBlue is that it has spawned a heightened sense of need to secure ourselves from the danger of those who hear these bad-faith attacks and believe that they are cleansing the ecosystem by taking negative actions on good actors.

This has created a really profound conviction on our part to offer that reassurance.

Our position is we have nothing to hide. And we stand by that every day, which is why we are so transparent in the way that we operate, the way that we engage, the way that we respond.

You’ve talked about being more vocal. Is there anything else ActBlue needs to do to ensure it remains a trusted platform in light of these attacks?

Listen, there are things that we have always done and, again, we don’t super publicize the actions that we’re taking.

Being more vocal about how we do that is clearly what is needed in this moment and the posture that we will take going forward just to make sure that in the presence of truly bad actors that thing that we have worked so hard to preserve stays intact.

On the issue of trust, last cycle we saw for the first time ActBlue kicked off some “scam PACs” from the platform. Could you talk about that decision to decide certain actors shouldn’t be raising on ActBlue, and whether that is something going forward that ActBlue is going to continue to focus on?

I’m very reticent to use the word “scam PACs” because it doesn’t have a formal definition. There are issues that come along with any entity, being a long-standing entity versus a brand new entity.

So for example, a PAC that’s been around for many years has a lot of historical information that we can look at to see, are their fundraising practices good? Do they actually have a virtual presence that we can look at? Can we study their budget and decide that the dollars that they are deploying are dollars that are in line with what they said they’re here to exist to do? Or are they spending dollars raised on the backs of hardworking small dollar donors to elevate themselves?

These are things that you can learn pretty quickly from an entity that has existed for a long time, and new entities don’t have the benefit of that historical information, so in some ways you have to learn as they go and make decisions as they grow about how they’re behaving.

We’ve seen in recent years, there are other platforms that have emerged as means of Democratic giving. When you look at the landscape, is there anything ActBlue can learn from emerging competitors or any ways you’ve thought about changes ActBlue might need to make to keep up with the landscape and the competition?

We’ve adopted a phrase recently that is, “When they go low, we innovate.” And this is something that is important not just for ActBlue but for any technology organization.

The good thing about being the largest is that there are many benefits that come with being the largest. There’s economies of scale that we gain, there are network effects that we gain and — you asked the question about other smaller competitors — these are not things that you gain overnight, right?

There are always things that we can learn from smaller organizations that in some ways might be more nimble. They have lower risk. They have fewer customers that they have to notify when changes are coming forward. They have a smaller platform to make sure that the things that they’re implementing actually work.

We’ve got a huge network and we’ve got many, many more constituents that we have to work with. Organizations like that, who reach the position of large scale, do two things: One, they force themselves to evolve eternally, but two, they also look at opportunities to bring in through acquisitions some of those new ideas so that they can grow more quickly.

Politics

GOP Rep. Andy Ogles ousted in Tennessee primary

Published

23 hours ago

August 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Tennessee GOP Rep. Andy Ogles was ousted by a Republican challenger on Thursday, a blow to President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson who tried to boost his campaign in the final days.

Former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher won the GOP primary for the 5th District after outraising Ogles, receiving a late endorsement from GOP Gov. Bill Lee and seeing a flood of outside money on his behalf from a renewable energy super PAC.

Ultimately, that spending, coupled with a newly redrawn district that forced Ogles to reach new voters, helped end his reelection bid. Ogles has also faced a number of controversies since he was first elected in 2022.

He deleted a homophobic social media post that was denounced by members of his own party in June, and he drew severe backlash for another post in which he said “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” In 2024, the FBI searched Ogles’ phone during an investigation into campaign finance records, which came after a watchdog group filed an ethics complaint into his use of campaign funds. And in 2023, he faced scrutiny for false claims about his resume.

Ogles’ loss makes him the second Trump-endorsed candidate to lose a primary this week, after a Michigan House candidate who had the president’s backing fell to a challenger who had already dropped out.

Hatcher will face the Democratic mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, Chaz Molder, in November. Molder has posted strong fundraising hauls, while Hatcher will basically be starting from scratch.

But Republicans redrew the seat to favor Trump by 23 points after the Supreme Court severely limited the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, leaving Hatcher as the front-runner.

Politics

Bobby Pulido is sick and tired of apologizing

Published

2 days ago

August 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

HIDALGO, Texas — Bobby Pulido is learning that the bright lights of politics can be even harsher than music superstardom.

For the past several months, the Latin Grammy-winning singer and local megacelebrity has been the subject of a steady stream of national headlines scrutinizing his former professional relationship with a one-time bandmate who was imprisoned on child sex molestation charges. He’s also faced criticism for past social media posts that included racial, sexist and homophobic slurs and comments.

During a recent interview with Blue Light News — after a weeknight meet-and-greet with voters in the same stadium where he performed his final concert in November 2025 — Pulido struck a defensive tone about the scandals that have plagued his campaign.

“I apologize right now,” Pulido said, referring to the social media posts. “I’ll tell you right now, that way you’ll never ask me again. I apologize for everything that I’ve ever joked about that offended anybody. But I can’t continue to revisit every single one.”

Pulido also insisted he did nothing wrong in his working relationship with Frankie Caballero, maintaining he did not know about his former accordionist’s child molestation charges. He expects opponents to “keep dripping, dripping, dripping, dripping” new social media posts.

“I’ve been an open book for 30 years,” he said. “I was on Twitter way before I thought about running for office. They’re gonna keep going to old tweets, and there’s a lot of tweets in there that I’m embarrassed of. There’s jokes that I’ve told that I apologize for, and I’ve owned up to them. I’m like, man, that makes me cringe, and I’ve publicly apologized.”

Pulido is one of House Democrats’ prized battleground recruits and a key part of their plan to flip control of the lower chamber. The first-time candidate is widely known in Texas’ 15th District for his singing career, and he hopes to capitalize on voters’ anti-incumbency angst in his bid against GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz in a newly redrawn district that President Donald Trump won by 18 points in 2024.

Recent polling shows the race within the margin of error or Pulido leading, thanks in large part to his near-universal name ID. But while voters have shown a strong interest in political outsiders, those outsiders are also untested — and new revelations can swamp news cycles and potentially their chances.

The New York Post first reported in April on Pulido’s past relationship to Caballero, a registered sex offender who was imprisoned for indecent contact with an eight-year-old girl. Pulido told Blue Light News he first learned that Caballero was incarcerated on sex charges from the Post report, and Pulido’s campaign says the singer’s management company cut ties with Caballero after learning about a domestic abuse charge in 2021.

Pulido said he’d asked Caballero why he was in prison. “Transferring illegal aliens. That’s what he told me,” he told Blue Light News. “And I knew he had a lot of substance abuse issues, and he violated a lot of his paroles. Those were the things that he told me.” (Pulido’s campaign told the Texas Tribune in July that Pulido only knew Caballero struggled with addiction.)

In June, Axios reported Caballero performed with Pulido at a middle school benefit concert in 2018, where children were present, after being released from prison. When asked if he regretted having Caballero play there, Pulido said he did — knowing what he knows now.

“Without me knowing, it’s hard for me to say that,” he said. “Me, that I know now, yes. I wish I wouldn’t have taken him there.”

Caballero could not be reached for comment.

Pulido’s past social media posts have also come back to haunt the singer-turned-politician. In Twitter posts between 2013 and 2018, Pulido used homophobic and sexist Spanish-language slurs which translate to “f-g,” “f—-t” and “p—y.” In several other posts, he used the word “prieto,” a term referring to dark-skinned individuals many view as pejorative. The posts were first reported by NBC News and reviewed by Blue Light News. In another 2013 Spanish-language post reviewed by Blue Light News, Pulido joked that Mexican actor Mauricio Islas “isn’t a f-g, respect him. His boyfriend is.”

Islas, whose partner is a woman, did not respond to a request for comment.

Pulido told Blue Light News some of the remarks were made in jest toward personal friends. “That’s how we joke. I would never tell a stranger that,” he said.

He defended his use of the racial term as a cultural misunderstanding. “In our culture, we call each other that. It’s like Black people calling each other the n-word,” he said. “Would somebody that called another Black person the n-word be accused of racism? But they want to come and translate what I said to this guy, which is how we say it and we’re joking, they wanted to make it seem like I’m telling some complete stranger that. That’s not what it is.”

“I’m not making excuses,” Pulido added. “Would you have to apologize to your friend that you joke like that with, that doesn’t have a problem with anything you say? I don’t feel like I should have to apologize to them because they’re my friends.”

This isn’t the first time he’s flashed irritation when asked about his past posts, saying they distract from issues like affordability and immigration that voters care about. Pulido let loose on the New York Post when the paper reached out for comment about some other controversial social media posts. “We’ve been getting the same recycled tabloid nonsense since last October,” he said in a July video posted to his social media channels.

“And for whatever reporter that wants to keep asking,” he said in Spanish, “que no mamen, Kool-Aids. Now go translate that.” The colloquial phrase translates roughly to “don’t be jerks, assholes” or “don’t be stupid, assholes.”

De La Cruz’s campaign hopes to make hay out of the issues. In a statement, James Shook, the representative’s campaign manager, said Pulido is a “product of the corrupt compadre system that looks out for itself and everybody else is expected to look away.”

In press releases, De La Cruz’s campaign has pointed out apparent inconsistencies in Pulido’s statements. They note that Pulido told The Monitor he fired Caballero in 1996, but Caballero appears on two of Pulido’s albums through 1999. In a 2019 podcast, Pulido suggested he got Caballero out of jail; he told Bloomberg this year that was “hyperbolic” and he “misspoke.”

“Bobby Pulido walked a man convicted of molesting an eight-year-old girl onto a middle school event in this community, and hid his sex offender status from parents,” Shook said. “This is someone he toured with for years and is on tape bragging he personally bailed him out of jail. The only question left is why he thought he would get away with it.”

But there are signs that voters have become increasingly desensitized to scandal. A new Blue Light News Poll found a significant share of voters — both Republican and Democrat — say they would stick with their preferred candidate even if they were caught accepting gifts from lobbyists, exploiting tax loopholes or making antisemitic posts. Democrats drew a harsher line when it came to accusations of sexual violence and sexual assault. Voters were not polled on past use of homophobic or gender slurs on social media, or on relationships with sex offenders.

Some of Pulido’s supporters who know his family largely shrug off the headlines.

Esmeralda Knapp, a hairstylist in McAllen, said she will vote for Pulido solely because his uncle, a former county judge, helped secure Knapp’s brother’s release from prison many years ago. Bob Villarreal, a retired teacher in Edinburg, reminisced about the time Pulido’s father, a musician himself, substitute-taught his sixth-grade orchestra class. Maria Dominguez, who runs a wellness club in McAllen, said Pulido is “a good person” because she knows his family: “His family are working people, good people and raised in the valley.”

Villarreal brushed off Pulido’s relationship with Caballero. “It wasn’t Bobby,” he said. “I guess it’s important for some people, but for me, I mean, it’s somebody else.”

“It’s guilt by association,” said Patricia Villarreal, his wife.