Incumbent Rep. Mike Thompson departs the U.S. Capitol Building on March 5, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
Blue Dog Action Fund, the super PAC spending arm for a fiscally conservative caucus of House Democrats, has already spent $1,200,000 in ad buys backing Rep. Mike Thompson’s bid for reelection this cycle while he sits as treasurer of the Blue Dog Political Action Committee, an affiliated organization that also contributed $5,000 directly to his campaign.
The Blue Dog Coalition, who claim to represent “the center of the political spectrum” by pursuing “fiscally responsible” economic policies and a “strong national defense,” formed Blue Dog Action in 2025 for the upcoming election cycle. Federal election law requires that every political committee designate a treasurer, whose responsibilities include ensuring campaign finance reports are accurate, complete, and filed on time, before it can raise or spend money. An organization’s treasurer can thus, in some cases, be held personally liable for the committee’s actions.
The super PAC withheld its ad buys until April 2, two days after the March 31 filing deadline for first quarter FEC reports in an apparent effort to shelter the funding push from scrutiny.
Aside from the $1,200,000 spent for Thompson, Blue Dog Action has spent $300,000 supporting Bobby Pulido in Texas’s 15th congressional district and roughly $1 million in independent expenditures supporting Johnny Garcia, who just won his primary in Texas’ 35th congressional district against his embattled challenger Maureen Galindo, who advocated for converting ICE detention facilities into concentration camps for Zionists.
Neither Thompson nor Blue Dog PAC responded to requests for comment.
Thompson’s role as treasurer of a PAC that has contributed directly to his campaign, and one that’s affiliated super PAC has bankrolled his re-election bid, raises significant questions about how coordination between the candidate and the super PAC could possibly be avoided. It is illegal for Super PACs to coordinate with the candidates or campaigns for whom they spend. This overlap also creates the appearance of a conflict of interests, introducing blanket ethical concerns outside of election law.
“It shows the complete fallacy of the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United, where it decided that Super PACs are separate from candidates and they operate independently. They don’t operate independently, and this is more proof of that,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert at Public Citizen.
While Thompson’s position in the PAC “doesn’t violate any law in itself,” Holman said, “He’s using his position to help enrich his own campaign. If I were part of the Blue Dog Coalition I would start questioning that type of activity.”
“He can have an extraordinary amount of power over the decisions of the PAC,” Holman added.
Eric Jones, the candidate challenging Thompson to his left, has focused his campaign on lowering costs by breaking up utility monopolies like PG&E and rooting out corruption in D.C. by banning corporate PAC money from elections and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks. Of the $1.2 million Blue Dog Action Fund spent on Thompson’s behalf, $600,000 specifically went into funding oppositional ads against Jones across California’s 4th congressional district.
The district, encompassing significant portions of Sacramento, Sonoma, and Napa, is safely Democratic, and an increasingly likely outcome is that both Thompson and Jones will advance to the general election after the state’s jungle primary concludes on Tuesday.
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