CA-48 Democratic Campaigns Are Exploiting a Campaign Finance Loophole
48th Congressional District campaigns find ways around campaign finance rules | KPBS Public Media
BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front
Three Democratic candidates competing in California's newly redrawn 48th Congressional District — Ammar Campa-Najjar, Marni von Wilpert, and Brandon Riker — are employing a practice called "redboxing" on their campaign websites, posting detailed targeting instructions and messaging scripts that super PACs have demonstrably echoed verbatim in mailers and texts sent to voters. The practice exploits a structural gap in federal campaign finance law left unaddressed by a Federal Election Commission that currently lacks a quorum to conduct enforcement. Legislation to close the loophole has stalled in a Republican-controlled Congress whose members benefit from the same practice. With the June 2, 2026 primary days away and millions in outside money flowing into the district, voters in CA-48 are witnessing a race in which the legal boundary between campaigns and ostensibly independent super PACs has, in the judgment of campaign finance experts, effectively ceased to exist.
Investigative Report | Campaign Finance
Federal Regulators Cannot Enforce
Candidates for a pivotal San Diego-area House seat are posting targeting scripts on their public websites — and outside groups are spending accordingly, with near-identical language surfacing in mailers and texts. Experts call it coordination without a paper trail. The cop on the beat has no quorum.
Three leading Democratic candidates in California's 48th Congressional District — a seat that national prognosticators consider a critical pickup opportunity for a party seeking to retake the House of Representatives — have posted detailed campaign strategy instructions on their publicly accessible websites in a practice that campaign finance watchdogs say amounts to thinly veiled coordination with super PACs that are legally required to operate independently of campaigns.[1]
The practice, known as "redboxing," takes its name from the distinctive red-bordered text boxes that campaigns began using to signal allied outside spending groups. In its modern form, campaigns post what they call "media pages" containing specific demographic targeting data, geographic breakdowns, preferred media channels, and word-for-word messaging — information that super PAC operatives can harvest without ever picking up a phone or exchanging an email with the campaign, side-stepping the Federal Election Campaign Act's prohibition on coordinated communications.[2]
The practice is not hypothetical. A documented chain of near-verbatim language now connects the campaign websites of at least two of the CA-48 candidates to third-party mailers and text messages that were distributed to voters — material that federal law would treat as an in-kind contribution subject to strict limits if it were proven to have been produced in direct coordination with the campaigns.[1]
The Stakes: A Seat That Could Tip the House
California's 48th Congressional District was redrawn under Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that voters approved in November 2025 to replace a map drawn by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. The newly configured district — covering portions of San Diego's North County including Vista, San Marcos, Escondido, Temecula, and Borrego Springs — was one of five Republican-held seats that the redistricting effort targeted for Democratic pickup.[3]
Incumbent Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican, announced on March 6, 2026 that he would not seek re-election in the redrawn district, endorsing San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond to hold the seat for the GOP. The Cook Political Report's Partisan Voter Index rates the seat at R+7 based on the 2020 and 2024 presidential results, making it competitive but not a gimme for Democrats.[3]
Republicans currently hold a 218–214 House majority with three vacancies. The outcome of the CA-48 race, along with a handful of other California contests, could determine control of the chamber in the 120th Congress.[3]
Each of the three principal Democratic candidates — Campa-Najjar, von Wilpert, and Riker — has raised more than $1 million for the primary.[1] But direct campaign contributions are only part of the financial picture. Outside spending from super PACs, 501(c)(4) dark money groups, and affiliated committees has poured millions of additional dollars into the race, with much of it appearing to follow the strategic blueprint laid out on the candidates' own websites.[1,4]
What Redboxing Looks Like in Practice
Campaign watchdogs at the Campaign Legal Center describe redboxing as a strategy in which campaigns publish data and content — messaging points, photographs, demographic targets — to help supportive outside groups align their supposedly independent expenditures with campaign strategy.[2] While the underlying federal law prohibits direct coordination, the FEC's existing rules contain no explicit prohibition on one-way public communication, which is the gap redboxing exploits.[5]
"Voters need to hear both negative and positive messaging. For Positive Messaging, Voters in the Los Angeles and San Diego media markets in CA48 need to see 1) positive ads first and foremost online, 2) then on streaming devices, and 3) then in direct mail."
The site continues with a list of targeted demographics and geographic areas by ZIP code, as well as specific negative messaging against opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar.
"Likely primary Democrats and Democratic leaning Independent voters in California's 48th Congressional District, within the San Diego media market, need to READ in mail, the following message... Real change starts with ending corruption. Unlike his opponents, Brandon Riker refuses every dollar of corporate PAC money."
The same page directs messaging attacks against both Campa-Najjar and von Wilpert, specifying: "particularly Registered Democrats 50+ and NPP / Independent Voters in the San Diego media market would benefit from learning these facts."
"Starting in Week 8, voters in the NEW CA-48 need to see ads that repeat Ammar Campa-Najjar's name as many times as possible... 1. San Diego broadcast. 2. San Diego cable (MSNBC/CNN + programs overindexing to voters age 50+). 3. LA cable..."
The page included specific demographic targets for "Men voters age 50+" and programs that over-index to that group. After KPBS began asking questions, the page was updated to remove specific targeting details.
When the Script Moves From Website to Mailbox
The most direct evidence that the redboxing strategy is functioning as intended comes from a comparison of the von Wilpert campaign website and a mailer sent by a committee calling itself Veterans for Truth PAC.[1]
The von Wilpert site's negative messaging section characterized Campa-Najjar as "a con man" who "run and lost three campaigns from four different addresses under two different names," who "opposed Trump's impeachment, supported Trump's border wall, donated to an extreme gun rights group," and quoted him as having said "I ran for Congress to work with Trump." The mailer from Veterans for Truth PAC reproduced these same attack points, in the same sequence, alongside a photograph of Campa-Najjar with that same quoted statement.[1]
"Everyone in the campaign world understands that this is a way to share information but get around the rules against coordinating."
A similar correspondence was documented between the Campa-Najjar campaign website and materials distributed by Serving CA, a super PAC that the Times of San Diego reported is funded by the Bezos family — specifically through the With Honor Fund, which has received $27.3 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his parents, accounting for 55 percent of the fund's total receipts over nearly ten years — and by Irwin Jacobs, the Qualcomm co-founder who is the grandfather of Campa-Najjar's domestic partner, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA).[4]
Irwin Jacobs contributed $500,000 to Serving CA, while the Bezos-linked group added $250,000 in April 2026.[4] The Campa-Najjar campaign website contained a legal disclaimer about the candidate's Navy Reserve status and uniformed photographs; Serving CA's text messages sent to voters reproduced that disclaimer with near-word-for-word fidelity.[1]
A Separate Controversy: The Pentagon's Rebuke
The disclaimer language connecting Campa-Najjar's website to the Serving CA texts carried its own significance. It appeared on the campaign site within days of a KPBS investigation that found the candidate had been using military imagery in apparent violation of Department of Defense Directive 1344.10, which governs the political activities of service members and reservists.[6]
Campa-Najjar holds the rank of lieutenant junior grade in the Navy Reserve, a direct commission he received in 2023. Pentagon regulations permit reservists to run for office but restrict how they present their military status in campaign materials. The directive requires that reservists "must clearly indicate their retired or reserve status" when referencing their service; it also prohibits the use of uniformed photographs as the "primary graphic representation" in campaign media without a "prominent and clearly displayed" disclaimer.[6]
La Prensa San Diego first reported potential violations in March 2026, noting that Campa-Najjar's website and social media were describing him simply as a "Navy Officer" — omitting his reserve status — and prominently featuring uniform photographs without adequate disclaimers.[7] KPBS subsequently reported the Navy was "looking into the matter." A freelance journalist filed a complaint with the Navy Reserve Inspector General in early March 2026.
On April 22, 2026, the Inspector General's office emailed the complainant to confirm that the candidate's chain of command had been notified and had enacted "corrective action" regarding violations on his campaign website. The IG's email also noted that additional potential violations remained on Campa-Najjar's campaign Facebook page and referred those concerns to Commander, Navy Reserve Forces Command "for action deemed appropriate."[8]
• Serving CA: funded by Bezos-linked With Honor Fund ($250,000) and Irwin Jacobs ($500,000) exclusively to support Campa-Najjar.
• Veterans for Truth PAC: sent mailers attacking Campa-Najjar using language mirroring von Wilpert's redbox. Could not be reached for comment.
• Democratic Majority for Israel: spending $1 million+ in attack ads against Campa-Najjar, endorsing von Wilpert.
• House Majority PAC and other national Democratic committees active in the district.
• Nationally, super PACs spent $2.7 billion in the 2024 federal election cycle, up from roughly $1.4 billion in 2022.
The Systemic Problem: 200+ Campaigns, a Broken Watchdog
CA-48 is not an aberration — it is a local instance of a national phenomenon that has expanded dramatically since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision removed limits on independent expenditures by corporations and unions.[9]
A peer-reviewed study published in the Election Law Journal by University of Chicago researcher Gabriel Foy-Sutherland and Campaign Legal Center's Saurav Ghosh examined the 2022 election cycle and found that more than 200 federal candidates employed redboxing. Those candidates "frequently benefitted from super PAC spending that was hundreds of times greater than candidates who did not redbox."[5]
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan reform organization, characterizes redboxing as a practice that "openly flouts" the coordination ban, giving wealthy donors a pathway to circumvent contribution limits and "indirectly bankroll their preferred candidates while sidestepping contribution limits."[2] Issue One, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on reducing money's influence in politics, agrees the practice is pervasive. "Groups and candidates are finding ways to work together to skirt the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law in some cases," said Michael Beckel of Issue One.[1]
The FEC was created by Congress in 1974 specifically to enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Under the law, coordinated communications between campaigns and outside spenders are treated as in-kind contributions subject to a limit of $5,000 per campaign per election. But the agency requires four of its six commissioners to agree before taking any enforcement action — a structural requirement that has historically produced partisan deadlock rather than accountability.[10]
The situation has deteriorated further. Following the resignations of multiple commissioners in 2025, the FEC no longer has the quorum of four members necessary to conduct official meetings, issue advisory opinions, or pursue enforcement actions. The Brennan Center for Justice noted in May 2025 that the agency "can't enforce campaign finance laws" — a condition that persisted as this article went to press.[11] The Congressional Research Service confirmed the quorum lapse began in 2025 and represents the fourth such episode since the agency's founding.[10]
With enforcement capacity effectively suspended, President Trump holds the appointment power to restore a quorum, but nominee confirmations are subject to the same partisan dynamics that have long plagued the commission. The FEC's own enforcement statistics show that even when fully staffed, approximately 50.6 percent of enforcement matters considered since 2012 have produced at least one deadlock, failing to achieve the four votes needed for action.[12]
"Congressional leadership, essentially since the 1970s when the FEC was created, have had a lot of say in who is getting nominated to serve in these roles... So it's a complicated dynamic."
In 2023, the FEC declined to investigate allegations of illegal coordination between the John Hickenlooper Senate campaign and Senate Majority PAC, citing the "resources that would be needed to further pursue the allegations" — a decision that critics said illustrated the commission's unwillingness to police the practice.[1]
Legislation Stalled: The Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act
Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-HI) has twice introduced the Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act — first in September 2024 as H.R. 9589 in the 118th Congress, then reintroduced on March 27, 2025 as H.R. 2476 in the 119th Congress, where it was referred to the House Committee on House Administration.[13,14] The bill would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to classify expenditures by outside groups as "coordinated" — and therefore subject to contribution limits — whenever those expenditures are "materially consistent with instructions, directions, guidance, and suggestions" from a campaign or party committee.[13]
The Campaign Legal Center "enthusiastically endorses" the measure. "By establishing clear rules and guidelines that better define what makes campaign spending 'coordinated' with outside groups like super PACs and dark money 501(c) groups, we can stop candidates from circumventing our campaign finance laws," said CLC's director of federal campaign finance reform Saurav Ghosh.[14]
The bill's prospects, however, are dim. It has no Republican co-sponsors and has received no hearing in the Republican-controlled House. As Beckel noted, the members who would need to vote for stricter coordination rules are the same people who benefit from lax enforcement of those rules in their own campaigns — a structural conflict of interest that has characterized the campaign finance reform debate for decades.[1]
The Candidates Respond
The candidates' responses to questions about their redbox pages reveal a shared logic: the practice is common, therefore it is acceptable, and abandoning it would constitute "unilateral disarmament."
"Our campaign follows the law. Period. Full Stop," said Dan Rottenstreich, a von Wilpert campaign representative, in a statement to KPBS. "This kind of publicly available campaign materials are common in competitive races across the nation."[1]
Campa-Najjar, whose campaign website was updated to reduce the specificity of its targeting information after KPBS began inquiring about it, told the station: "It's a common practice that's being done by every candidate, on the Democratic side, who is, you know, in the front running position, communicating to folks what we want to be talked about."[1] Campa-Najjar has made campaign finance reform part of his platform, calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and the elimination of super PACs. He defended his own redbox use in a conditional frame: "Just like with Prop 50 and redistricting, the whole reason we got into that fight against Texas is because we cannot unilaterally disarm. We have to fight fire with fire, get into office, take power, and reform this broken, corrosive system."[1]
The Riker campaign declined to comment. No material mirroring the Riker campaign website has been publicly identified by reporters at the time of publication.[1]
The California Fair Political Practices Commission did not respond to requests for comment. Veterans for Truth PAC and Serving CA could not be reached for comment. The Republican candidate Jim Desmond's campaign website does not contain a redbox-style media page.
Note: Irwin Jacobs is a financial supporter of KPBS, which originated several key reports underlying this compilation. KPBS maintains editorial independence from its donors. Epoch Times reporting is independently compiled from public records, filings, and multiple primary and secondary sources.
Verified Sources & Formal Citations
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