Why Patriotic Millionaires Went All-In on a Columbus County State House Race

Justin Burke projected his voice over the whir of a giant fan inside the exhibition center at the Columbus County Agricultural Fair.

“So, we’re trying to raise the minimum wage,” Burke, who is a paid staff member for The Deciders—a local affiliate of the national political advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires—told a woman who stopped at their booth on October 14.

Burke explained that he wants North Carolina lawmakers to ease the cost of living for working-class families by shifting more of the tax burden to the state’s wealthiest residents and upping the minimum wage. 

The fairgoer listened intently until she caught a glimpse of a small sticker featuring a black-and-white photo of state Rep. Brenden Jones, a Columbus County Republican and the House majority leader. The words “Blame Brenden!” were printed in bold, red text around his face.  

“You had me until ‘Blame Brenden,’” the woman said before walking away, carrying a free Koozie from the Columbus County Republican Party’s booth a few stalls down. The swag read, “I’m not perfect, but at least I’m not a Democrat.”

Patriotic Millionaires has taken aim at Jones, a self-described “hometown boy” who climbed the GOP ranks in Raleigh and is now seeking a sixth term in office. 

Jones might seem a shoo-in, as Columbus County voters have shifted Republican over the last decade. But that hasn’t stopped Patriotic Millionaires, which describes itself as nonpartisan but has many members who back Democratic candidates, from targeting him ahead of the November 3 election. 

The group is spending $200,000 on its “Blame Brenden” campaign this election, including billboards, full-page ads in local newspapers, yard signs, and pamphlets, said Erica Payne, the national group’s founder and a North Carolina native who now lives near Washington, D.C. 

The ads attribute low wages, poor health care, and insufficient school funding–including in this rural and poor southeastern corner of the state–to the incumbent lawmaker.

Democrat Brittany Newton, an original member of The Deciders when it formed in 2023, is challenging Jones this year. The 32-year-old Army veteran and mother of two who juggles multiple jobs, including as a certified nursing assistant, said lawmakers who heard her speak against redistricting before the General Assembly three years ago encouraged her to run. 

Newton says she stepped away from The Deciders when she filed for candidacy. Patriotic Millionaires’ website lists her among its endorsed “Money Agenda Champions,” alongside Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper and other North Carolina Democrats.

Among the group’s gripes about Jones: He has not backed legislation or held a hearing about raising the state’s minimum wage from the federal rate of $7.25 per hour. And he has supported corporate income tax cuts, most recently in the state’s long-delayed budget passed this summer.

Payne said Jones has declined to meet with The Deciders, whose members are not millionaires but support the national effort’s agenda. (Jones told Payne during a recorded exchange outside a store in Tabor City earlier this month that his office had not received requests to meet with the group.)  

Jones’ spokesperson said he was not available for an interview. But the candidate blasted Patriotic Millionaires earlier this month in a two-page statement posted to social media, calling its members and Newton “an outside socialist group filled with paid protestors that is funded by out-of-state dark money.”

Why Columbus County?

Payne says she is not a millionaire but has spent two decades harnessing the power of wealthy people who support progressive policies.

She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991 and got her first job in politics the next year with Democratic U.S. Sen. Terry Sanford’s reelection campaign. She worked as the deputy finance director for the Democratic National Committee during the 1996 election and started the Tesseract Group, a public policy consulting firm, in the early 2000s. 

Payne helped found the Democracy Alliance, a network of rich donors, in 2005 and The Agenda Project in 2010. The Agenda Project quickly launched several campaigns, including F*ck Tea (aimed at the conservative Tea Party movement) and Patriotic Millionaires. 

The 200-plus members of Patriotic Millionaires include Walt Disney’s grandniece, Abigail Disney, and former managing director of the investment company BlackRock Morris Pearl. At least two North Carolinians are members: Monica Lavery in Ashe County and Ann Evans in Charlotte. Both attended the Columbus County Fair with Payne this month.

Payne brought her work home to North Carolina in 2023. Her mother is a former principal of Broughton High School and her father is a retired Wake County judge; they live in Raleigh. Payne said that while the state has a strong reputation as being good for business, workers don’t always benefit. The nonprofit Oxfam has ranked North Carolina among the worst states for wages, labor protections, and union organizing since 2020.

Patriotic Millionaires spent $791,370 in 2023 to form The Deciders in North Carolina and grow similar grassroots groups in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, its tax filings show. All are considered swing states. It has focused on North Carolina and Wisconsin since 2024, Payne said.

But why Columbus County, and why Jones, a popular businessman and politician? 

Payne said she decided to open an office in Whiteville because she thought her group’s message would resonate with voters there. Columbus has struggled for years with the loss of tobacco and textile manufacturing, and more than 19% of residents live in poverty. The Deciders have four paid, part-time employees in Whiteville and about 30 volunteers, all county residents. 

“These are the most powerful voters in the entire country,” Payne said. “Columbus County could turn the entire trajectory of the country, and, with it, the world if people would take a few hours out of their day after working their third job and lean into these economics.”

Jones, Payne said, simply has more power than other state lawmakers who live in the area. 

“Brenden Jones is a device,” Payne said. “He is a mechanism through which I can get what I actually want, which is an opposition party that is sufficiently committed to overcoming the status quo and giving hardworking people a chance to live a decent, happy, and dignified life that they deserve.”

Payne disputed Jones’ description of the group as “dark money,” broadly defined as electoral spending that doesn’t disclose donors. She said money for the “Blame Brenden” campaign came from Patriotic Millionaires’ recently formed 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, the same tax status held by the National Rifle Association and Planned Parenthood. 

Under federal law, such organizations can distribute material opposing political candidates if at least 51% of their money is used for “bringing about civic betterments and social improvements.” Payne said Patriotic Millionaires is moving all funding for its work, including its economic education efforts, to the 501(c)(4).

No tax filings are yet available for its 501(c)(4). Payne said nearly all of Patriotic Millionaires’ money comes from its members, who must contribute at least $18,000 a year. About two-thirds of its members are publicly listed on Patriotic Millionaires’ website, Payne said. The group’s 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit arm, which cannot be involved in electoral politics, received more than $3 million in contributions and grants last year, according to its tax filing. Only about $50,000 came from nonmembers, Payne said.

The Campaign Legal Center and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which both focus on election accountability, have criticized 501(c)(4)s as “dark money nonprofits” since they are not required to disclose donors to the Federal Election Commission. Such groups spent $49.89 million in the 2024 election, according to OpenSecrets.

“It would be fair to call Patriotic Millionaires’ electoral spending, like the ‘Blame Brenden’ campaign, ‘dark money,’” said Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center. “However, it might be an overstatement to call the organization a ‘dark money group’ due to their different activities besides electoral politics.”

Jones also criticized the group for giving away $50 Visa gift cards and free dinners to people who attended information sessions in Columbus County to establish The Deciders.  

But Fischer said the group likely didn’t violate any laws. “It’s not uncommon to offer some kind of an incentive for people to attend a meeting,” he said. “It does not raise any obvious legal red flags.”

But Jones isn’t the only one who has questioned the group’s motives. Some people at the county fair wondered why a national group was taking such a keen interest in a local race. 

‘Nothing But Praises’

Columbus County voters reliably picked Democratic candidates, especially those running for the General Assembly and local offices, for decades. The first time Jones ran for a seat in the state House in 2014, he lost to the Democratic incumbent by more than 11 points.

But the political tide was changing, as it was in much of rural America. Donald Trump handily won Columbus County in 2016, when voters also picked many down-ballot Republicans–including Jones, who secured more than 60% of the vote in his home county. (District 46 also includes the eastern side of Robeson County, which has seen a similar GOP swing.)

Jones earned a degree in mortuary science from Fayetteville Technical Community College in 1994 and later took over his family’s car dealership, according to his campaign website. He and his wife bought and renovated a Fair Bluff funeral home in 2022 and sold it this August.

By the time Jones got to Raleigh in early 2017, Republicans had held a majority in the General Assembly for six years. His colleagues named him freshman whip and then deputy majority leader starting in his second term. He became the majority leader in 2024, the second-highest-ranking member after Speaker Destin Hall.

Jones, who told The News Reporter in a video interview this month that he holds “conservative Christian values,” hasn’t been shy about engaging in the culture wars. In April, he grilled leaders of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools for allowing books about gender and sexuality in school libraries. Last month, he railed against the Wake County Public School System after it stopped accepting parents’ challenges to library books that are not being used for classroom instruction.

Billboard advertisements paid for by the North Carolina GOP highlight Jones’ stance that “there are only two genders.” 

Jones “can be underestimated at times, but he uses that to his advantage,” said state Sen. Danny Britt, a Robeson County Republican. 

“When he goes after something, he’s a pit bull, but he’s southeastern North Carolina’s pit bull,” Britt said. “Rep. Jones and I are a great team in Raleigh. When we set out to bring something home to our district, not much can get in our way.”

Columbus County got more than $10 million in earmarked funds from the budget state lawmakers passed over the summer. That includes $5 million for the Fair Bluff riverwalk and about $173,000 for the DMV in Tabor City, where Jones lives.  

“I’ve got nothing but praises for him,” Columbus County Commissioner Buddy Byrd said. “He’s done very well representing Columbus County.” 

But Jones’ critics believe he could do more to improve the lives of working-class families in Columbus County. Some of the fairgoers who accepted a “Blame Brenden!” sticker from the Patriotic Millionaires earlier this month cited concerns about Jones’ push to build a state alcohol distribution center with developers who donated thousands of dollars to his election campaign fund over the past four years, The News & Observer reported. 

Jones is drastically outpacing Newton in the money race. By the end of August, his campaign had raised nearly $840,000, compared to Newton’s over $85,460. 

Twenty-seven of the 88 donations Jones’ campaign received between February and August were for $6,800–North Carolina’s legal limit for state candidates. Among the donors were Michael Estramonte, a Charlotte health care businessman who a state campaign watchdog said has donated to state legislators’ campaigns to help secure $35 million in state funding for a treatment center for children experiencing mental health emergencies, according to NC Health News. 

Two out-of-state political action committees—the Cigna Group Employee PAC and Enterprise Holdings PAC—gave Jones’ campaign a total of $5,500 this election cycle, his finance report shows.

Most of the 283 donations Newton received from February through August were below the state’s $50 reporting threshold, according to her campaign finance report. Of the 86 donations above $50, more than 47% came from outside North Carolina, and 23 were from publicly listed members of the Patriotic Millionaires.

Jones has criticized Newton for her work with The Deciders and Patriotic Millionaires, calling her “a socialist candidate who is purchased by our friends in New York and California.” 

“He’s calling me all of this because he hasn’t done what he was supposed to do while he’s been in the legislature,” Newton said. “I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I feel like I am a modern-day Democrat.”

Newton knows beating Jones is a long shot. So does Payne, though she said she hopes the “Blame Brenden” campaign will raise awareness and rally residents around their causes.

“The day after the election, I’d love to meet with Brenden,” Payne said, “and say, ‘All right, we had a big fight, and I think you are responsible for the choices you have made. Now, how can we sit down together and try to bring some stability to the lives of the people in your community?’”