The groups running these election ads in Nevada won't disclose their donors until 2027

Mailers going out to voters in Nevada's swingy state Senate District 9 slam Sen. Melanie Scheible (D-Las Vegas) for being married to a Republican and profiting "from the MAGA agenda."

The twist? A Republican operative appears to be behind the attacks — but who exactly is funding them won't be known until early 2027, well past Election Day.

That's because the PAC behind the mailers, the Nevada Transparency Alliance, exploited a loophole in state law that allows groups with no activity before Oct. 1 to evade campaign finance disclosures until well after the general election. The next quarterly campaign finance reports, covering October through December, are not until mid-January.

So far this month, nine of these so-called "shadow PACs" (five PACs and four nonprofits) have registered with the secretary of state's office, a Nevada Independent analysis found, leaving the public in the dark about who is bankrolling them. 

These groups might not be directly involved in the ongoing campaign season and simply happened to launch this month. One of them has GOP ties and sent mailers in an apparent attempt to deceive voters into supporting a nonpartisan gubernatorial candidate.

A handful of other PACs have reregistered or amended their registration after Sept. 30, but more information is available on those groups because they have either submitted recent fundraising reports or were active in past political cycles. 

Evading campaign finance reporting is not new. Ahead of this year's primary, 32 groups registered after the final campaign finance deadline before the primary, including groups that launched six-figure ad campaigns in support of Republican candidates. In 2024, attack ads went after state Sen. Dina Neal (D-North Las Vegas), but the public only learned the extent of the fundraisers until after the primary.

This cycle's late-registering groups appear to have diverse political leanings. There's a group called "Citizens for Safe AI" run by a former Democratic nominee for a Florida legislative seat, a group that advocates for clean energy from a conservative perspective and a PAC established to represent family-owned businesses in Nevada, including quick service restaurants, whose registered agent is Tommy Ferraro, a Republican strategist who heads one of the state's top lobbying firms. 

Those involved with the group confirmed to The Indy that the timing of the registration was coincidental and not intended to avoid filing financial information.

Another one of these shadow groups is a nonprofit associated with the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA). However, DAGA already gave $1 million to a Nevada-based PAC that has been airing ads in the state's attorney general race. 

DAGA said it registered the new nonprofit — the national group that oversees political fundraising efforts — so that it could redirect money to its Nevada-based PAC.

'A taste of their own medicine'

The Indy found that two of these nine groups are linked to the same Republican operative — and both have been sending out mailers in an apparent effort to mislead Democratic voters.

Registered on Oct. 2, the Nevada Transparency Alliance lists its "chairman" as Dustin McIntyre, who is also listed as the treasurer for nearly 80 PACs nationwide — many with Republican ties and funded by conservative "dark money" groups that do not have to reveal their donors. 

McIntyre did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The mailers sent by the Nevada Transparency Alliance slam Scheible, first elected in 2018 to a blue-leaning Senate seat in Las Vegas, and says she "profits from the MAGA agenda. Married to a Trump operative. But campaigns as a progressive?" 

Scheible is married to Greg Bailor, a Republican political strategist who served as executive director of the Nevada Republican Party when President Donald Trump (R) was elected in 2016. He later served as Republican caucus director for the Nevada State Senate. Bailor is also co-chair of a Nevada group formed this year to bridge partisan divides and helped run former state Sen. James Settelmeyer's (R-Minden) congressional bid this year.

Scheible called the attacks "pathetic" in a statement to The Indy.

"It's important that voters understand these mail pieces are coming from Republicans trying to mislead them," she wrote. 

Senate Minority Leader Robin Titus (R-Wellington) said in a statement that her caucus "had no involvement" in the mailers. She added that if anti-Trump sentiment is being turned against a Democrat, "it's a taste of their own medicine."

The filing for the Nevada Transparency Alliance also lists Landon Nelson as an "agent." A registered voter in Clark County has the same name. The Indy left voicemails with the phone numbers listed on the PAC's registration form and the county's voter rolls, but did not hear back.

McIntyre, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, is also listed as the chairman of another shadow PAC sending deceiving mailers. 

These ads link Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to nonpartisan governor candidate Danielle Ford, who shares a last name with the Democratic governor candidate, Attorney General Aaron Ford. Ocasio-Cortez's spokesperson said the ads were an effort to "trick voters" and siphon votes away from Aaron Ford.

Public in the dark

It's part of a broader landscape in Nevada politics where the public doesn't know the source of prominent political advertising. The other side of this coin is so-called "dark money" groups, which are registered nonprofits that under federal law do not have to disclose their donors because they purportedly only lobby or run ads on issues that "promote social welfare."  

This cycle, social media ads in favor of a ballot question to require voter ID have come from a dark money group called the Coalition for Prosperous Communities. Its Nevada-based group spent $675,000 on advertising in September.

Ahead of the June primary, more than one-third of political ad spending was tied to "dark money" groups or shadow PACs, including six-figure spending by the McIntyre-affiliated Save Nevada NOW PAC. Campaign finance reports, released after the primary election, traced these dollars back to a conservative dark money group.

Ken Miller, a UNLV political science professor, said while donors tied to dark money groups likely never want their identity revealed, those behind shadow PACs likely do not mind if donor information becomes public — so long as it is after the election.

"If it's an issue where you just don't want it to be a campaign issue before Election Day — who funded this — then the shadow PAC makes sense," Miller said. "If it's sort of intra-party squabbling and I don't want to burn bridges, then dark money makes more sense."