It’s hardly a secret that Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-5th), the dean of Maryland’s congressional delegation, is working hard to elect Del. Adrian Boafo (D-Prince George’s) in the race to succeed him.
Hoyer endorsed his former aide early, calling Boafo “as strong as he is smart, as principled as he is pragmatic.” He has appeared with Boafo at campaign events, fundraisers and endorsement news conferences. Boafo’s campaign website features a pop-up fundraising solicitation with a photo of a smiling Hoyer patting his protege on the back.
Boafo received consequential endorsements Friday from Gov. Wes Moore (D) and U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) – both of whom benefited from early Hoyer endorsements during their first statewide bids.
But the full extent of Hoyer’s investment in Boafo’s campaign is only now coming into focus.
In the first three months of the year, Boafo, who turned 32 on Mother’s Day, received direct campaign contributions totaling $14,000 from the 86-year-old former U.S. House majority leader and his leadership political action committee. Hoyer donors ponied up more than $140,000 – almost a third of Boafo’s campaign contributions during the first quarter of the year, according to campaign finance records. Several former Hoyer aides are donors to Boafo’s campaign, chipping in at least $11,800 collectively.
Some of Hoyer’s allies in the Washington, D.C., influence community and his network of national Democratic donors have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Boafo. Lobbyists with Annapolis and Washington, D.C., firms have sent at least $30,400 to Boafo’s campaign coffers.
Most significantly, Hoyer’s leadership PAC, AMERIPAC, has so far spent half a million dollars on Boafo’s behalf.
Hoyer’s close ties to pro-Israel organizations have also resulted in a financial windfall for Boafo’s campaign. As support for Israel erodes among Democratic voters, there is some political risk in being so closely associated with certain pro-Israel groups that have been strong and consistent supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Similarly, Boafo is collecting donations from tech firms and the cryptocurrency industry, at a time when some Democratic voters are expressing unease with both sectors.
Protect Progress, a super PAC connected to crypto companies, recently earmarked $243,967.73 to run digital ads in support of Boafo. The first spot has nothing to do with crypto, but leads with Hoyer’s endorsement and says Boafo “is leading the fight against MAGA in Maryland.” It references a bill Boafo sponsored in Annapolis – that did not pass – that would have prevented Maryland law enforcement agencies from hiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, before concluding that Boafo “will stand up for our democracy and stop ICE.”
Additionally, four employees of Coinbase, a leading crypto company, contributed a total of $10,500 to Boafo’s campaign.
Some of Boafo’s Democratic opponents have taken notice and are questioning his reliance on big-money donors and special interests.
Asked about the sources of Boafo’s campaign funds and his reliance on Hoyer’s vast political network, a spokesperson, Chris Taylor, said in a statement that the campaign is “powered by this community’s energetic support with contributions from every county in the district.”
“Adrian is backed by a broad coalition of 30 plus elected officials, business leaders, educators, and unions because they know Adrian delivers for Marylanders. He’s a fighter that’s taken on Big Tech to protect kids, stood up to Trump’s ICE, and held energy companies accountable when they put profits over people,” Taylor’s statement said.
Redboxes, flashing lights
Of the two dozen candidates on the Democratic 5th District ballot, Boafo finished third on the fundraising front for the first quarter of the year, taking in $465,242, according to recently filed reports with the FEC.
Harry Dunn, the former U.S. Capitol Police officer with a national following since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, raised $2,073,664 in the first quarter of the year. Quincy Bareebe, a health care executive, reported pulling in $2,321,860 during the same period – though $2,260,000 came from her own pocket.
But AMERIPAC has more than doubled Boafo’s financial firepower in recent weeks, doling out exactly $500,000 on independent expenditures for Boafo in April alone. The money was earmarked for direct mail, digital ads and digital ad production, FEC filings show.
Under federal campaign finance law, candidates and PACs are prohibited from directly communicating. But Boafo and another 5th District Democratic candidate, former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker, are employing an increasingly common method of skirting that provision, placing what is known as a “redbox” on their campaign websites.
Redboxes include messages with very specific language and images designed to send signals to a PAC that may be putting together an ad campaign on a candidate’s behalf – or to attack a candidate’s opponent. These messages and images often turn up in the PAC’s ads.
That was the case in Maryland in 2024, when the United Democracy Project, a political action committee affiliated with the pro-Israel powerhouse organization AIPAC, spent more than $4 million boosting now-U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-3rd) in a crowded open-seat primary, often using images from Elfreth’s campaign website for its TV ads and mailers.
The message on Boafo’s website – which is literally bound by red lines creating a box – references his support from Hoyer in the primary, suggesting that the images and messaging could be used in pro-Boafo literature and digital ads. Images from Boafo’s redbox are also appearing in the ads from Protect Progress, the pro-crypto PAC.
“The practice of redboxing is an effort to coordinate,” said Saurav Ghosh, director for federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, a national election reform group. “It’s an effort to send instructions and guidance from the original campaign to the outside group … Its meaning is like a secret message among these folks.”
Ghosh said the practice, which has become “more blatant” in recent election cycles, is being ignored by the FEC. The agency in 2022 dismissed a case from the 2020 election that challenged a U.S. Senate candidate’s use of a redbox, and now scores of congressional candidates are taking advantage, campaign finance advocates say.
“It’s open season,” Ghosh said. “There’s no concern at all about the regulator holding anyone accountable.”
Baker’s website also features a redbox, which touts his experience and ability to take on the Trump administration. It offers 13 still photos, 10 minutes of video of Baker with voters and, as in Boafo’s redbox, specific messages that should be delivered to particular voting groups and the priority of each.
Baker’s redbox may be an attempt to send a message to With Honor, a bipartisan organization that supports military veterans and recently endorsed Baker, a former Army reservist. With Honor has three registered federal fundraising committees, but none shows any independent expenditures on Baker’s behalf so far.
None of the other candidates in the 5th District race has a redbox on their campaign website.
On Capitol Hill, the Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii), would target redboxing by establishing clear legal standards for the FEC to assess and determine whether there’s coordination between a campaign and an outside political entity. But the bill has gone nowhere in the past two Congresses.
Congressional campaigns generally refuse to speak publicly about the redboxes on their websites, and neither the Boafo nor the Baker campaigns directly answered questions about their use of redboxes.
Boafo on his campaign website vows to overturn Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that unleashed record sums of “dark money” political spending, and to “reduce the influence of unlimited corporate money in our elections.”
Foes oppose PAC donations
Dunn’s national celebrity as a pro-democracy advocate since the Jan. 6 ransacking of the Capitol has helped stock his campaign coffers this year, with individual donations from across the country, just as he did when he ran against Elfreth in 2024.
Late last month, he called on his foes to reject PAC money and other special interest contributions and work to stop coordination between campaigns and unaffiliated PACs. But it was clear that his message was aimed at Boafo and possibly Baker, even though he didn’t name them.
“I spent 15 years protecting the Capitol and defending our democracy,” Dunn said in a statement. “I’ve seen firsthand what happens when powerful interests think the rules don’t apply to them – and I’ve seen what it costs when they don’t.”
Another 5th District Democratic candidate, firefighter and small business owner Harry Jarin, who was in the race before Hoyer announced his retirement and has been highly critical of the outgoing incumbent, has also targeted Boafo’s supporters and donors – without naming him.
“We can’t let Maryland be represented by an AIPAC-aligned Big Tech lobbyist,” Jarin, who is Jewish, said recently on social media.
Prince George’s County Councilmember Wala Blegay, another Democrat in the race, features her opposition to corporate PAC money prominently on her campaign website – and goes so far as to call for public financing of congressional campaigns to avoid special interest influence.
The AIPAC question
A big question in the 5th District primary has been whether AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, would wade in on Boafo’s behalf, as it did in Elfreth’s race in 2024 and in now-Rep. Glenn Ivey’s victory in Maryland’s 4th District two years earlier, dumping millions into both races.
Among congressional Democrats, Hoyer has been one of AIPAC’s staunchest allies through the years. (Elfreth, who once interned for Hoyer, gave Boafo $1,000 through her leadership PAC, Don’t Give Up the Ship.)
United Democracy Project’s media office did not respond to a request for comment. AIPAC played in a quartet of Democratic congressional primaries in Illinois earlier this year, but it entered those races fairly late – and created new entities with local sounding names, like Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now!, to boost its favored candidates or attack its political foes.
Even if AIPAC isn’t involved in the 5th District primary yet, other pro-Israel organizations are active in the race.
The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC (DMFI), which bills itself as “the voice of pro-Israel Democrats,” recently donated $1,000 to Boafo. Its president, Brian Romick – a former Hoyer chief of staff – also contributed $1,000 to Boafo’s campaign.
The left-wing news website Zeteo, which is harshly critical of the Netanyahu regime, recently asserted that DMFI is an AIPAC-aligned organization providing cover for Democrats who don’t want to accept AIPAC money.
Other political action committees identified as pro-Israel by the website Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics, have contributed to Boafo’s campaign, including the Phoenix-based Grand Canyon State Caucus ($3,000); Coral Gables, Florida-based SunPAC ($3,000); Los Angeles-based Citizens Organized PAC ($3,000); Highland Park, Illinois-based CITYPAC ($3,000); and Skokie, Illinois-based To Protect Our Heritage PAC ($5,000).
Some of AIPAC’s top supporters are also Boafo donors, including former AIPAC President Gary Frischling, an attorney from Santa Monica, California ($2,000), and Hillary Kapner, a Bethesda-based fundraising consultant for nonprofits who is an AIPAC board member ($3,500).
Some of Boafo’s other core financial support comes from the tech giant Oracle Corp. Since 2021, Boafo has been a D.C.-based lobbyist for the company, and several Oracle executives and in-house lobbyists are supporting his campaign – contributing $45,250 collectively. One of the donors, Josh Pitcock, the company’s senior vice president of government affairs, was a chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.
Oracle’s profile has been elevated in recent months. The company’s CEO, Larry Ellison, is a supporter of President Donald Trump. His son, David Ellison, last year purchased a media company whose assets include CBS, and under his ownership the network’s news division has moved conspicuously to the right.
In an interview with WAMU last week, Boafo said he doesn’t know Larry Ellison personally and insisted he has mostly focused on tech literacy as an Oracle lobbyist, rather than the company’s more high-profile priorities, like building more data centers and limiting regulation of AI technologies.
On Friday, four of Boafo’s opponents – Baker, Blegay, Jarin and Bareebe – issued a joint statement calling on Boafo to publicly denounce his employer’s involvement in supporting ICE operations and to return campaign contributions tied to Oracle’s top executives.
Boafo’s play
Boafo, the son of immigrants from Ghana, has a compelling life story, and despite his youth has already spent four years in the legislature after serving three years on the Bowie City Council. While he has yet to amass a robust list of legislative accomplishments, he has skillfully managed to place himself in the center of several consequential policy debates in Annapolis, and clearly has observed how power works, on Capitol Hill and in the State House.
His recent endorsements from the National Education Association and the Maryland State Education Association, alongside the endorsements of Alsobrooks and Moore, are meaningful in this primary.
But in such a large field, with almost none of the candidates very well known, relying on Hoyer’s support and sway is the best play – and perhaps the only play – Boafo has to break out of the pack.
Hoyer, whose political career dates back to 1966 and includes 45 years in Congress, is nothing short of an icon, in Maryland and on Capitol Hill. His list of achievements and his sphere of influence are undeniable.
Yet Hoyer very much represents the old way of doing business in Democratic politics, buttressed by well-funded political insiders. Fifth District Democratic voters will soon decide whether they want to see that philosophy extended to the next generation of political leaders.