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PODCAST

Follow the Power

Carrie Clendening

Hi, I’m Carrie, and I’m what happens when someone spends 15+ years inside the government machine, gets a fancy public policy degree, becomes a parent, and decides that polite silence is overrated. carrieclendening.substack.com

government

All Episodes

17:41

We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

Follow the Power ·

2025/12/23

Today, we need to talk about closed primaries. More specifically: what happened in West Virginia, why the Republican Party closed their primary to no party affiliation voters, and the very strange follow-up that basically amounted to, “We don’t want your voice — but hey, join our team.” Okay, let’s get into it.So, first things first: terminology. This is boring but important, so stay with me for a second. In West Virginia there is no “Independent” registration box. When you don’t check Republican or

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25:46

RE-RELEASE WELCOME TO PERMANENT CAMPAIGN MODE

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2025/12/23

Season 1* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover Strategy* Article 6 - The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear Ranked Ballots*

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9:04

An Open Letter to the Leaders Who Chose the Low Road

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2025/12/22

Dear Senators, Representatives, Executives, Pundits, and Assorted Architects of Our Current Nightmare,I’m writing this on December 22, 2025. Three days before Christmas. The end of a year that felt less like twelve months and more like a slow-motion car crash we were all forced to watch while somehow also being inside the car.I’m writing it as a parent. I’m writing it exhausted—not the normal exhausted, the kind that doesn’t go away with sleep, the kind that’s settled into my bones like a second

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7:10

The Political Economy of Plastic Crap: Why I Almost...

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2025/12/20

Listen, nobody asked me to become the person who explains why a fourth-grade holiday party is actually a microcosm of late-stage capitalist failure, and honestly, I wish I didn’t have to be that person. But I was standing in a Five Below on Thursday, vibrating with a specific frequency of rage usually reserved for cable news chyrons, and I realized I can’t let you walk into this blind.I had a “State of the Union” breakdown. It didn’t happen in a briefing room or a lecture hall. It happened while

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11:36

Field-Guide - Narratives vs. Systems Thinking: A...

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2025/12/13

A note on why I am publishing this now: I have had a number of people reach out wanting to engage with this work—to collaborate, to contribute, to produce their own analysis in a similar vein. I appreciate the interest. It is validating to know this work reaches people.However, I have also observed a pattern. Many who are attracted to systems analysis are not yet equipped to do it. They have absorbed the conclusions and the vocabulary, but not the methodology. Engaging with them—gently redirecting,

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17:21

How “Team Mooney” and “Team Morrisey” Weaponized...

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2025/12/12

The 2024 West Virginia election cycle wasn’t just another primary season—it was a masterclass in campaign finance innovation. Two federal Joint Fundraising Committees quietly transformed obscure county party organizations into powerhouse financial vehicles, flooding rural committees with six-figure transfers from Major League Baseball owners and national conservative donors.This is the story of how “Team Mooney” and “Team Morrisey” turned Morgan and Upshur Counties into something their founders

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8:13

The Inherited Resentment: Understanding the Scars of...

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2025/12/11

My father once told me something that stopped me cold.He said the coal miners of West Virginia were treated like property. That they were bought and sold, worked until they broke, and discarded when they had nothing left to give. And then he said something harder: that nobody cares about their suffering the way they care about others’.It was a controversial comparison—miners to slaves—and I bristled at it. But sitting with his words over the years, I’ve come to understand something important. He

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11:22

Why Journalists Miss Almost Everything

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2025/12/10

I’ve spent several years investigating how West Virginia’s government was systematically captured by out-of-state interests. In that time, I’ve watched dozens of legitimate news stories break about the same ecosystem I’m documenting—and I’ve watched almost all of them miss the point entirely.Not because the journalists were lazy. Not because they were biased. Not even because they lacked resources.They missed it because they were trained to see narratives, and what they were looking at was a

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29:27

A Forensic Autopsy of the Americans for Prosperity...

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2025/12/05

The Laboratory of OligarchyWest Virginia, historically the battleground of labor rights and the engine of American industrialization, has been repurposed. It is no longer merely a state struggling with post-industrial transition; it has become a “laboratory of oligarchy,” a testing ground where national special interest groups, funded by untraceable capital, deploy radical policy experiments that dismantle the public commons to benefit a distant donor class. The Americans for Prosperity-West

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19:04

Buckley v. Valeo: The 1976 Decision That Built...

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2025/12/03

Season 1This article is part of my ongoing series on the machinery of American politics. Previous articles:* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election

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11:58

The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear...

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2025/11/22

The Math That Terrifies Ideological PACsLet me show you the one reform that makes professional political operatives lose sleep: ranked-choice voting in open primaries. Not because it’s some democracy-saving miracle cure—it’s not. But because it fundamentally breaks the mathematical model that ideological PACs have perfected.Here’s the dirty secret: In closed primaries with low turnout, you need about 6-8% of eligible voters to win. That’s it. Six percent. That’s not democracy; that’s a rounding

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44:52

Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in...

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2025/11/20

Cleta Mitchell, the Trump attorney who participated in the notorious January 2, 2021 Georgia phone call, has built a nationwide election infrastructure that transforms election denialism into tangible policy changes through carefully cultivated relationships with state officials like West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner. Their partnership exemplifies how the Conservative Partnership Institute creates "parallel governing infrastructure" that coordinates national strategy with state

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11:15

The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over...

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2025/11/19

Let me tell you how democracy actually dies. Not with jackboots and manifestos. With spreadsheets and Super PACs.You want to know why your congressman sounds like he’s reading from a script written by someone who’s never set foot in your district? Because he essentially is. The script’s authors are sitting in D.C. offices funded by billionaires you’ve never heard of, running ideological PACs that have turned primaries into auction houses where democracy goes to the highest bidder.Here’s what nobody

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25:36

How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why...

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2025/11/19

Season 1Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign ModeArticle 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of PropagandaArticle 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over PrimariesArticle 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery MattersArticle 5: Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover StrategyWest Virginia has become the most visible example of this system in America. Here’s what you need

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25:46

WELCOME TO PERMANENT CAMPAIGN MODE

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2025/11/14

Season 1Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign ModeArticle 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of PropagandaArticle 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over PrimariesArticle 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery MattersArticle 5: Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover StrategyThe System That Now Runs American PoliticsSomething fundamental shifted in American politics, and

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12:50

The Chilling Effect: How Dark Money Turns Elections...

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2025/10/22

In my article, “Big Pharma’s Dark Money Network in West Virginia,” we rolled up our sleeves and did the hard work of following the money. We started with a single, misleading political ad and pulled the thread, tracing it from a generically named Super PAC through state and federal databases, right to the doorstep of the dark money nonprofits that serve as the financial intermediaries for powerful corporate interests. We exposed the “how.”Now, it’s time to talk about the “why.”This Substack is

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30:06

The Perfect Storm: How Dark Money Engineered Three...

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2025/10/12

On April 15, 2025, Governor Patrick Morrisey stood in Ripley Elementary School surrounded by fifth-graders and signed Senate Bill 199 into law. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Amy Grady—herself an elementary school teacher—smiled for the cameras. It was a feel-good moment: a teacher-legislator helping other teachers deal with disruptive students.What the cameras didn’t capture was the invisible hand that had been orchestrating this moment for years. Behind the wholesome optics stood a sophisticated

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5:39

The Political Circus Has Left the Building (And Took...

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2025/10/10

Remember when political parties actually stood for different things? When “Republican” and “Democrat” meant something beyond which color tie someone wears while disappointing you?Those days are dead. Murdered. Buried in a shallow grave marked “Thoughts and Prayers.”Here’s what we’ve got instead:Republicans roll up promising “parental rights” and “fiscal responsibility” while schools can’t afford tissues. They’re out here defending your right to have opinions about education while systematically

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44:06

The Koch-ALEC Pipeline: How Dark Money Rigged West...

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2025/10/09

West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program, celebrated as the nation’s first “universal” education voucher system, was not a grassroots West Virginia innovation. It was the product of a sophisticated national dark money network connecting the Koch family foundations, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), and donor anonymity organizations like DonorsTrust—a coordinated infrastructure that funnels millions through untraceable channels to state legislators and advocacy groups. Americans for

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61:47

Morrisey for Attorney General 2012 Debt: How Campaign...

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2025/10/06

Patrick Morrisey carried more campaign debt longer than any politician in West Virginia history—and energy companies that bankrolled his debt retirement now benefit from his policies as governor. Over 13 years, Morrisey transformed personal campaign loans into a continuous fundraising pipeline connecting him to coal, gas, and utility executives while systematically dismantling environmental protections as Attorney General and expanding fossil fuel dominance as Governor. His signature 50x50 Plan,

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