Handbook·Money in politics

How to spot astroturf

Guide·Effort 30 minutes·Leverage MODERATE·Verified 2026-07-10

The answer

Astroturfing is a manufactured campaign, paid for and directed by a company, industry group, or political operation, built to look like spontaneous public support or opposition. The name comes from Senator Lloyd Bentsen's 1985 complaint that he could tell fake "Astroturf" from real grassroots after an insurance-industry letter drive.1 Spotting it means checking who funds a group, not just what it says.

Before you go

  • Note the group's name and any claim to represent "consumers," "working families," or a neighborhood or community interest. Generic, sympathetic names are common in documented cases, including "Consumers for Smart Solar" in Florida2 and "Working Families for Walmart."3
  • Look for a funding disclosure on the group's own site. Its absence is itself informative.
  • Check whether the group is a registered nonprofit, searchable on ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer,4 or a ballot committee, searchable on your state's campaign finance database.

The mechanics

  1. Search the organization's name plus "funding" or "who funds" in news archives, and check ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer for its Form 990, which lists revenue and sometimes major donors.4
  2. If it's a ballot-measure or election committee, search your state's campaign finance database for its donor list. Florida's "Consumers for Smart Solar" filings showed about $17 million of $22 million came from four utilities directly.2
  3. Check whether the same PR or consulting firm runs multiple "grassroots" groups. Walmart's "Working Families for Walmart" was created and staffed by its PR firm Edelman in December 2005.3
  4. For online comment campaigns, check whether the same text appears repeated with only minor edits across many submitters, the pattern the 2017 FCC docket investigation used to identify fraud.5
  5. Look for leaked internal communications or recordings, which have exposed strategy directly in past cases.6

What to look for

  • Funding that traces back to a single company or narrow industry rather than many small individual donors.
  • A PR or lobbying firm's fingerprints on multiple "independent" groups.
  • Comment or petition text that repeats near-verbatim across supposedly unrelated people.
  • Stock photography, recently created social accounts, or a website registered close to the campaign's launch date.
  • Sympathetic, vague framing, "smart," "working families," "consumers", standing in for specifics about what the group actually wants.

What happens next

Documented astroturf campaigns have led to real consequences. New York's Attorney General secured $4.4 million in 20225 and $615,000 in 20237 in settlements from firms that fabricated FCC comments. Florida's Amendment 1 still passed at the ballot box in 2016 despite the exposure, which shows that documentation doesn't always change the outcome, only the public record.

Does it work

The FCC net neutrality case is the most thoroughly investigated astroturf scandal to date, backed by a state law enforcement subpoena investigation rather than journalism alone: of more than 22 million comments filed, roughly 18 million were fake, and more than 8.5 million used real people's names and addresses without consent.5 The Florida rooftop solar case combines campaign finance records with a leaked recording of the strategy being described by an insider.6 Arizona's rooftop solar fight shows a parallel pattern of utility-linked dark money and a competing "survey" campaign.8 State-level exposure of astroturfing depends heavily on state campaign finance and ballot-committee disclosure rules, which vary widely. Utility-funded campaigns are especially visible in states with elected or contested public utility commissions, like Arizona and Florida, where utilities have a direct financial stake in ballot measures and commission races. Note that InfluenceWatch is run by the right-leaning Capital Research Center and SourceWatch by the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy.9 Both are useful for facts, funders, filings, dates, but their framing of a group's motives deserves the same caution you'd apply to any advocacy source.

Take action

Check the funding behind the next "grassroots" campaign that lands in your inbox. Check /engage for a link to your state's ballot-committee disclosure search.

Sources

  1. Merriam-Webster, "Astroturfing" definition and word history, 2026. source ↩

  2. Energy and Policy Institute, "'Consumers for Smart Solar' behind Florida's Amendment 1 collected only $10 from actual consumers," 2016. source ↩ ↩2

  3. SourceWatch, "Working Families for Wal-Mart," 2006. source ↩ ↩2

  4. ProPublica, "Nonprofit Explorer," 2026. source ↩ ↩2

  5. New York Attorney General Letitia James, "Fake Comments: How U.S. Companies & Partisans Hack Democracy," 2021. source ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Energy and Policy Institute / Miami Herald, leaked audio of James Madison Institute VP describing Florida Amendment 1 strategy, 2016. source ↩ ↩2

  7. New York Attorney General, "Attorney General James Secures $615,000 from Companies that Supplied Fake Comments to Influence FCC's Repeal of Net Neutrality Rules," 2023. source ↩

  8. Energy and Policy Institute, reporting on Arizona Public Service and the 2016 rooftop-solar ballot fight, 2016. source ↩

  9. Media Bias/Fact Check profiles of InfluenceWatch and SourceWatch; PR Watch, "'Influence Watch' Website Launched," 2017. source ↩