Dem Cheri Bustos Diverts Post Office Aid Cash to Own Campaign

The latest fundraising plea from Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos tells potential donors their money is desperately needed to fund struggling post offices—but every dollar raised is going straight to her campaign.

A Sunday email from Bustos, an Illinois lawmaker who was chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last cycle, painted a dire picture of operations at the USPS, and begged recipients to chip in. “We need EVERYONE reading this email to do their part to help us raise $3,420 TODAY and save USPS,” Bustos wrote in the fundraising email, pointing to an NPR report on mail delivery delays. “Please chip in $5 or whatever you can afford right now.”

Fundraising email from Friends of Cheri Bustos

Any concerned donor who clicked to help post offices, however, arrived on Bustos‘s ActBlue fundraising page, where she was pleading for money to help fight Republicans in Congress. And links to NPR’s story on mail delays didn’t lead to a news report but, rather, to the same request for contributions.

Bustos’s ActBlue fundraising page

The bizarre fundraising attempt comes as Bustos fights to cling to her House seat—after winning reelection by more than 20 percentage points in both 2016 and 2018, she won reelection this November by only about 12,000 votes.