{
    "archive_path": "archive/1791999915.80487",
    "base_url": "www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide",
    "basename": "why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide",
    "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-14 17:45",
    "canonical": {
        "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide",
        "dom_path": "output.html",
        "favicon_path": "favicon.ico",
        "git_path": "git/",
        "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.semafor.com",
        "headers_path": "headers.json",
        "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt",
        "index_path": "index.html",
        "media_path": "media/",
        "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html",
        "pdf_path": "output.pdf",
        "readability_path": "readability/content.html",
        "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png",
        "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html",
        "warc_path": "warc/",
        "wget_path": "www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide.html"
    },
    "domain": "www.semafor.com",
    "extension": "",
    "hash": "KGBZ8E29TETBH9GGV54E",
    "history": {
        "archive_org": [],
        "dom": [],
        "favicon": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "curl",
                    "--silent",
                    "--location",
                    "--compressed",
                    "--max-time",
                    "120",
                    "--output",
                    "favicon.ico",
                    "--user-agent",
                    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                    "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.semafor.com"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                "end_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:23.428879+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "favicon.ico",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:22.822854+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "git": [],
        "headers": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "curl",
                    "--silent",
                    "--location",
                    "--compressed",
                    "--head",
                    "--max-time",
                    "120",
                    "--user-agent",
                    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                    "https://www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                "end_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:24.279892+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "headers.json",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:23.438595+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "htmltotext": [],
        "media": [],
        "mercury": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js",
                    "https://www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "1.0.0",
                "end_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:34.368214+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "mercury",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:30.463416+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "pdf": [],
        "readability": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor",
                    "/tmp/tmpjx9z76p4",
                    "https://www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "0.0.11",
                "end_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:30.450460+00:00",
                "index_texts": [
                    "Aaron Day\u2019s third-party campaign cost Republican Kelly Ayotte her Senate reelection bid in 2016. Now he\u2019s trying to take his spoiler project national.With several Senate races tight enough for an alternate candidate to make a real difference, whether they\u2019re Libertarian or another third party, Day is looking to spend as much as $2.5 million \u2014 or perhaps less, if his effort works as designed \u2014 to cost the GOP the Senate.Day\u2019s strategy is simple: Use his Stark Freedom PAC to spend relatively small amounts on online ads made with AI that boost name ID for spoiler candidates, figuring he can do just enough to hand those races to the Democrats.Republican leaders are highly skeptical of Day\u2019s efforts, but he sees a real chance at disrupting races across the country. What\u2019s more remarkable is how open he is about his goal of ending the Senate Republican majority.\u201cYou call it a spoiler campaign, I call it holding Republicans accountable,\u201d Day told Semafor in an interview. His website is equally explicit: \u201cWe fund the margin. It costs the GOP the Senate.\u201dDay is targeting eight states where he\u2019s deduced that boosting third-party candidates would hurt the Republican nominee: Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, Minnesota, South Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, and Kansas. It\u2019s a \u201cMoneyball\u201d theory of modern politics, banking on a relatively small amount of cash to mess up the margins in close contests.Nudging a third candidate\u2019s vote share up by a couple of percentage points higher, as he explained, takes a lot less money than the obscene amount needed to actually win a race.\u201cPeople are going to be shocked after the fact at how effective this is,\u201d Day said. \u201cMost voters don\u2019t know that the third-party option exists, and a lot of these candidates don\u2019t actually have money, and they\u2019re not allowed to participate in the debates.\u201dIn addition to Ayotte\u2019s 2016 New Hampshire campaign, Libertarian candidates\u2019 support boosted former Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in his 2006 and 2012 Montana races. The effect was clear in Nevada\u2019s 2024 Senate race, which Democrats narrowly won as nearly 5 percent of voters picked a candidate outside the two major parties.And no one can forget Jill Stein\u2019s Green Party spoiler effect on Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential chances in 2016.It\u2019s hard to see how giving Democrats the Senate helps advance Day\u2019s causes \u2014 which include concerns over centralized digital currencies and government surveillance via cryptocurrency legislation. But Day says he wants to check President Donald Trump through \u201cgridlock\u201d and that with Democrats in charge, the crypto market structure bill and other legislation he dislikes will continue to stall.Several Republican groups, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Leadership Fund, declined comment.While third-party hopefuls appreciate his support, their goals are different. Ted Brown, the Libertarian candidate in Texas, said he\u2019s running to win, not to cost Republicans Senate control.\u201cI\u2019m running to defeat the corrupt two-party system,\u201d Brown told Semafor. \u201cBut I would say this, if the Republicans lose the Senate on November 3: The good news is, the Republicans lost control of the Senate. The bad news is, the Democrats won control of the Senate.\u201dDay said his model would be replicable to punish a Democratic majority in the future as well, by boosting Green Party candidates to eat into their candidates\u2019 margins: \u201cI actually view this, if it works, as something that can be used to hold both major parties accountable.\u201d"
                ],
                "output": "readability",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:28.189119+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "screenshot": [],
        "singlefile": [],
        "title": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "curl",
                    "--silent",
                    "--location",
                    "--compressed",
                    "--max-time",
                    "120",
                    "--user-agent",
                    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                    "https://www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                "end_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:28.181307+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "Why one spoiler candidate is now trying to replicate his work nationwide | Semafor",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:28.137091+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "wget": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "wget",
                    "--no-verbose",
                    "--adjust-extension",
                    "--convert-links",
                    "--force-directories",
                    "--span-hosts",
                    "--no-parent",
                    "-e",
                    "robots=off",
                    "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv",
                    "--timeout=120",
                    "--restrict-file-names=windows",
                    "--page-requisites",
                    "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3",
                    "--compression=auto",
                    "--timestamping",
                    "https://www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3",
                "end_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:28.124532+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide.html",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-10-14T19:16:24.289784+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ]
    },
    "icons": null,
    "is_archived": true,
    "is_static": false,
    "latest": {
        "archive_org": null,
        "dom": null,
        "favicon": "favicon.ico",
        "git": null,
        "media": null,
        "pdf": null,
        "screenshot": null,
        "singlefile": null,
        "title": "Why one spoiler candidate is now trying to replicate his work nationwide | Semafor",
        "warc": null,
        "wget": "www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide.html"
    },
    "link_dir": "/data/archive/1791999915.80487",
    "newest_archive_date": "2026-10-14T19:16:30.463416+00:00",
    "num_failures": 0,
    "num_outputs": 6,
    "oldest_archive_date": "2026-10-14T19:16:22.822854+00:00",
    "path": "/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide",
    "schema": "Link",
    "scheme": "https",
    "snapshot_id": "8d950c83-ef0c-46dc-9a41-f714a6347629",
    "sources": [
        "/data/sources/1791999915-import.txt"
    ],
    "tags": ",war-wiki,pool,drudge",
    "tags_str": "war-wiki,pool,drudge",
    "timestamp": "1791999915.80487",
    "title": "Why one spoiler candidate is now trying to replicate his work nationwide | Semafor",
    "updated": "2026-10-14T19:16:22.822428+00:00",
    "updated_date": "2026-10-14 19:16",
    "url": "https://www.semafor.com/article/10/14/2026/why-one-spoiler-candidate-is-now-trying-to-replicate-his-work-nationwide"
}