Published July 13, 2026 · Updated with each build
Red Box Watch

A public ledger of red‑boxing — campaign‑site signals to super PACs

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Finding House · Illinois Democrat

Budzinski, Nikki FINDING

Seat
H-IL-13
Party
DEM
Universe reason
contested_primary
FEC receipts
$2,458,602 FEC
Campaign site
https://nikkiforcongress.com (unverified)
Pages scanned
168 · last 2026-07-09

Posted public messaging guidance consistent with red-boxing

Detected on https://nikkiforcongress.com/important  · classifier confidence 0.95 · model fireworks/deepseek-v4-flash

The page contains a section titled 'What Voters Need to Know' that explicitly instructs what voters should see on broadcast and streaming platforms, which is a clear media-buy directive. It also provides b-roll video and photos, which are ad assets. This combination of directive language and asset provisioning indicates the page is intended as guidance for an outside group to run ads, not as direct voter persuasion or a standard press kit.

Quoted evidence — verbatim spans from the page

  • Voters districtwide need to see on broadcast and streaming platforms that:
    Directive specifying what voters should see on paid media channels, indicating media-buy guidance.
  • B-ROLL VIDEO
    Provisioning of ad assets (b-roll) for use in paid communications.
  • PHOTOS OF NIKKI
    Provisioning of ad assets (photos) for use in paid communications.
Archived screenshot of https://nikkiforcongress.com/important
Archived at detectionFull-page screenshot of https://nikkiforcongress.com/important · Raw HTML preserved

Independent-expenditure corroboration

FEC Schedule E · 4 filings

Sequence. Messaging guidance was present on the candidate's site when detected (by us) on 2026-07-09; $167,721 in supporting independent expenditures is on file for this candidate.

Committee AmountFilingsDate range
S PROTECT PROGRESS $167,721 4 2026-02-25 – 2026-02-25

S Supporting O Opposing

Schedule E is corroboration, not the trigger — a filed expenditure is late evidence, and our detection timestamp reflects when we crawled, which can lag the actual posting. Supporting IE dated on or after our detection day: $0. Dates are FEC expenditure dates.