A national anti-immigration group has been running ads on Alaska TV stations, attacking U.S. Senator Mark Begich for his overtures in favor of immigration reform. The Democratic Party of Alaska responded by exposing the group’s controversial founder and its connections to nativist radicals who have been labeled racists by civil rights activists. The group, called NumbersUSA, has been credited for stopping immigration reform for years, including reforms proposed by the George W. Bush administration in 2007.

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The ads are not the first from an independent political group against the senator, and they won’t be the last. Independent organizations that run so-called issue ads are barely accountable in American politics, particularly after the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision upended decades of campaign finance reporting law and gave corporate entities free speech rights similar to those of individual people.

“It is the tide of what’s coming,” said Susanne Fleek, the state director for Begich’s Alaska offices. “If you find one billionaire who is willing to fund your campaign then you can run ads all over the country—Senator Begich isn’t concerned about what one extreme group in Washington D.C. thinks, he want to know what Alaskans think.”