Democracy Alliance

I have a piece in the American Spectator: Soros Election-Rigging Project Dies? The mysterious disappearance of the Secretary of State Project.

Here is how it begins:

Soros Election-Rigging Project Dies?

By Matthew Vadum

The mysterious disappearance of the Secretary of State Project.

Whatever happened to the left-wing Secretary of State Project liberals promised would save our elections from the dirty tricks of those dang lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered Republicans?

The evidence now suggests that the election-stealing, George Soros-funded so-called “527″ political committee is dead, or perhaps just deeply sedated. This group that section 527 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code allows to accept unlimited financial contributions was created solely to rig elections for Democrats.

It accomplishes this by electing permissive liberal Democrats as secretaries of state. In most states the secretary of state is the chief elections officer, so putting left-wingers in the often-overlooked but critically important office allows these political radicals to manipulate the electoral process. This is what liberals call “election protection.”

Billionaire donor Soros, whom Saturday Night Live has mocked as the “owner” of the Democratic Party, underwrote the Secretary of State Project in order to help Democrats gain an unfair advantage on Election Day. Soros and progressives all across the fruited plain believe with a religious fervor that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell). [...]

Read the whole thing at the American Spectator.

I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Times.

It begins

George Soros’ Democracy Alliance, an invitation-only club for billionaire leftist political donors, has decided to drown Democrats and President Obama’s re-election campaign in an ocean of cash this year. Democracy Alliance, founded in 2005, is a financial clearinghouse that recommends to its wealthy members projects and groups aimed at transforming America into a European-style socialist state. The secretive group has directed untold hundreds of millions of dollars to left-of-center causes.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Soros, he is the pre-eminent funder of the left in the United States. He openly favors American decline and has said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now.” The radical, anti-American philanthropist praises China effusively, saying the totalitarian nation has “a better-functioning government than the United States.” Mr. Soros already has begun doling out funds for Democrats. In the 2012 cycle, he has given a modest $203,500, but that number promises to rise exponentially.

Democracy Alliance’s original mission was to focus on building political infrastructure – think tanks, activist groups, leadership schools and media outlets – to help the left gain and keep power. The idea was to focus on long-term organizational issues as opposed to the more mundane task of helping Democrats get elected every election cycle.

But political expediency has forced a stunning course correction that is causing deep fissures in Democracy Alliance that ultimately may destroy it. On one side of an internal divide are Democracy Alliance members who believe in the original mission of the donors’ collaboration.

Soros doppelganger Peter B. Lewis, who helped found the group with Mr. Soros, thinks Democracy Alliance has become far too partisan. In a crushing blow to the club, the Progressive Insurance magnate, who spent $25 million in 2004 in a failed attempt to defeat President George W. Bush, reportedly resigned from Democracy Alliance in disgust weeks ago.

“Peter’s focus since 2004 has been on scaling up the progressive infrastructure, as opposed to election or political candidates,” a source told Politico last month.

To read the rest of it, click here.

Left-wing billionaire Peter B. Lewis has quit the Democracy Alliance, an exclusive club of billionaire Democrat donors.

Along with George Soros, Lewis has been with the group ever since it was founded in the wake of the 2004 election.

I last profiled the Democracy Alliance in December 2008.

George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that aims to turn America into Greece, has a new project.

It’s called New Media Ventures.

This is its self-description from the “about” page on its website:

New Media Ventures is the first national network of early stage investors who are investing their time and money into new, cutting edge, start-ups focused on building progressive change. Members join to learn more about opportunities that they couldn’t find anywhere else.

It is a pilot project of the Democracy Alliance, a partnership of changemakers committed to strengthening democracy by investing in and fostering collaboration among progressive leaders and institutions. Launched in 2005, the Democracy Alliance has emerged as one of the largest drivers of progressive activist funding in the country.

New Media Ventures is directed by Christie George. The advisory board consists of:

• John Johnson, Co-Founder, Buzzfeed.com
• Mike Mathieu, Founder, FrontSeat.org
• Rob McKay, Democracy Alliance Board Chair
• James Rucker, Co-Founder, Citizen Engagement Lab
• John Schwartz, Founder, Free Speech TV
• Felicia Wong, Senior Vice President Investment Services, Democracy Alliance

Ultimately, New Media Ventures aims to help investors support projects that increase citizen engagement and participation, creating lasting social change.

Ahem. I think they mean socialist change.

The George Soros-led billionaires’ club that wants to transform America into a European-style socialist leviathan had a post-election meeting a few days ago, according to Sam Stein of the Huffington Post.

At a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive causes, voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president.

The Hungarian-American financier was speaking to a small side gathering of donors who had convened in Washington D.C. for the annual gathering of the Democracy Alliance — a formal community of well-funded, progressive-minded individuals and activists.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is “used to fighting losing battles but doesn’t like to lose without fighting.”

“We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line,” he said, according to several Democratic sources. “And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.” [...]

Apparently these super-rich leftists are still in deep denial.

A source attending the meeting said participants were expressing frustration about the fact that “we just came out of an election where the right wing and the Republicans distorted what was going on.”

I know it’s becoming a cliche, but these people just don’t get it.

According to a Canadian nonprofit, Drummond Pike, CEO of the San-Francisco-based Tides Foundation, an innovative leftwing grantmaker, has resigned as head of the group he founded 34 years ago.

A little-known benefactor to radical activist groups, Pike achieved notoriety in 2008 when he personally contributed $700,000 to help coverup and compensate the radical community organizing group ACORN for a nearly $1 million embezzlement by ACORN financial officer Dale Rathke. Dale Rathke is the brother of Pike’s friend Wade Rathke, who founded ACORN and was a founding board member of Tides. 

Tides has achieved reknown for revolutionizing the way money is gathered and distributed to left-leaning groups. The Tides Foundation maintains some 300 donor-advised funds. In 2008 it accepted $114 million from individual and foundation donors and made 1800 grants totaling $105 million. The Tides Center, a spin-off group, acts as a “fiscal sponsor” lending its management and fundraising skills and, more importantly, its tax-exempt status, to new and inexperienced activist organizations that are treated as Tides “projects” for legal and tax purposes.

Capital Research Center will examine Tides in its forthcoming October Foundation Watch publication. Word of Pike’s resignation reached us after our press deadline

According to a press release Pikes’ successor is Tides board member Melissa L. Bradley,  president and founder of New Capitalist, a venture capital firm.

My work on the Democracy Alliance is highlighted in the Weekly Standard.

Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer’s article is called The Party’s Over: The Colorado Model goes national.

There’s an extraordinary new book out that explains Democrats’ long-term strategy for winning and maintaining power.

It’s called The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans EVERYWHERE Should Care), by journalist Adam Schrager and former Colorado state Rep. Rob Witwer.

Drawing in part on the work of Capital Research Center, the book explores in depth the efforts of the Democracy Alliance, a donors’ consortium made up of left-wing millionaires and billionaires such as George Soros and Progressive Insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis. The mission of the low-profile Democracy Alliance is to build a lasting political infrastructure of think tanks, activist groups, leadership schools, and media outlets to help the left gain and keep power.

It was created after Democrats failed to reclaim power in the 2004 election — despite favorable polls and record contributions by high-dollar donors.

The Democracy Alliance, which counts both SEIU and AFL-CIO as institutional members, helped Democrats give Republicans a shellacking in 2008. Now it’s organizing state-level chapters in at least 19 states, and once-conservative Colorado, which hosts the Democracy Alliance’s most successful state affiliate, has turned Democrat blue. Colorado funders such as heiress Patricia Stryker, technology tycoons Tim Gill (Quark Xpress) and Rutt Bridges, poured money into state-level projects and it paid off. (Jared Polis, now a Democratic congressman representing Boulder, Colo., was also involved but it’s unclear if he is or was an actual member of CoDA — Colorado Democracy Alliance.)

The national Democracy Alliance funds key institutions on the left: Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, Catalist, People for the American Way, EMILY’s List, (the now-dissolving) ACORN, and the Secretary of State Project which has helped elect the chief electoral officials in at least nine states.

The Democracy Alliance’s ultra-secretive “Committee on States” project has office space in SEIU’s D.C. headquarters a few blocks away from here in Dupont Circle.

To get a 35% discount (excluding shipping and handling) order the book through the publisher. The telephone number for Fulcrum Books is: 1-800-992-2908. The discount code is “Blueprint1″.

Art collector and retired plastics executive Stefan T. Edlis has been discovered to be a member of the ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance, a George Soros-led left-wing billionaires’ club that wants to turn America into socialist Europe.
 
His foundation, Edlis-Neeson Foundation NFP, funneled $200,000 to the Democracy Alliance via the Tides Foundation in 2008, according to the foundation’s 2008 tax return. See page 16 of the return available here.

I was tipped off to this several hours ago but it looks like my friend David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner beat me to the punch.

The document “National Progressive and Party Infrastructure,” purporting to have been co-written by Rob Stein of the Democracy Alliance, offers new information on how the left is trying to create a permanent left-wing political infrastructure throughout the nation.

Freddoso’s initial observations:

Among the more interesting nuggets:

The mention on page 10 of the “Independent Coordinating Entity: America Votes” under which 40 different groups are “working together to coordinate their independent electoral activity.”
The Atlas Project, which has compiled a database of more than 100,000 campaign documents. This will mean that future liberal campaigns will not need to reinvent the wheel. AP is also involved in plans for redistricting in key states.

On page 18 us a list of groups that have become prominent with their recent television ad buys promoting one or another of President Obama’s agenda items — the Employee Free Choice Act, health insurance reform, etc.

Page 19 looks ahead to the 2010 round of redistricting and how liberal groups are becoming involved to ensure that the process is “fair.”

The document was posted by Wellstone Action, an activist group named after the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, an arch-leftist Democrat who represented Minnesota.

Post script 5 p.m.: Whoever posted the document took it down. Fortunately, I made a PDF copy of it. Read it here.