The Left’s Plot to Take Over Election Administration: Clerk Work

The Left’s “Dark Money” Plot to Take Over Election Administration (full series)
Power of Election Officials | Clerk Work
U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence | Big Tech Funding

Clerk Work

Run for Something announced the Clerk Work program in April, with the plan to spend $80 million over three years to recruit and train 5,000 candidates from 35 states to run for local offices that have a role in election administration.

Run for Something, founded in 2017, recruits liberal Democrat candidates under the age of 40 for state and local political offices. But the organization imposes a litmus test for candidates to be endorsed for any office—and most of these have nothing to do with a candidate’s ability to run a clean and efficient election.

Run for Something demands any candidate receiving its endorsement support liberal policies such as government-controlled health care, providing legal status to illegal immigrants, environmental regulation, unrestrictive abortion laws, gun control, and labor-union supported policies.

Amanda Litman, the email director for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, and Ross Morales Rocketto, a Democrat Party consultant, launched Run for Something in 2017 out of what they called “anger and exasperation.” Litman, who also worked for the pro-Obama Organizing for America, said that Run for Something’s mission was to “develop a progressive-leadership pipeline and discover a potential president from its expanding candidate pool.”

Run for Something has partnered with liberal organizations such as Indivisible, Sister District, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Organizing for Action, Emily’s List, and People for the American Way.

Litman told the Washington Post regarding the project, “You can influence quite literally who is administering elections,” and added: “If we don’t do it, we are absolutely going to regret it.”

In July, Litman tweeted about local Republican election officials in New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania questioning election outcomes, and said,

This is why @runforsomething‘s Clerk Work program is so important: The next phase of election subversion & coup attempts will start with local elected officials.

In the months since opening, Clerk Work recruited 300 candidates to run for offices overseeing elections—200 of the candidates in battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Nevada. However, co-founder Rocketto complained donors were not showing much enthusiasm. “We could have done more if the funding had come in quicker,” he said.

Rocketto contends Democrats have to fight back, pointing to former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s comments from December 2021, “We are going to take over the election apparatus. American citizens are volunteering,” Bannon said, adding, “They are going to volunteer to become a precinct committeeman. They are going to volunteer to become an election official. They are going to come and run for county clerk and overthrow those [incumbent] county clerks.”

Whatever one thinks of Bannon or his bluster about “We are going to take over the election apparatus,” he described a public call for supporters to volunteer for election worker positions and to run for office. That’s quite different than a nationally organized, well-financed effort to get activists elected as election supervisors.

“Propping up partisan operatives to serve as election clerks will not solve our election integrity issues, and it definitely will not restore confidence in our electoral system on either side of the aisle,” Rep. Mike Garcia, a California Republican, and co-chairman of the House Election Integrity Caucus, told the Daily Signal. “It’s going to take careful consideration and deliberate debate on these matters to improve election integrity and bolster faith in our elections.”

The Money Behind Run for Something

If there is a discernable link between Run for Something and the forces behind the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence it would be $10,000 in donations from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Run for Something.

But that is far from the largest donor to the organization.

LinkedIn’s political arm gave $250,000 to Run for Something, according to Open Secrets, which monitors political donations. The 501(c)(4) group Onward Together, founded in 2017 by Hillary Clinton, gave $100,000 to Run for Something. Act Blue, a PAC devoted to electing Democrats nationally, gave $50,000 to Run for Something.

The political arm of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, contributed $37,775 to Run for Something. The political arm of Apple Inc. gave $16,450, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees gave $10,000, according to Open Secrets.

In the next installment, CTCL forms the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a coalition of left-leaning election “reform” groups.