From Shadow Party to Shadow Government: George Soros and the Effort to Radically Change America

by John Perazzo

  39Laura Blumenfeld, "Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush," The Washington Post (November 11, 2003)

  40 www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6709

  41www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6201

  42 www.richardpoe.com/2005/10/06/part-1-the-shadow-party/

  After all these negotiations were completed, Soros agreed to an interview with the Washington Post. "America under Bush is a danger to the world," he declared. "Toppling Bush is the central focus of my life ... And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."43

  43Laura Blumenfeld, "Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush," The Washington Post (November 11, 2003)

  While Soros' investment was substantial, it was primarily a catalyst inspiring other leftwing donors to take the new network seriously. As journalist Byron York observed, "After Soros signed on, contributions started pouring in."44 America Coming Together and the Media Fund, the orga- nization designed to fight the television "air war" in the coming election, alone took in some $200 million after Soros pledged his $20 million. This type of concentrated money and focused activity was unprecedented in American politics.45

  44Byron York, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy (2005), pp. 86-87.

  45 ibid

  By early 2004, scarcely six months after the meeting at the Soros estate, the Shadow Party had taken shape. Its infrastructure was comprised of seven non-profits. In addition to America Coming Together, MoveOn.org, and Podesta's Center for American Progress, the network included America Votes,46 the Media Fund,47 Joint Victory Campaign 2004,48 and the Thunder Road Group.49 Ostensibly "independent" from each other, these organizations would work synchronously to defeat Bush and implant a progressive agenda in the Democratic Party.

  46 www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6527

  47 www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6712

  48www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofileasp?fndid=5342&category=79

  49www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6713

  The Shadow Party was the complete package. In the Center for American Progress it had a think tank to explore its important causes, especially what Soros saw as the increasing power of conservatives. (The CAP immediately launched Media Matters as an attack site to smear and discredit members of the conservative media, especially those in talk radio and cable news.50) America Votes, referred to by one of its staffers as a "monster coalition," was designed to coordinate the efforts of all the leftwing groups working at the grassroots to defeat Bush — from ACORN to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Sierra Club to the American Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union. It would manage the "ground war" against Bush, fine tuning the details down to the precinct level.

  The Joint Victory Campaign 2004, formed by onetime Clinton operative Harold Ickes Jr.,51 was the fundraising entity for the Shadow Party. It would ultimately channel more than $57 million into the Shadow Party network, $19.4 million of it to America Coming Together, which focused on high pressure tactics to register voters and get them to the polls, and another $38.4 million to the Media Fund, also created by Ickes, which would oversee the television attack ads on Bush in the battleground states.52 Eventually the Media Fund would outspend the Democratic National Committee and shape the political message of the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign.

  50 www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7150

  51www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1624

  52David Horowitz and Richard Poe, The Shadow Party (2006), p. 199-200.

  The Thunder Road Group was the nerve center of the Shadow Party and its unofficial headquarters, coordinating strategy for the Media Fund, America Coming Together, and America Votes through strategic planning, polling, and opposition research. Trial Lawyers of America; the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund; EMILY's List; the Human Rights Campaign; the League of Conservation Voters; the NAACP; NARAL Pro-Choice America; the National Education Association; People for the Amer-ican Way; Planned Parenthood; the Service Employees International Union; and the Sierra Club.53

  53 www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6527

  In addition to its seven core members, the Shadow Party also sheltered in its penumbra at least another 30 well-established leftwing activist groups and labor unions that participated in the America Votes Coalition. Among the better-known of these were ACORN; the AFL-CIO; the American Federation of Teachers; the Association of New Mexico's then-governor, Democrat Bill Richardson, observed that these groups were "crucial" to the anti-Bush effort. Because of campaignfinance reform law embodied in McCain-Feingold, Richardson observed, the organizations of the Shadow Party had become "the replacement for the national Democratic Party."54And no donor was more heavily invested in these organizations — or in defeating President Bush — than Soros, who contributed $27,080,105 of his personal funds during the 2004 election cycle.55 Campaign Finance Reform had led to the biggest infusion of money into politics in American history, and the money was directed by Soros.

  54Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, "The New Soft Money," Fortune (October 27, 2003)

  55 Byron York, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy (2005), p. 8

  In November 2004, the Shadow Party came within a few thousand votes in Ohio of pulling off a victory in the national election. But even in defeat its alteration of the American political landscape was profound. By pushing campaign finance reform, Soros had cut off the Democrats' soft money supply. By forming the Shadow Party, he had provided the Democrats with an alternative source of funding — one which he and the institutions he created controlled. He was in a position to define the agenda of the Party and also to purge it of the small minority of remaining moderates who had survived the McGovern coup of 1972 and plan for the next election to determine the American future.

  Round Two: The Democracy Alliance

  As Soros wondered what his next step should be after Bush's reelection, the answer came to him — somewhat unexpectedly — from Democrat political operative Rob Stein, who would play a central role in the "Colorado Miracle," one of the Shadow Party's greatest triumphs and an exhibit piece for its national plan.

  For the previous two years, Stein had been working in a universe that paralleled the one Soros had created for the 2004 election. Lamenting that he felt as though he was "living in a one-party country" after Republicans had gained eight House seats and two Senate seats in the 2002 midterm elections, Stein had studied the conservative movement to determine why it was winning the political battle.56 After a year of analysis, he concluded that a few influential, wealthy family foundations on the right — notably Scaife, Bradley, Olin, and Coors — had, by creating think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute and by subsidizing the work of certain intellectuals (such as Charles Murray, whose writings had touched off the movement to end welfare), managed to shape the public debate to an extent that was disproportionate to their relatively modest (and uncoordinated) investment.

  56 www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=8738

  Stein put his analysis into a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation titled "The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix," which mapped out, in painstaking if inflated detail, the conservative movement's networking strategies and funding sources.57 He showed this presentation — mostly in private meetings — to political leaders, activists, and prospective big-money donors of the left. He hoped to inspire them to join his crusade to build a new organization that would act as a financial clearinghouse dedicated to offsetting the efforts of conservative funders and injecting new life into the progressive movement.

  57www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=8738

  Stein hit pay dirt when he showed his presentation to Soros early in 2005. After seeing the presentation and talking to Stein, the billionaire staged another summit meeting that April. The venue was in Phoenix, Arizona, but otherwise it resembled the elite get-together a year and a half earlier at Soros'
Southampton estate. This time, Soros brought together 70 carefully vetted, likeminded wealthy activists who agreed that conservative politics represented "a fundamental threat to the American way of life" and were ready to do something about it.58 Thus was born the Democracy Alliance (DA).

  58 www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/15/fundraiser-seekscash-for-his-own-war-chest/print/; www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=551%20

  This would be the most exclusive of all the Shadow Party institutions. "Partners" in the Alliance, recruited on an invitation-only basis, would pay an initial $25,000 fee, and $30,000 in yearly dues thereafter. They were also required to donate at least $200,000 annually to groups the Alliance endorsed. Donors were to "pour" these requisite donations into one or more of what Rob Stein referred to as DA's "four buckets": ideas, media, leadership training, and civic engagement. The money was then to be apportioned to approved leftwing groups in each of these categories.59

  59www.democracyalliance.org/membership%20; www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=551%20

  Almost pathologically secretive about its membership, the Democracy Alliance is thought to con- sist of at least 100 donor-partners. The Capital Research Center has managed to compile the names of some of the more significant current and former DA partners, most having ties to Soros that extends beyond their shared membership in the Democracy Alliance.60 Among them are Peter Lewis, Rob Glaser and Rob McKay, early backers of America Coming Together; Tim Gill, a major funder of gay-rights groups such as the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, also supported by Soros; television producer Norman Lear, founder of People for the American Way; Tides Foundation founder and CEO Drummond Pike.

  60www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1228145204.pdf; www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=551%20

  No grants were pledged at the Democracy Alliance's April 2005 gathering in Phoenix, but at an Atlanta meeting three months later, DA partners pledged $39 million — about a third of which came from George Soros and Peter Lewis.61 Because the Alliance has largely refrained from providing information about its getting or giving, only a small percentage of its grantees are known to the public. Thus it is impossible to determine precisely how much money DA has disbursed since its founding. Most estimates, though, place the figure at more than $100 million. ("Partner" Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network, claimed in August 2008 that DA had already "channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into progressive organizations.")62 The recipients include organizations such as ACORN and Air America, the ill-fat- ed effort to create a leftwing version of talk radio, along with Shadow Party organizations such as the Center for American Progress, America Votes, and Media Matters.

  61www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=551%20

  62www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=551%20; http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1228145204.pdf

  In the three years following its founding, the Democracy Alliance would establish subchapters in many states, but its most successful effort was in Colorado, where the Colorado Democracy Alliance funded such varied enterprises as liberal think tanks, media "watchdog" groups, ethics groups that bring forth so-called public-interest litigation, voter-mobilization groups, media outlets that attack conservatives, and liberal leadership-training centers.63 The result was the "Colorado Miracle," which achieved the political equivalent of a sex change operation in turning a red state blue.

  63www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1228145204.pdf

  Radicalizing America, One Party and One State at a Time

  Just two months after the Democratic Party had won control of both houses of Congress in the November 2006 elections, George Soros and then-SEIU president Andrew Stern created Working For Us (WFU), a pro-Democrat PAC. This group does not look favorably upon Democratic centrists. Rather, it aims "to elect lawmakers who support a progressive political agenda" — code for the political left.64 WFU publishes the names of what it calls the "Top Offenders" among congressional Democrats who fail to support such leftist priorities as "living wage" legislation (a socialist program to raise the minimum wage to potentially unlimited levels), the proliferation of public-sector labor unions, and a single payer healthcare system which would exert government control over the health of all Americans. Targeting congressional Democrats whose voting records "are more conservative than their districts," WFU warns that "no bad vote will be overlooked or unpunished."65

  64www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7342

  65 Ibid

  In an effort to promote large-scale income redistribution by means of tax hikes for higher earners, WFU advocates policies that would narrow the economic gulf between the rich and poor. The group's executive director is Steven Rosenthal, a longtime Democrat operative with close ties to the Clinton administration and a cofounder of Soros' America Coming Together. According to Rosenthal, WFU "will encourage Democrats to act like Democrats — and if they don't — they better get out of the way."66

  66www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3176510

  What had taken place in Colorado was like a laboratory experiment for the Shadow Party, providing the model for similar coups it plans to stage in other "battleground" states that have experienced similar demographic changes and "cultural revolutions."

  As early as August 2005, when the Democracy Alliance was just getting off the ground, Soros' Open Society Institute designed a project called the Progressive Legislative Action Network, or PLAN, whose mandate was to furnish state legislatures with prewritten "model" legislation reflecting leftist agendas.67 A year later, three members of the Democracy Alliance took the next step in the Shadow Party's effort to gain a handhold on the levers of national power by launching a major new initiative called the Secretary of State Project (SoSP), which was set up as an independent "527 committee" devoted to helping Democrats win secretary of state elections in crucial "swing" states where the margin of victory in the 2004 presidential election had been 120,000 votes or less.68

  67Louis Jacobson, "New Organization to Push Liberal Measures," Roll Call (June 23, 2005).

  68www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1228145204.pdf; www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7487

  Why the focus on the Secretary of State, traditionally considered one of the least important jobs in state government? Because whoever fills this position serves as the chief election officer who certifies candidates as well as election results in his or her state.69 The holder of this office, then, can potentially play a decisive role in determining the winner of a close election.

  69www.azsos.gov/info/duties.htm

  The idea for the Secretary of State Project had germinated shortly after the 2004 election, when the Shadow Party blamed then-Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, for John Kerry's defeat. Blackwell had ruled that Ohio, which provided George W. Bush's electoral victory (by a relatively slim 118,599-vote margin), would not count provisional ballots — even those submitted by properly registered voters — if they had been submitted at the wrong precinct. Though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ultimately upheld Blackwell's decision, the Secretary of State Project's founding members received the ruling with the same bitterness they had felt about the Florida recount which Vice President Al Gore lost to George Bush in the 2000 election, and which was handled by Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Summing up their attitudes, political analyst Matthew Vadum wrote that the Secretary of State Project's leaders and foot soldiers alike "religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 ... and in Ohio in 2004."70

  70 http://spectator.org/archives/2008/11/07/sos-in-minnesota

  To establish "election protection" against similar outcomes in subsequent political races, the Secretary of State Project targeted its funding efforts in 2006 on the secretary-of-state races in seven swing states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, and Michigan.71 USA Today saw
the development, even if it didn't catch sight of the shadowy machinery that had produced it: "The political battle for control of the federal government has opened up a new front: the obscure but vital state offices that determine who votes and how those votes are counted."72

  71 http://spectator.org/archives/2008/11/07/sos-in-minnesota

  72www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-16-secretary-statedemocrats_x.htm

  Because of the relatively mundane nature of most of the Secretary of State's duties, candidates for that office tend to draw fewer (and small donations than do most state-level campaigns. Consequently, even a modest injection of cash from just a handful of dedicated and savvy donors can tip the scales.73 In 2006, SoSP raised a total of $500,000 for the secretary-of-state candidates whom it supported — a small amount by traditional political fundraising standards, but a weighty amount in comparison to the sums that such can- didates had typically garnered in the past. Democrats emerged victorious in five of those seven targeted races — failing only in Michigan and Colorado (where they won two years later as part of the "Miracle"). Politico.com saw the meaning of the Secretary of State Project when it characterized it as "an administrative firewall" designed, "in anticipation of a photo-finish presidential election," to protect Democrats' "electoral interests in ... the most important battleground states."74

  73 http://spectator.org/archives/2008/11/07/sos-in-minnesota

  74 www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/15105.html

  One beneficiary of Secretary of State Project funding in 2006 was Democrat Jennifer Brunner of Ohio, who defeated the Shadow Party's bête noire, incumbent Republican Ken Blackwell. Brunner went on to make her influence felt in several ways during the 2008 election cycle. She ruled, for instance, that Ohio residents should be permitted, during the designated early-voting period extending from late September to early October, to register and vote on the same day.75 Brunner also sought to effectively invalidate many of the approximately one million absentee-ballot applications that Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign had issued. Each of those applications had been printed with a checkbox next to a statement affirming that the voter was a qualified elector. In an effort designed to suppress Republican absentee votes, Brunner maintained that if a registrant failed to check the box — even if he or she signed the form — the application could be rejected. (The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently overturned Brunner's directive on grounds that it served "no vital purpose or public interest.")76