news.yahoo.com/s/washpost/rich_liberals_vow_to_fund_think_tanks
Washington Post Staff Writer Sun Aug 7, 1:00 AM ET At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or mor e apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past thre e decades.
Click Here The money will be channeled through a new partnership called the Democrac y Alliance, which was founded last spring -- the latest in a series of l iberal initiatives as the Democratic Party and its allies continue to st ruggle with the loss of the House and the Senate in 1994 and the preside ncy in 2000. Many influential Democratic contributors were left angry an d despairing over the party's poor showing in last year's elections, and are looking for what they hope will be more effective ways to invest th eir support. Financial commitments totaling at least $80 million over the next five ye ars generated by the Democracy Alliance in recent months -- at a time wh en some liberal groups, such as the George Soros-backed America Coming T ogether, are floundering -- suggest that the group is becoming a player in the long-term effort to reinvigorate the left. The group has a goal o f raising $200 million -- a sum that would inevitably come in part at th e expense of more traditional Democratic groups, although alliance offic ials say donors have committed to maintaining past contribution levels.
"Among the lessons learned was that to bri ng back the progressive majority in this country is not just a periodic election investment strategy." The Democracy Alliance will act as a financial clearing house. Its staff members and board of directors will develop a lineup of established and proposed groups that they believe will develop and promote ideas on the left. To fulfill their million-dollar pledge, each partner must agree to give $200,000 or more a year for at least five years to alliance-endors ed groups. The alliance is the brainchild of longtime Democratic strategist Rob Stei n, who spent years studying conservative groups -- in particular their s uccess in sustaining GOP politicians and achieving many of their policy goals. Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, is workin g with Stein and is a leading promoter of his effort. Rosenberg said liberals and Democrats now face a conservative "informatio n-age Tammany Hall, a 21st century political machine, that is simply bet ter than what we have on our side. "The infrastructure we have was built for a different time and mission. I t was built around the congressional majority we had for 60 years in the 20th century, the labor movement and the urban-ethnic city machines," h e added. As alliance officials see it, many liberal groups are designed to protect an agenda that was enacted by past Democratic majorities -- as opposed to generating new ideas and communication strategies to win support from voters who do not belong to labor or other traditionally Democratic con stituencies. The goal of the alliance, according to organizers, is to foster the growt h of liberal or left-leaning institutions equipped to take on prominent think tanks on the right, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, a s well as such training centers as the Leadership Institute and the Youn g America's Foundation. Almost all the alliance partners have been active donors of the Democrati c Party and liberal interest groups. Many said they have concluded that their spending to date has lacked strategic coherence. "There never has been an organized or coordinated look at connecting the dots of the progressive movement," said San Francisco businessman Mark B uell. He and his wife, Esprit de Corps founder Susie T Buell, are major Democratic donors. Mark Buell, an alliance board member, said: "For 40 years, we had a voice somewhere, the White House, Congress, the Senate. "To be effective in the 21st century in promoting your beliefs, it is nec essary to have a financially secure institutional infrastructure that ha s the capacity to promote consistently and coherently a set of ideas, po licies and messages," Stein said. "We understand that it's very hard to promote a belief system and to be operationally high performing if you d on't have multi-year funding." The shift of big money givers to the alliance poses a threat to the survi val of such pro-Democratic independent groups as America Coming Together and the Media Fund. ACT recently announced that it is closing state offices and laying off most staff members. Democrati c sources said its long-term survival is in doubt. Soros, the billionaire financier, was the most prominent backer of the 20 04 Democratic groups, but he has assumed only a modest role in the Democ racy Alliance. There has been a flourishing of new, pro-Democratic think tanks and advoc acy groups in recent years. former Democrati c congressional aide David Sirota recently set up the state-oriented Pro gressive Legislative Action Network; and author David Brock helped creat e Media Matters for America last year, among others. All these groups ar e potential recipients of money from alliance partners. In addition, the number of liberal bloggers on the Web has been growing a t a fast pace, and their blogs have become both central forums for debat e over party strategies and hugely successful vehicles for campaign fund raising, including raising through online contributions more than two th irds of the $750,000 used in the surprisingly competitive House campaign of Democrat Paul Hackett in Ohio. Rosenberg has created the New Politic s Institute, an organization that works with bloggers. Alliance organizers said they are seeking to avoid involvement in the ide ological disputes that have plagued Democrats in recent years. But it ma y prove difficult to avoid them when the list of organizations eligible for contributions is drafted.
Jockeying for cash among possible recipient organizations has already beg un. Robert L Borosage, director of the liberal Campaign for America's F uture, said the alliance will fund a "set of institutions in this city t o be in the national debate, and we would like to be one of them." Stein, who closely examined the finances of institutions on the right and left over the past two years, contends that there is a huge financial i mbalance favoring conservatives that he puts at $295 million vs. In 2003, the 19 progressive organizations with budgets exceeding $1 milli on spent a total of $75 million, he said. In contrast, the 24 national t hink tanks on the right had $170 million in spending, along with state-b ased policy centers' $50 million and campus-based conservative policy or ganizations' $75 million to $100 million, according to Stein. Liberal groups have been disproportionately dependent on one-year foundat ion grants for specific projects, Stein said, while the money flowing to conservative groups has often involved donors' long-term commitments wi th no strings attached. Stein noted that of 200 major conservative donor s, about half sit on the boards of the think tanks they give to, increas ing the strength of their commitment.
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