David Brock’s groups include the conservative media monitoring nonprofit Media Matters, the opposition research super PAC American Bridge and the legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. | AP Photo Dems jockey for big money control Liberals raise concerns about efforts by Clinton enforcer David Brock.

The tug of war between Hillary Clinton’s supporters and the progressive left is spilling over onto a new front: control of liberal big money.

Some of the left’s most active financiers and groups — including the Democracy Alliance donor club — are bristling at Clinton enforcer David Brock’s plan to officially launch his own donor network this weekend to fund his efforts to rebuild the left and, in his words, “kick Donald Trump’s ass.”


Brock’s plan, first revealed by POLITICO soon after Trump’s Election Day victory, is seen in liberal finance circles as an implicit challenge to the Democracy Alliance, which was launched in 2005 by billionaire financier George Soros and other major donors.

Brock has not exactly discouraged that notion, explaining that his network will be more overtly political than the Democracy Alliance, which has endeavored to strike a balance between progressive policy initiatives and partisan politics, but which has drawn criticism from Democrats for diverting money from winning elections to focus instead on liberal donors’ pet causes. Brock seemed to endorse that argument himself this month, asserting the Democracy Alliance has “veered away from politics” in recent years.

Some Democracy Alliance donors and officials have grumbled quietly that Brock — whose efforts have gotten support from the alliance and its donors including Soros — is plotting a power grab.

John Morgan, a Florida big money donor who is loyal both to the Clintons and to liberal causes, said of Brock’s fund-raising: “Anybody who gives money to him is pissing down a rathole.”

Brock’s donor conference, called “Democracy Matters,” is set for this weekend in Aventura, Florida, and is envisioned as the first in a twice-a-year series of conferences, mirroring the Democracy Alliance schedule.

Even the agenda, obtained by POLITICO, feels a bit like a more aggressively partisan version of a Democracy Alliance confab. Brock’s event features sessions such as “Democratic Messages That Win,” and panelists who include Clinton loyalists like veteran operative James Carville, who helped organize the confab, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, along with rising stars like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and state attorneys general Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Hector Balderas of New Mexico and Eric Schneiderman of New York. And donors will be treated to a closed-door forum with candidates for chair of the Democratic National Committee, suggesting that Brock’s fledgling network is trying to build alliances with the party’s future leader — whoever that may be.

Democratic Party donors and fundraisers — including many of Hillary Clinton’s top bundlers — were still receiving invitations as recently as last week. But among the invitees are newer Silicon Valley donors (LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus are confirmed to participate on a panel), as well as leading Democracy Alliance donors, including finance titans Soros and Tom Steyer, though it’s unclear which major donors are planning to attend. Soros is in Davos, Switzerland, attending the World Economic Forum and will not be there, said an associate, though he is expected to send a representative, while representatives for Steyer said he would not be attending.

The South Florida conference was the subject of worried conversation on a Tuesday afternoon conference call of the Democracy Alliance board, according to someone briefed on the call.

Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance, which is known as the DA among the professional left, said in an interview that he recently reached out to Brock for assurance that Democracy Matters would not take on the DA, and also to challenge Brock’s assertion that the DA had backed away from politics.

“They tell me up and down that they’re not creating another donor network,” said LaMarche, who argued that Brock’s efforts complement the DA’s and pointed out that he has been invited to speak on a panel at Brock’s conference. “The only other issue is that I have been concerned that David, in his efforts to distinguish himself from the DA, has said that the DA doesn’t concern itself with politics, and nothing could be further from the truth. I have forcefully communicated the inaccuracy of that, and I have been told that they get that now, and that they won’t be making that mischaracterization of the DA.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Brock struck a conciliatory tone toward the DA, saying his recent comments about the group “have been somewhat misconstrued. I should have been clearer in saying that, while our donor conference will be more explicitly focused on partisan politics such as rebuilding the Democratic National Committee, the Democracy Alliance has had demonstrable political impact over the years, for example in funding voter registration and outreach efforts.”

And, Brock added, “there is very little overlap between the attendees of our meeting and the Democracy Alliance partners. Only a handful of DA partners are coming to our conference.”

Nonetheless, after POLITICO revealed Brock’s plans for the conference, the DA announced that its annual spring conference, which is typically held in late April in California, would instead be moved up to mid-March in Washington, D.C., and that it would “focus exclusively” on state politics.

People familiar with the DA's planning said the group has for weeks been aggressively reaching out to liberal organizations in a bid to get them involved with that gathering.

Yet the DA also faces internal pressure not to shift too much into partisan politics or to become too affiliated with the Democratic Party — a tricky balancing act highlighted in literature distributed to its donors at its fall meeting at Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel a week after Election Day.

“Although winning elections is critical, the ultimate measure of our success is our ability to help create a more just and equitable nation,” wrote Julie Kohler, a DA official in a letter to donors that was obtained by the conservative watchdog group Capital Research Center and provided to POLITICO. The letter focuses on the DA’s efforts to boost the minimum wage, expand access to health care, child care and higher education, and to reduce incarceration rates, “state-sponsored discrimination” and police violence.

“Accomplishing these and many other aligned goals requires us to not only win elections, but to advance policy and build power in a way that realigns complex economic and democratic systems that currently serve the interests of a privileged few. Certainly these goals seem more elusive now,” wrote Kohler, referencing the “dramatically changed landscape” created by “an overwhelmingly bleak Election Night.”

The inflection point at the DA mirrors the broader fractures that have overtaken the party since Election Day. Loyalists of Clinton and her Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders have been wrestling over Democrats' future in the DNC contest, state party races all over the country, and in gubernatorial primaries in New Jersey and Virginia.

While national Democrats are bending over backward to ensure that such tensions don’t break too far into the open and hand Republicans political ammunition, donors, operatives and elected officials frequently bemoan the lack of a single national leader or center of gravity on the left.

The Democracy Alliance was launched at a similarly fraught time for Democrats — after their devastating loss in the 2004 election — by Soros, the late insurance mogul Peter Lewis, and a handful of fellow Democratic megadonors who were disappointed by the failure of their huge spending spree to oust President George W. Bush.

The DA’s plan was to seed a set of advocacy groups and think tanks outside the Democratic Party that could push the party and its politicians to the left while also defending them against attack from the right.

The group requires its members — who now number about 110 and include major individual donors, as well as leading labor unions and liberal foundations — to contribute a total of at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. Since its inception in 2005, the DA has steered upward of $500 million to various groups, ranging from community organizing associations to campaign finance watchdogs to pillars of the political left such as the policy advocacy outfit Center for American Progress, the data firm Catalist and Brock’s flagship group Media Matters.

Since launching Media Matters in 2004, Brock — who began his career as a self-described right-wing hit man before becoming the Clintons’ lead enforcer — has built an armada of aggressive political outfits that have become pillars of the institutional left.

Brock’s groups include the conservative media monitoring nonprofit Media Matters, the opposition research super PAC American Bridge and the legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which Brock describes as nonpartisan and which recently recruited as a vice-chair a Republican who served in George W. Bush’s administration.

Brock’s groups also include the liberal media-funding vehicle American Independent Institute, the media-training nonprofit Franklin Forum and the for-profit social media operation ShareBlue, which The New York Times described as “Hillary Clinton’s Outrage Machine.” He also created a super PAC called Correct the Record to coordinate directly with Clinton’s campaign, but it has now wound down. In its place, American Bridge has been building up an anti-Trump "war room."

Leaning on Brock’s relationships with some of the left’s deepest pockets, the groups raised a combined $75 million during the 2016 cycle, and played a pivotal role in supporting Clinton’s campaign.

But that close affiliation with the Clintons, which was a strength for so many years, now poses a challenge for Brock, as the Democratic Party struggles to forge a post-Clinton identity.

Brock has taken heat after Clinton’s loss, with many Sanders backers now escalating their critique of him as a political opportunist whose groups — including Correct The Record, which drew their ire during the Democratic primary over its opposition research on the Vermont senator — did little to help Clinton against Trump. High-level Sanders operatives have not hesitated to express skepticism about Brock's plans to become a center of gravity on the left in the new landscape, in which they feel Sanders-style progressivism is ascendant.

Even some Clinton loyalists have expressed wariness about Brock, suggesting that his work for conservatives in the ’90s makes him an unreliable vehicle for anti-Trump liberals.

“I think what he did to the Clintons early on disqualifies him from me for life,” said Morgan, the Clinton bundler who has criticized Brock’s fundraising techniques for years — and who is considering running for governor of the Sunshine State in 2018. “I look at people like that as just political mercenaries.”

Told of Morgan’s critique, Brock defended “the 13 years of blood, sweat and tears that I’ve spent advancing progressive values,” and added “if I was a political mercenary, I would be using my talents in another line of work.”

Other Clinton donors appear to be sticking with Brock, and he’s even made some inroads among prominent Sanders supporters, securing an appearance at Democracy Matters by Sanders’ sole Senate endorser during the primary, Oregon’s Jeff Merkley.

Some Clinton donors seem more inclined to turn their backs on the Democracy Alliance than on Brock, according to a Democratic operative involved with the Democracy Alliance’s decision-making.

“It seems like David is getting good response to this and at the last Democracy Alliance meeting there was a lot of frustration, groups are pretty tepid,” said the operative. The DA’s leaders “are concerned about,” Brock’s efforts, said the operative, pointing out that many Clinton donors aren’t associated with the DA. Many turned away back in 2008, when the group was seen as favoring Barack Obama over Clinton in the Democratic primary.

“What could happen, and would suck, is a lot of donors going for one of the groups and another group with the others,” said the operative.

Rob Stein, a founder of the Democracy Alliance, downplayed the tension, noting that this week's gathering is oriented around Brock's groups.

“Any time donors get together there are going to be questions raised about whose donors they are, but the answer is donors are their own,” he said.

While the Democracy Alliance relies on donor input in tendering endorsements to a portfolio of more than 30 independent groups with different leaders, Stein pointed out that Brock’s meeting “is predominantly focused on the constellation of organizations that are within [Brock’s] Media Matters universe. So they have four, five, or six affiliates [like] Correct The Record and American Bridge, and that’s what they're focused on, plus informing their donors and giving their donors political context.”

But conservatives are relishing the prospect of an emerging rift on the big-money left as the Democratic Party seeks to retrench to do battle with Trump and fight to regain power in coming elections.

“Will this new addition to the Brocktopus steal donors away from the Democracy Alliance? The question answers itself,” said Matthew Vadum, senior vice president of the Capital Research Center. “This cannot be what the Alliance wants right now as it girds for a long battle against conservatives and Republicans.”

