David Brock and some of the biggest donors from across the left are rallying behind an effort to stave off a Republican avalanche in state-level races that could bury Democrats for decades.

The effort, affiliated with a previously low-profile group called the State Innovation Exchange (or SiX for short), aims to offset Republican advantages in state-level campaigns, policy debates and looming redistricting fights.


But SiX’s aggressive play could also set up a clash with other Democratic big-money efforts to boost the party at the state level, including an ambitious redistricting initiative backed by former President Barack Obama and his former attorney general, Eric Holder.

The increased sense of urgency — and competition — among Democrats to reverse the party’s flagging fortunes in state houses provided the backdrop for the move by SiX, which was founded in 2014, to bring on a raft of big names of its own from across the Democratic spectrum.

Brock, the self-described reformed right-wing hitman who became a key figure in Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, has been named co-chair of the beefed-up board of SiX’s political arm SiX-Action, along with former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, a favorite of the abortion rights movement who got trounced in a 2014 gubernatorial campaign.

The new board also includes an operative who helped run Sen. Bernie Sanders’ populist campaign against Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination (Richard Pelletier), as well as a key official from Obama’s reelection (Buffy Wicks), a leading figure in the Black Lives Matter movement (Rashad Robinson of Color of Change) and an adviser to the influential progressive group MoveOn.org (Karine Jean-Pierre).

Also on the board are a pair of representatives from powerful labor unions, AFSCME political director Brian Weeks and American Federation of Teachers official Michelle Ringuette, and operatives associated with major donors. Representatives for groups funded by Houston trial lawyers Amber and Steve Mostyn and San Francisco hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer signed on, as did Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance liberal mega-donor club, which has endorsed SiX.

The goal behind expanding the board was two-fold: to bring together the divergent groups jockeying for control of the Democratic Party, and raise some big money to compete with the deep-pocketed constellation of conservative groups that have long given the GOP an advantage at the state level.

“Conservatives have been playing on a different level — and progressives have been playing the same game for the past decade,” said SiX’s executive director Nick Rathod, who served as Obama’s former liaison to the states. “It’s time to take the gloves off.”

SiX is ramping up SiX-Action, which is registered under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, to spend in state legislative campaigns, and hopes to eventually raise an annual budget of $15 million between that group and its policy focused non-profit the State Innovation Exchange, which is registered under section 501(c)3.

That would represent a five-fold increase over the groups’ combined 2016 budget of $3 million.

But it would still pale in comparison to the combined budgets of the conservative groups focused on state-level battles, including the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) and its affiliates. The RSLC and an associated nonprofit called the State Government Leadership Foundation have launched a plan with a $125-million budget to buy data and fight strategic and legal battles related to the reapportionment of congressional districts to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 U.S. Census.

The RSLC plan intends to replicate a blueprint it implemented ahead of the 2010 redistricting, which helped Republicans pick up 21 new state legislative majorities.

Democratic fortunes in state houses across the country have only declined since then, with the party losing more than 900 state legislative seats since 2010, and Republicans at or near historic levels of control of governorships (31), state legislative chambers (69) and attorney general offices (29).

RSLC President Matt Walter said Democrats have only themselves to blame for the state of affairs.

“For years, they were singularly focused on the White House, while they ignored the government closest to the people in the states,” he said. He dismissed as “panicked” the efforts by SiX and a handful of other groups on the left to close the gap, asserting they are “tripping over themselves [to] throw as many state-focused projects as they want at the issue in an effort to start making gains again.”

Other groups on the left also are rallying to try to remedy this imbalance, including the Obama-Holder redistricting project, which is called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. It has buy-in from a number of established Democratic groups that have been active at the state level, including the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

DLCC Executive Director Jessica Post said her group is eager for “opportunities to partner with [SiX] as it works with DLCC members in our ongoing fight to thwart President Trump’s GOP at the state level and to prepare for the next round of redistricting.”

But the DLCC and other Democratic groups focusing on the states have sometimes struggled to win support from national donors. And, while Rathod says he plans to work with the Obama-Holder coalition and notes that Holder spoke at SiX’s December gathering of state legislators in Washington, he also says he sees a need for fresh leadership.

“I know donors are getting bombarded with people and groups telling them that they are now going to work in the states,” he said. “From what I’ve seen, those people have never worked in the states or are the same crowd that oversaw the decimation of progressive power at the state level for the past decade.”

Having Brock at the helm of SiX’s board could give the group a big financial boost, since Brock is known for having a golden fundraising touch among some of the left’s richest activists.

Last month, he moved to launch his own Koch-brothers’ style donor network with a major conference in Aventura, Florida, where he highlighted some of his own armada of aggressive political outfits, which raised a combined $65 million during the 2016 cycle, as well as some independent groups, including SiX.

While Brock has faced criticism from some Democrats for power grabs and no-holds barred tactics against Republican and Democratic foes alike — and even some allies — he said his goal is to lend support to SiX, not take it over.

“SiX isn't becoming part of Fort Brock, so to speak,” he said. “It is a way for me, in my personal capacity as a Democratic activist, to aid state-based work by increasing SiX's profile generally and specifically in the donor community.”

He praised Rathod and his group for combining “a clear mission with hyper competent execution,” and being “poised to be the tip of the spear” in the Democratic “effort to win political power in the states.”