An influential coalition of the biggest liberal donors is quietly distancing itself from the national Democratic Party and planning to push its leaders — including Hillary Clinton — to the left.

The Democracy Alliance funders club at a private April gathering in San Francisco is set to unveil a five-year plan to boost causes on which some of its members contend leading Democrats like Clinton have been insufficiently aggressive.


Some within the club’s ranks had felt that it aligned too closely to the Democratic Party during President Barack Obama’s campaigns and administration. And the plan, called 2020 Vision, represents a more assertively liberal direction for Democracy Alliance — one that could pose problems for Clinton in her expected presidential campaign and beyond, if she wins the White House.

It aims to steer more than $30 million a year toward groups committed to fighting income inequality, climate change and the influence of political money. A particular focus is on groups fighting those issues at the state level, reflecting a sense among donors that national political gridlock limits chances for progress on their issues, regardless of the specific candidates.

“The Democracy Alliance donors, as I read them, while they are almost all Democrats and they are electorally active, want to be a progressive force independent from the Democratic Party,” said the group’s president, Gara LaMarche. “That’s not about Hillary Clinton as such, or about Barack Obama as such. It’s about standing for certain core concerns on the economy and climate and pushing that in the states.”

LaMarche wouldn’t comment on plan specifics, expected to be completed in early April, except to say that it reflects broad “alignment” among progressive donors on “key economic issues and climate change.”

But other sources with knowledge of the plan characterize it as more aligned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the dream presidential candidate for many Democracy Alliance members, than with Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate. And for some liberals, it foreshadows an emerging rift that could hamper efforts up and down the ballot in 2016, and possibly lay the groundwork for a liberal version of the tea party, resulting in years of factionalism.

Sources say the club invited former Secretary of State Clinton to speak behind closed doors at the San Francisco meeting, which runs April 12-15 at the Four Seasons hotel. She declined, citing a scheduling conflict — perhaps not surprising, given that she’s expected to launch her presidential campaign around that time. Sources say the group might ask her to record a video message, but Clinton’s office had no knowledge of such plans.

Clinton and her backers have had a sometimes uneasy relationship with the Democracy Alliance. Bill Clinton clashed with a donor named Guy Saperstein at a 2006 conference while defending his wife’s vote to authorize the Iraq War, and club members provided early support to Obama during his epic 2008 battle with her for the Democratic presidential nomination. More recently, Warren got rock star receptions in Democracy Alliance appearances in 2013 and 2014, when she was urged to seek the party’s 2016 nomination.

Hillary Clinton has never addressed the group, which has hosted numerous other high-profile Democrats, including multiple visits by Warren, Vice President Joe Biden and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

“Hillary did not fare well in the Democracy Alliance eight years ago, and I don’t think there is going to be much more support for her this time, other than people thinking that she is the horse we’ve got, so we better not criticize her because it could weaken her,” said Saperstein. A part owner of the Oakland A’s who last year pledged $1 million to a super PAC seeking to draft Warren into the presidential race, Saperstein dropped out of the Democracy Alliance in 2008 but remains friendly with current members; he said there are many who have “great attraction” to Warren.

Clinton might have been an uncomfortable fit at the San Francisco meeting because it would highlight issues on which her centrist sensibilities clash with the Alliance’s more liberal views.

George Soros is one of the DA's biggest-giving partners and has committed to Clinton in 2016. | Getty

For instance, according to a draft agenda obtained by POLITICO, the meeting will feature sessions on reducing the influence of big money politics and reforming the criminal justice system, including ending the death penalty. Clinton, an unparalleled fundraiser, hasn’t led the charge on campaign finance reforms and supports capital punishment — unlike potential 2016 Democratic presidential rival Martin O’Malley. The former Maryland governor, who oversaw the death penalty’s abolition in his state, was invited to speak, but an O’Malley spokeswoman confirmed he is not planning to attend.

Other sessions highlighting assertively liberal stances are titled “Connecting Climate, Education, and Economic Justice” and “Marijuana Politics: Times They are a-Changin’.” The latter session includes a tour of San Francisco’s premier cannabis dispensary, “to learn about the rapidly changing world of medical marijuana” and stimulate discussion “about the role marijuana now plays in American politics,” including how the issue “could help turn key races in 2016 and beyond,” the agenda says.

The death penalty and marijuana sessions were initiated by Democracy Alliance partners — as its member donors are called.

Marsha Rosenbaum, leader of the dispensary tour, praised LaMarche, who launched plans for 2020 Vision when he assumed leadership in 2013, for “an openness to a range of topics and points of view.”

David desJardins, a DA board member who — like Rosenbaum — supported Obama over Clinton in 2008, said he has “not decided” which candidate to support, but suggested that liberal donors and interest groups could influence Clinton’s agenda.

“There is a need to have a menu — like saying, ‘Here are some good policies that would help you actually win and govern.’ And, if outside groups do a good job of that, she’s likely to adopt them,” said desJardins, who was among the first employees at Google. “I want whoever comes out of the Democratic primary to be the best candidate they can be, so to me that means encouraging Hillary to run the best campaign as opposed to hoping that she runs a bad campaign or self-destructs. I wouldn’t want that.”

The DA, as it is known in liberal finance circles, was created in 2005 by a handful of major donors including billionaire financier George Soros and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay. They spent tens of millions of dollars in 2004 in a failed effort to oust President George W. Bush, and the DA was intended to shift major donor giving away from elections and toward a sustained investment in think tanks, media and organizing and data outfits that eventually would win the battle of ideas.

It was patterned on a model its founders believed had been effectively deployed for decades by a few dozen wealthy conservative families, including the Kochs, the Scaifes and the Coorses.

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The DA’s members — a group that now includes more than 100 individual and institutional donors, such as Soros, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and various unions — pay $30,000 annually. That goes to fund DA staff salaries and conferences, which are often elaborate closed-press affairs. They also must contribute at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. Its members have donated more than $500 million to recommended groups since it started, and according to a 2020 Vision summary provided to members, it plans to increase its spending to recommended groups to more than $30 million a year.

Still, the amount pales in comparison with the spending of the donor network helmed by billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, which intends to spend $889 million in the run-up to 2016 on think tanks, academic research, advocacy groups and political efforts.

On the first day of the conference, DA donors are set to discuss the challenge posed by the Kochs’ plans in a panel on “The Electoral Arms Race,” according to the agenda.

“While progressive donors will almost certainly be outspent by this onslaught, we’ll probably break our own records as well,” reads the agenda. “But how can we use this moment as a wake-up call to change our politics, and use our money strategically while keeping our eye on the ultimate goal of moving away from the dominance of money in our political system?”

That could be a tricky balance for Democracy Alliance partners — and Democrats more broadly — to strike in 2016 with Clinton leading the ticket, since one of Clinton’s strengths is her broad base of support from rich donors.

Some of the DA’s biggest-giving partners — including Soros, New York philanthropist Amy Goldman and Houston trial lawyers Steve and Amber Mostyn — have committed to Clinton in 2016. They didn’t respond to requests for comment.

And the main super PAC supporting Clinton’s nascent campaign, Priorities USA Action, which hopes to raise as much as $500 million to support her presidential campaign, in 2012 won a coveted recommendation from the DA, along with other super PACs supporting Obama’s reelection and congressional Democrats.

Yet some donors bristled at those endorsements, arguing the support for electorally focused groups diverged from the DA’s original mission.

The super PACs do not seem to be as prominent in discussions around LaMarche’s 2020 Vision plan. Unlike his predecessor, a longtime Clinton aide named Kelly Craighead, LaMarche’s background is progressive movement philanthropy, not electoral politics.

And he wrote in an email last month to his board that he was detecting among DA partners “a growing frustration with politics, particularly after the 2014 election, where many feel they put a great deal into it and things only got worse.” For some partners, he wrote, “this has caused them to pull back from politics and in a few cases even … away from the DA, which they wrongly equate with electoral politics.”

The 2020 Vision planning process included discussions about scaling back DA support for three liberal pillar groups close to the Democratic Party and to Clinton — the data firm Catalist, the think tank Center for American Progress and the watchdog Media Matters for America.

The discussions alarmed some Clinton supporters, since all three are run by close Clinton allies and are expected to boost her campaign in various ways. But ultimately, sources say, the discussions fizzled and the groups appear likely to retain their DA endorsements.

The talk about phasing them out was not driven by an effort to create distance from Clinton or the Democratic Party, but rather a sense that the groups had become self-sustaining and didn’t require help, say sources familiar with the process. Their combined 2013 budget — the most recent year for which tax filings were available — was $63 million. And only $7 million of that came from donors who reported their giving toward meeting the club’s annual quota that year, according to a 62-page briefing book obtained by POLITICO.

One group facing more uncertainty in the DA’s portfolio is the nonprofit New Organizing Institute, trainer for many top Democratic digital operatives. It collapsed last month when several officials resigned over the leadership of its founder and Executive Director Ethan Roeder, a top data strategist on Obama’s presidential campaigns.

Roeder did not respond to requests for comment, but LaMarche in an email to his board last month called the implosion a “wake-up call.” Asserting that the group had “a tiny, distracted, founder-led board,” LaMarche wrote that “the DA has identified this as a problem for NOI in the past, and they said they would take steps, but it never happened.”

While LaMarche suggested the DA might not “impose capital punishment and completely drop the group from DA,” he urged donors to develop “more tools to assist organizations, and a stronger suite of services to help them get the job done, with benchmarks that have some force.”

Among smaller groups that sources say are being vetted for DA endorsements are two state-focused organizations — the State Innovation Exchange (SiX) and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC).

SiX is an effort to combat the dominance in state policy and political battles of conservative groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council, while BISC focuses on ballot measures. Group representatives are expected to participate in San Francisco sessions, including one focused on the right’s “enormous gains at the state level in recent years,” according to sources and the agenda. It notes that “nothing is more central to a progressive future than reversing this trend and winning back power.”

Officials from BISC declined to comment.

SiX Director Nick Rathod, whose group was recently blessed by the White House, praised the DA as “a catalyst for establishing many of the major institutions within the progressive infrastructure. SiX is being built in the vein of many of those institutions — like a CAP or Media Matters — and it is our hope that the DA will view us as such and include SiX in its core portfolio.”

The DA’s funding portfolio has been closely guarded in years past, but sources expect the group to publicly release it for the first time after it’s finalized in early April.

Likewise, the DA board has discussed allowing media to attend some conference sessions — which would mark a significant departure for the secretive group, which has had heavy security at past meetings — though some donors remain leery about full transparency.

“It’s a complicated problem,” said desJardins, the DA board member. “There are times when I want to have conversations with my friends and my colleagues about what I’m thinking and I don’t want that to be in the paper the next day,” he told POLITICO. “It’s annoying to have people like you hanging around when you’re not all that welcome. I don’t mind talking to you like this, when you’re on the other side of the phone line and you’re respectful. But at the conferences, you might use your prerogative to try to sneak around and dig things out of the trash.”

Told that POLITICO had not dug anything out of the trash at a DA meeting, desJardins said “maybe not you, but that’s the world you operate in.”

An earlier version of this story misidentified the New Organizing Institute.

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