Lindsay Mark Lewis is the former Democratic National Committee finance director and executive director of the Progressive Policy Institute. He has raised more than $200 million for the Democratic Party’s candidates and causes since 1992, and became the DNC’s finance director under Chair Howard Dean in 2005. This excerpt is adapted from Political Mercenaries: The Inside Story of How Fundraisers Allowed Billionaires to Take Over Politics, by Lindsay Mark Lewis and Jim Arkedis, a writer and analyst in Washington, D.C.

The drive along Interstate 40 from Vegas to D.C. snakes through some of the most fascinating territory in the country. The southwestern desert scenery is unreal, and the towns dotting the highway scream classic Americana. The trip gave me a few days to roll the windows down, smoke cigarette after cigarette and take stock of my life and my career.

The Big Texan Steak Ranch sits along I-40 in Amarillo, Texas, but billboards start advertising it every couple miles along the highway back in Arizona. At first, they’re confusing as hell, completely random. But then I realized that the billboards are slowly telling a story and advertising a free 72-ounce steak (if you can eat it within the hour). They go on for miles and miles, hours away from the place. If you’re driving by yourself and thinking about life, it’s a welcome distraction. When I pulled into Amarillo, I couldn’t wait to stop.


The Big Texan Steak Ranch is also a motel, and I stayed there for the night. The place was run by a nice family who’d built their restaurant and hotel business from the ground up. I started working in politics for these folks. I wanted to engage them, to get them involved in the democratic process, and help them understand that they had a voice in their government too. I wanted to give them a seat at the table, one that was quickly filling up with rich donors, lobbyists and special interest groups. The family’s work seemed so much more honest than mine. I briefly considered applying for a job. I’d already lived in Section 8 housing in Baltimore during my first year of college, so working at the Big Texan in Amarillo would be cake!

Instead, in early 1999, I was headed back to D.C. with my tail between my legs. I had raised money for two failed campaigns in Vegas, and during the latter I’d completely embarrassed myself by implicitly and falsely accusing Vegas Mayor-elect Oscar Goodman of sexual impropriety with children. Vegas should have been my escape from Washington, a place where I could have seized the opportunity to achieve real political change at the local level—or at least become the king of double-deck blackjack. But here I drove, in a Jeep Cherokee whose reverse gear didn’t work, practically broke. How far I’d fallen. My dad was now so worried about me that he wired me a hundred bucks, just in case I needed gas.

I hated raising money. I was disillusioned with politics and I was dying to try something else … anything. But I didn’t have any other marketable skills. So I kept shuffling along as a fundraiser, trying to put on a happy face in a career I couldn’t escape from.

Political fundraising was becoming a self-sustaining industry. In the early 1990s, when I had been raising money for then House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a handful of fundraisers were happy just to be on staff somewhere, either at the Democratic National Committee or in a presidential race. But we began to spread ourselves throughout the country, finding paydays in Washington with new candidates and elected officials who weren’t yet aware that they needed us, promising candidate after candidate that money was the only path to victory.

It was a huge scam. A fundraiser’s pitch is simple: Raise more money to win, and every minute a candidate isn’t raising is one that the competition definitely is. Here’s the truth: Candidates raise money to get their message out, yes; but they also raise money to make sure their fundraiser gets paid.

The scam worked. As fundraisers attached themselves to candidates throughout the country, even established figures who didn’t need the money began raising anyway. By the 1999–2000 election cycle, fundraising to win had become fundraising for show. Fundraisers pushed candidates to raise more, and elected officials pressured fundraisers to do the same, a vicious cycle. The total amount of money a candidate for Congress needed to raise to be viable had grown from $250,000 in 1992 to well over $600,000 in 1998. Political money was no longer a means to an end. It had become the end itself—and I had done my share to help it become that way.

***

Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota with a seat on two powerful committees, Budget and Banking & Finance, hired me to be his finance director in June 1999 after I returned from Vegas. Gephardt, whom I’d worked with for about six years, was a renowned money man in the party, and Conrad clearly thought that with me he was purchasing a little piece of the House minority leader’s success. Before his career in the Senate, Conrad had been North Dakota’s tax commissioner, and that made him a numbers guy, an accountant. He lacked any sort of common touch with regular people trying to make a decent living, like those motel workers in Amarillo. He would have made a perfect staffer, but I wasn’t terribly proud to call him an elected official from my party.

Senator Conrad on the Capitol steps in 1999. | Getty

When he hired me, I didn’t know him from a hole in the wall, and it was quickly apparent that our relationship was indicative of the new fundraising climate: I needed a paycheck, and he wanted to raise money he didn’t need.

At first, I thought this would be simple. Thanks to his committee assignments, Conrad had influence on every major piece of financial legislation that moved through Congress: banking, taxes, defense, real estate, health care, you name it. His position allowed him to raise a lot of money, easily, from all the lobbying groups that wanted connections to his committees. I understood what I was getting into, but I accepted my fate and just hoped for a 9-to-5 normal routine.

Everything started off well enough. I settled into my tomb-like basement office on C Street in Capitol Hill. (C Street was now lined with these fundraising coffins because virtually every senator had a full-time fundraiser working somewhere on the block.) Conrad and I came up with a $2 million budget. Two million bucks would scare away any serious opponent, in either the primary or the general election. That was part of the new game: Reelection is much easier without a serious challenger, and at the time, the fear of having to raise $2 million just to be on par with an incumbent senator was enough to scare off many good people.

The fact was, though, that Conrad was spending too much time raising way too much money, given his historically weak competition. He had won his previous two Senate races handily. By 1999, he was a known quantity in North Dakota, a political stalwart whom no opponent would touch for the next 14 years.

Yet Conrad wanted to keep up with the Joneses. In this new climate, to be considered a player in the Senate in the year 2000, raising money helped show how powerful you were, it helped get the press’s attention and it made the other kids in the playground—your Senate colleagues—want to be associated with you. Senators were buying higher profiles, spending valuable time raising money when they could be getting to know their colleagues or writing legislation.

Sure, most senators were playing the new money game to some degree; but it didn’t take me long to realize that Conrad wasn’t quite like all the rest.

***

I knew that if I wanted to settle into a comfortable daily routine and still haul in $2 million, I had to start fast. The plan was to get a lot of money in quickly, then relax. I stayed late that first week, usually till 9 or 10 p.m., preparing call sheets, following up with donors and planning the next day’s work.

After a few days, I began to notice a car pulling up in front of my office every night, usually around 8:30 p.m. It would park right in front of the building, but the windows in my basement tomb went only two feet above street level, so I couldn’t really make out the driver. Like clockwork, every night at 8:30. At first, I thought maybe it was the undercover Capitol Police checking on the light in the basement. The driver never got out, never did anything but park out front for five minutes, then drive off.

I finally recognized the car. It was Conrad, checking on me. I wasn’t particularly shocked, but I was depressed. This is what fundraising had come to? Still, I decided I’d play by his rules, making sure to stay late every night until I could see those wheels. I didn’t really raise money those extra few hours, though; I mostly watched TV, surfed the Internet, drank a six-pack or two.

When I actually did try to raise money, it was painful. I couldn’t justify in my head why raising so much money was necessary and started referring to myself as a “dead fundraiser walking.” The senator had plenty of cash, enough to purchase every single TV ad slot in North Dakota and probably most of them in South Dakota too. The money would never serve any purpose other than sitting on the senator’s balance sheet, scaring off anyone who’d think to challenge him. I grew frustrated. Is spending all your time raising money to keep out potential challengers really what democracy is about?

Conrad would come up with odd excuses to spend his money. Maybe he would visit a town and one person would not be nice to him. Maybe someone wouldn’t wave back from across the street … Gotta spend more on TV there! They don’t know me well enough! A few meetings in his state would have taken care of the problem. But this was how you campaigned for Senate in 2000—in a few short years, it had gone from raise enough to win to raise as much as you can.

Senator Conrad prepares for a news conference in 2007. | AP Images

Where Conrad differed from other senators, though, was that Conrad hoarded his money. If others raised more than they needed, they would often give it away to the party committees or other candidates. Not Conrad. The year I worked for him, Democratic Senate candidates Brian Schweitzer in Montana and Chuck Robb in Virginia were in tight races. Power in the Senate hung in the balance, and a win by either one would have given control to Democrats. Though he was sitting on more than $2 million, Conrad transferred just $20,000—less than 1 percent—to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Schweitzer lost his race by three points; Robb lost his by five. Conrad might have given a lot more to the DSCC—transfers to party committees aren’t subject to limits—and helped push maybe one over the edge. Both could have still come up short, but we’ll never know.

The difference between a guy like Dick Gephardt and a guy like Kent Conrad was clear to me: Gephardt was a real middle-class champion. The money I’d raised for him actually meant something. Sure, we raised more than he needed for his own campaigns, but he put that extra money to use, spreading the wealth to other Democratic candidates. That helped the party. The dole outs also solidified his position in leadership, but that—in my mind anyway—was a forgivable sin along the way to changing the world. Conrad, on the other hand, raised money just to raise money. It was about him and only him. It had no effect on other candidates or a greater cause.

***

Still, I trudged along. One week, about two or three months into my new job, I set up a lunch event with the senator to raise a few small checks at the Monocle Restaurant on the Hill. In the middle of lunch, someone suggested we go around the table so that everyone could say a few nice words about Conrad. The assembled lobbyists bullshitted their way through a few sentences. Then it was my turn.

Conrad looked in my direction. “So, Lindsay, what do you most appreciate about me?”

“Well, Senator”—I shot back a shit-eating grin—“you sign my paycheck.”

The room erupted. I hadn’t really been joking.

The senator kept up the pressure. He wanted more, more, more … and more. So I went to raise more. The West Coast swing it would be, to California and Seattle. Conrad was far from a liberal champion, and I knew Los Angeles would be tough. Just after special prosecutor Ken Starr had released his report on the Lewinsky affair, rumors had flown that Conrad might actually vote to impeach the president. Conrad had told Greg Craig, Clinton’s special counsel, that a mutiny was brewing among Democratic senators, who were on the verge of asking for the president’s resignation. Then Conrad had a huge fight with the left of the party when he threatened to endorse a constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the American flag.

Norman Lear, the Hollywood writer and producer of “Sanford and Son,” “The Jeffersons” and “Fried Green Tomatoes” fame, had sparred with Conrad over the flag issue, but they had good, honest debate. On some level, they respected one another. Lear was one of my first calls.

“Mr. Lear, I know you and Senator Conrad have had your differences, but he would really appreciate it if you hosted a fundraising event for him in California in a few weeks,” I said, putting on my best kiss-ass voice.

Having people like Lear host events was important because they commit to writing a check for or raising a certain amount of money. In this case, I asked Lear to either donate or raise $20,000. His job was to call his friends, and friends of friends, to make sure the room was packed so he didn’t have to write the whole $20,000 check himself.

He agreed on one condition. “I don’t want to be the only host. Senator Conrad’s a decent guy, but we’ve butted heads. I’m happy to show up with a check, and if you need to list me as one of the hosts, that’s fine.”

“Got it, Mr. Lear. Our goal is to have 20 to 25 hosts for the event. You won’t be the only one.”

Sounded like a green light to me. This was a multiday West Coast swing, so I had to arrange several events. We had the big one with Lear, but then a smaller one with Kathleen Brown—California Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister—and then another smaller event with some corporate types. I also set up a lunch in Seattle.

With so much on the senator’s schedule, I had to send out invites to literally thousands of people, and it would be tough to keep track of who was RSVPing for which event. If someone called my office and said, “I’d like to RSVP for Senator Conrad’s event,” that didn’t help very much. I could hardly ask, “And which event would that be?” because Conrad would look like he was grubbing for money. But I still needed to know how many fruit cups to order for breakfast!

So I used an old trick, and put a different fake name in the “please RSVP to” line on each event’s invitation. That way, if someone called and asked for “Wayne” or “Chip,” I would know which event he/she was talking about. I stuck “Please RSVP to Wayne Stephenson” on the invite for Lear’s big event in Los Angeles. Wayne Stephenson is one of my favorite old hockey goalies for the Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals.

Then I ran into a little problem: Between the rumored impeachment and flag-burning votes, L.A.’s liberal donor community hated Senator Conrad. My 25 cohosts just didn’t materialize; I only had Norman Lear. Two weeks before the event, I couldn’t wait another day to get a second host. I had to send the invites. I couldn’t really cancel—my boss needed his $2 million, and he reminded me of that every night at 8:30 p.m.—so I swallowed hard, stuck “Norman Lear Invites You to an Evening with Senator Kent Conrad” on the invite, and sent it out to 2,500 people on my L.A. donor lists.

I figured I would still be able to raise at least $40,000. Surely folks would show up to see the senator if Norman Lear invited them, right? Out of 2,500 invites, a 2 percent response rate would be 50 people, a good event.

I waited three days. Then I started following up with donors to make sure they’d received the invite and to ask if they’d like to attend. I would stay late in my office/tomb, just like the senator wanted, to try to catch people at the end of the day: 9 p.m. in D.C. was only 6:00 in L.A. I called and called, moving down my donor list, and the overwhelming response was No! No chance! No way in hell I am helping Kent Conrad! The FEC only lets me give so much money every year, so why should I spend it on him? (It wasn’t until 2014 that the Supreme Court struck down the annual cap on individual giving, in McCutcheon v. FEC.)

This wasn’t D.C. In Washington, any lobbyist would happily give a thousand bucks to a senator. But this crowd was California’s billionaire liberal donor community, and they gave money only because they felt a personal connection to a politician; they didn’t need to establish a business relationship with the politico. I respected their reasons for not giving—Conrad had no real opponent, was too conservative for them and they wanted to spend money on competitive campaigns. I left a lot of messages, talked to a few administrative assistants, talked to a few donors and got nothing. No one was coming.

Then at 8 p.m., maybe a week before the event, the phone finally rang. Finally an RSVP! I tried to play it cool … waited for it to ring three times. I answered.

“Is Wayne fucking Stephenson there? I need to talk to him right now!” Uh-oh. “Sorry, Wayne is not in. Can I take a message for him?”

“You tell Wayne that I am pissed off. This is Norman Lear, and I have a real problem with this invite he sent around. I never agreed to be the only host for Senator Conrad, and he needs to fix this right away.”

Wayne never returned Mr. Lear’s call.

***

Senator Conrad didn’t want to pay for a staffer to fly with him, so he traveled alone. He was the only senator I knew who would fundraise by himself. Fundraisers play important roles on the road: They chitchat with donors, protect their bosses from odd requests, take care of last-minute problems and work the phones to make sure people show up at events. Not with Senator Conrad. So off to Los Angeles and Seattle the senator went, alone.

In the end, Norman Lear produced a few folks, Kathleen Brown produced a few folks and Wayne Stephenson drew lots of heat. Of course, the senator had no clue what Lear was talking about when he ranted about Wayne, but Conrad, in typical senator customer service mode, told him that he would look into Stephenson-gate and take care of the problem. At the end of the reception, the senator picked up a handful of checks.

Then it was off to Seattle. I had sent over 2,000 invites to donors for this little lunch. No hosts, just a grab bag. I was pretty fed up and didn’t exactly do a great job following up the invitations with phone calls, but surely 20 would show up to see the senator. I arranged for the lunch to be set for 30. Ken Alhadeff, chairman of a Seattle-based holding company and longtime supporter of Democratic causes, joined Senator Conrad for lunch. “I love my democracy,” he used to say. Contributing “doesn’t come from my company as much as it comes from my heart.”

But Alhadeff was the only one to show up that day. Lunch for 30 turned into lunch for two. Conrad walked out of the restaurant, called Bob Van Heuvelen, his chief of staff, and told him to fire me. That was 10 months after I had started the job.

I was hardly surprised. I was actually relieved, happy even. I didn’t have to stick around for the 2000 election, when Conrad trounced an opponent who raised just one sixth of what he did. And I was desperate to get out of fundraising. But if I stayed in, at least I was beginning to realize what the industry’s main problems were.

Besides, I got my revenge. Van Heuvelen was the nicest guy and liked me a lot personally. So I told him, “Here’s the deal. Conrad’s never going to know … don’t take me off payroll yet.” I got an extra paycheck out of the good senator. He sure wasn’t using his money for a better cause.