Democratic Party megadonors feel helpless to stop Bernie Sanders’ rise.

Many think Sanders would make a poor general election candidate — but there is no big, burgeoning "stop Sanders" movement building in the wings, more than a dozen major Democratic donors and operatives said in interviews with POLITICO. Most donors don't want to risk damaging a candidate suddenly looking more and more likely to be the Democratic nominee against President Donald Trump.


What's more, big Democratic donors realize that launching a well-funded super PAC attacking Sanders could just motivate his devoted base even further, boosting Sanders and alienating those voters from the rest of the Democratic Party. It's even possible that Sanders would raise more money off attacks against him than anti-Sanders donors were willing to spend in the first place.

In other words, big donors' money is suddenly no good here.

"I pick up no signs yet of a 'Stop Bernie’ movement, at least among the donors I talk with," said Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance, a collaborative of progressive donors whose members have included high-powered megadonors like George Soros and Donald Sussman. "I think people are hyper-aware of how counterproductive that could be with the many voters who are passionate about Sanders."

Unlike rivals such as former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, most donors have had little contact with Sanders, who raises nearly all his money online from small-dollar contributions. Their concern about Sanders is mainly about his ability to win over moderate and Republican voters in a general election because of his progressive views on issues like "Medicare for All," donors say.


“It just doesn’t seem realistic to have Sanders as our nominee. He can just be dragged down so easily by Trump and all his followers,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a Bay Area megadonor.

But Tompkins Buell, who is currently helping Buttigieg in the 2020 race, quickly dismissed the notion of donating money to try to knock Sanders off his perch atop the Democratic primary polls.

“That’s not something I would do,” Tompkins Buell said.

Donors’ concerns about running negative ads in the Democratic primary aren’t just limited to Sanders. A damaging, drawn-out primary could be too much for any Democratic nominee to bounce back from in a general election, they believe.

“It just doesn’t seem realistic to have Sanders as our nominee. He can just be dragged down so easily by Trump and all his followers." Susie Tompkins Buell, Bay Area megadonor

As a result, donors to the pro-Biden super PAC, Unite the Country, have specifically asked the group to focus just on countering negative attacks from Trump and others against Biden, according to a donor to the group who gave it those instructions.


For most big Democratic donors right now, donating to super PACs aiding other candidates like Biden and Buttigieg — or throwing in to support New York City's former Mayor Mike Bloomberg — are the only ways they see themselves spending money to try, indirectly, to halt Sanders’ rise.

"Even though there are a lot of people who don’t want Sanders to be the nominee, many view any official anti-Bernie Sanders effort as counterproductive,” said Rufus Gifford, who is helping to do fundraising for Biden and who directed President Barack Obama’s finance operation in 2012. “The more money that goes into an anti-Sanders effort, the more divisive the primary gets and the harder it will be to win in November.”

Sanders has accumulated 21 delegates through the first two 2020 contests, one behind Buttigieg. But he polls well in a series of upcoming states including Nevada, where Democrats vote in caucuses on Saturday and where Sanders is 14 percentage points ahead of the next-highest polling candidate, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Sanders also has built a massive financial advantage over his competitors. Online donors have pumped more than $130 million into his campaign so far — more than any other non-billionaire candidate has brought to the race. That money has allowed Sanders to mount a bigger campaign, running ads in crucial Super Tuesday states like California and Texas before his non-billionaire rivals could afford it. Some candidates, like third-place New Hampshire finisher Amy Klobuchar, may not be able to run ads in large states like Texas at all.

The donors’ conundrum echoes Republicans funders’ agony in 2016 over President Donald Trump. While a minority of Republican funders wanted to act to stop Trump from becoming the nominee, many feared that money spent against Trump would only strengthen his populist, anti-establishment message. Eventually, Our Principles PAC, a super PAC founded by a former Mitt Romney aide, raised $19 million from anti-Trump donors and was among few groups that ultimately emerged up as a face of the “Never Trump” push during the primary.

While most Democratic donors watch silently, two organizations — one focused on Israel — have marshalled money to launch isolated anti-Sanders campaigns.

The Big Tent Project, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, plans to spend at least $1 million on digital ads in South Carolina spotlighting Sanders’ record on issues including Medicare for All.

As a 501(c)(4), also known as a “dark money” group, the Big Tent Project will not have to reveal its donors. The group’s spokesman, Jonathan Kott, a former aide to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), said Sanders needs more careful vetting in the race, even if some are concerned about leveling damaging attacks on the Democratic Party’s potential standard-bearer.

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“I don’t think his views have been scrutinized at the level of a presidential frontrunner,” Kott said. “There’s a different level of scrutiny that you get when you’re leading in the primary polls.”


Meanwhile, Democratic Majority for Israel, a 501(c)(4) and super PAC focused on pushing the Democratic Party to support Israel, has also aired ads opposing Sanders in Iowa and Nevada, including one spot that featured a voter airing concerns about Sanders’ 2019 heart attack.

Democratic Majority for Israel’s PAC does not draw from the standard stable of big Democratic donors. Several of its major donors have given money to both Democratic and Republicans in the past, disclosures show. Oklahoma-based oil and gas executive Stacy Schusterman, the group’s biggest donor prior to its launch of the anti-Sanders ads in Iowa, has donated to a range of Republican and Democrats in past years, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Mark Mellman, who is organizing the Democratic Majority for Israel’s anti-Bernie efforts, said he saw the anti-Sanders ads refocus a conversation about Sanders and electability in Iowa — though after the ad ran, Democratic Majority for Israel staff received “lots of threats from Bernie supporters to our lives and health” on Twitter, Mellman said.

“It certainly set the agenda for the closing discussion in the campaign, which was all about electability. That’s where we wanted the discussion to be,” Mellman said.