The Democracy Alliance has long been a major funder of left-leaning Washington-based institutions working against President Donald Trump. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images 2020 elections Liberal megadonors plan $100 million swing-state blitz to beat Trump The Democracy Alliance will pump up its funding efforts on everything from digital politicking to staff training in key states in 2020.

The country’s most powerful liberal donor club is reshaping its spending on the 2020 elections, playing down longtime relationships with groups in Washington and instead preparing to pour $100 million into key states to help defeat President Donald Trump.

The group, the Democracy Alliance, wants to fund everything from programs combating social media disinformation to candidate training sessions leading up to the elections and the next round of redistricting, according to a new three-year spending plan described to donors during a recent members-only meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin, Texas.


It’s a significant shift for the group, whose members pumped $600 million into various causes on the left in 2017 and 2018. The Democracy Alliance has long been a major funder of left-leaning Washington-based institutions like the Center for American Progress think tank and the national media watchdog Media Matters. But while individual Democracy Alliance members may continue financing those groups, the groups are no longer a central focus for the donor club, whose members pledge to give at least $200,000 a year to groups on a list of approved organizations.

“It’s not that we don’t need any more national organizations or that the national organizations are sufficiently resourced. Of course they need investments,” said Gara LaMarche, president of Democracy Alliance. But for the group to be effective, LaMarche continued, “We have to be working at the state level and we have to be funding organizations in the grassroots.”

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The Democracy Alliance’s next wave of spending will include “funding programs that listen to voters’ concerns and amplify the policy records — and harm — that the Trump administration and conservatives have caused in Americans’ lives,” according to a spending plan reviewed by POLITICO.

New Media Ventures, which invests in politically minded tech startups, is helming the group’s digital organizing, spurred by concerns among Democrats that the GOP and Trump campaign deployed better digital advertising and organizing tactics in 2016 than they did. The Democracy Alliance is aiming to funnel more than $5 million into digital spending in 2019, on top of the $100 million in state spending.

“We view our job, generally, as helping to build the infrastructure that is in place for an eventual nominee,” LaMarche said. “But we’re not doing our job well if we don’t have our eye on the long term.”

In addition to grassroots organizing and digital politicking, the group’s top priorities include candidate and staff training and initiatives on voting rights. It also will include raising $12 million for groups that organize and mobilize voters in minority communities, giving priority to organizations run by black, Native American, Latino and other minority leaders.

“Our donors are keenly aware of both the digital tactics and level of disruption that are being utilized both in this country by the far right and by foreign entities," said Kim Anderson, executive vice president of the Democracy Alliance, adding that donors are motivated by a lack of faith “in the Trump administration to engage with actors that put our democracy at risk.”

The changes to the group’s plans were introduced to donors in April at a muted spring gathering. Unlike at many Democracy Alliance meetings, attended by operatives who are recipients of the group’s largesse and which featured hotel bars packed with shoulder-rubbing Democrats, outsiders were not allowed into the April meeting, so that members could pore over details of the 2020 plan.





Roughly 75 people attended a session to hear about the rollout of the operation; many of them were representatives of labor groups, according to a person present. Democracy Alliance spokesperson Elizabeth Bartolomeo disputed this description, saying 100 donors to the group attended the conference and "only a few were representatives from labor."

Some Democrats argue the Democracy Alliance, which was founded in 2005 to build progressive infrastructure and counter the power of conservatives like the Koch brothers, does not hold the same sway it used to, as Democrats now have numerous other outlets for big-money political giving.

One of the Democracy Alliance’s most-active and high-profile original members, Tim Gill, is no longer a member of the group, according to multiple people familiar with his status. And though George Soros is still a member of the group, he usually does not attend the meetings.

“I don’t pay a lot of attention to [its] strategy,” said one Democrat who has attended Democracy Alliance meetings. “Politics has decentralized.” Today, many organizations thrive off individual donors rather than focus on getting the approval of a group like the Democracy Alliance, the Democrat said.

There are other donor gatherings organized by the likes of David Brock, the founder of American Bridge and Media Matters; the states-focused collaborative Way to Win; and a new political operation helmed by tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, who collects money from other donors in addition to giving his own.

In recent years, a handful of megadonors also began putting tens of millions of their own dollars into political groups they founded and have funded themselves — among them: Tom Steyer and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“Equally as important as what the DA is going to do is, what is Mike Bloomberg going to do?” Steve Phillips, a Democracy Alliance member, said in an interview. “When you get single individuals spending $100 million, they kind of become the center of gravity.”

Anderson, the group’s executive vice president, dismissed the notion that other organizations are competing with the Democracy Alliance for progressive power or money.

“Our competition is not progressive donors, our competition is donors who don’t share our values,” Anderson said. “The Democracy Alliance has had the broadest view of the ecosystem on the far right and the progressive side, and the longest commitment.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article mischaracterized the Democracy Alliance's spending on organizing minority communities. The Democracy Alliance will prioritize making grants to organizations led by leaders from minority and LGBTQ communities.