GOP-killing juggernaut puts bull's-eye on states

By Bob Unruh

Millionaires, billionaires donating to takeover plan

A Democratic juggernaut of local and regional organizations that blast Republicans and promote Democrats using money donated by hundreds of millionaires and even billionaires was a key to President-elect Barack Obama's win over GOP candidate Sen. John McCain last month. And a new report warns the same attack strategy now is being installed in states, targeting especially the offices of secretary of state, where elections are managed.

"The Democracy Alliance helped Democrats give Republicans a shellacking in November. Now it's organizing state-level chapters in at least 19 states, and once-conservative Colorado, which hosts the Democracy Alliance's most successful state affiliate, has turned Democrat blue," the report from Matthew Vadum and James Dellinger of Capital Research Center concludes.

The report from the center, which studies non-profit organizations, is titled "The Democracy Alliance Does America: The Soros-Founded Plutocrats' Club Forms State Chapters," and is accessible online.

It concludes the 2008 victory for Obama was a result of the outraged millionaire donors to the Democrats who watched another failure for their cause in 2004, after opening their checkbooks for tens of millions of dollars.

"It was born out the frustration of wealthy liberals who gave generously to liberal candidates and 527 political committees, but received no electoral payoff in 2004," the report said.

George Soros and others "were angry and discouraged after contributing to the Media Fund which spent $57 million on TV ads attacking President Bush in swing states and to American Coming Together which spent $78 million on get out the vote efforts," the report said.

The result was a victory for President George W. Bush. So assembling in 2005, 70 millionaires and billionaires met in Phoenix "for a secret long-term strategy session." Their principal point of agreement was "the conservative movement was 'a fundamental threat to the American way of life.'"

They studied the success of conservatives, their network of organizations, funders and activists, including think tanks, legal advocacy organizations and leadership schools.

Former Clinton administration official Rob Stein explained Democrats, meanwhile, had become a top-down organization run by professional politicians. Result? The birth of the Democracy Alliance, "a loose collection of super-rich donors committed to building organizations that would propel American to the left," the report said.

Colorado was one of the first regions targeted. According to the CRC documentation, Colorado went for Bush by 9 percent in 2000, and by 5 percent in 2004. In 1998, the state had two GOP senators and four of the six members of the House were GOP, as well as the governor and both houses in the state legislature.

As the money began flowing, the results began changing, and now both Senate seats are Democrat as are five of the state's seven House members as well as the governor's office and both houses of the state legislature.

Defeating GOP U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a vocal opponent of homosexual marriage, for example, cost an estimated $2.6 million and included such "juvenile harassment" stunts as an "interviewer" asking Musgrave to choose between stopping a "gay" marriage and saving a life, the report said.

Taking over the state legislature cost $2 million, and the governor's office was $7.5 million, the report said, funded by well-known Democrats Pat Stryker, Tim Gill and Rutt Bridges, among others.

The report explains the work focuses on seven components: the capacity to generate intellectual ammunition, ability to pursue investigations, to mobilize for elections, to combat negative media, to sue strategically, to train new leaders and maintain a new media presence.

Journalist Fred Barnes, according to the report, said, "If copied in other states, [this] has the potential to produce sweeping Democratic gains nationwide."

The concept depends on wealthy liberals' spending tons of money to "create a vast infrastructure of liberal organizations that produces an anti-Republican, anti-conservative echo chamber in politics and the media."

Now, the CRC warned, the same organizing is going on "in at least 19 states," and even more to the point, a special campaign has been set up to target the offices of Secretary of State around the nation.

"As the murderously astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, 'The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything,'" the report said.

"Since 2006, Democracy Alliance partners have quietly funded the Secretary of State Project, a below-the-radar non-federal '527' political group. It can accept unlimited contributions that are not immediately publicly disclosed. Its website claims, 'A modest political investment in electing clean candidates to critical Secretary of State offices is an efficient way to protect the election,'" the report said.

"SoS endorses secretary of state candidates who take the position that voter fraud is largely a myth; that vote suppression is widely and solely used by Republicans; that it's a waste of time to remove obviously fraudulent names from voter rolls; and that legal requirements that voters show photo identification discriminate against racial minorities," the report said.

Among its victories so far is Mark Ritchie in Minnesota in 2006, the state official currently presiding over the Senate recount in that state, the report said.

Also, in Ohio, Jennifer Brunner "trounced" her opponent.

"It October the SoS investment paid off when Brunner defied federal law by refusing to take steps to verify 200,000 questionable voter registrations," the report said.

While the report said group members deliberately are low-profile, among those whose membership has been cited in various reports are Quark creator Tim Gill, RealNetworks chief Rob Glaser, investment banker Steven M. Gluckstern, Hyatt heiress Rachel Peritzker Hunter, former Oracle executive John Luongo, television producer Norman Lear, Taco Bell heir Robert McKay, actor Rob Reiner and dozens more.

The leaders met on Nov. 12, following Obama's victory, in Washington, the report said. The goal? Apparently power, since the president alone, according to one Democratic official, appoints 5,000 officials to run agencies employing two million voters that hire another 10 million outside contractors.

"It's safe to say they are planning their next moves," the report said.