If you haven’t yet heard about the Progressive Donor Network,
you soon will. Yesterday the Washington Times reported
on how Democrats plan to use PDN to go around the new campaign
finance law to raise soft money. But there’s a more immediate
reason to pay attention: Two of PDN’s founding members are current
CNN “Crossfire” hosts Paul Begala and
James Carville, cause enough to expect controversy
as PDN pushes ahead with its very Democratic agenda.
PDN was started by Michael Lux, a longtime
leftist fundraiser and Clinton aide, whose résumé
reads like the template for the modern Democrat: former senior
Clinton White House adviser, former fundraiser for the AFL-CIO,
former senior staff member for People for the American Way and its
fundraising arm, and a former campaign aide to Sens. Joe
Biden and Paul Simon.
Lux’s PDN and its relationship to Carville and Begala will be
interesting to monitor, given that the PDN’s stated goal is to
attack and defeat the Bush Administration’s political and policy
agenda in the coming months. PDN intends to raise money through a
separate PAC and distribute it to state and local Democratic
candidates, as well as organize public protests and plant spokesmen
and PDN supporters on radio and TV talk shows to counter
conservative voices. Supporters of PDN say they fully expect and
hope in the coming months that their issues and their people will
become fixtures on the “Crossfire” set. Stay tuned.
Interestingly, Lux and his Progressive Strategies firm also
operate American Family Voices, a 501(c)(3) which recently has been
part of the Democratic Party’s attempt to tie Republicans to the
Enron collapse. Lux’s empire is operated out of his Washington
offices.
“He’s trying to beat Republicans at their own game,” says a
staffer to Rep. Dick Gephardt, who recently spoke
at a PDN fundraiser. “Guys on the right like Grover
Norquist have been fundraising and running three or four
different ‘interest groups’ out of their offices for years. We’re
finally catching on.”
Gephardt in particular seems enamored of the group, apparently
hoping Lux’s ties to the Clinton/Gore crowd, as well as the
AFL-CIO, will help him in a possible presidential run. “Sure, he’d
want a group like this in his corner. They’d be aggressive
advocates for his progressive ideals,” says Gephardt’s staffer.
(Wonder if Gephardt’s Missouri constituents know they’ve been
voting for a progressive all these years?)
Meanwhile, in Texas, Democrats have organized another neutrally
named 501(c)(3) headed by an old Clinton hand and designed to
provide aid and comfort to their party. Former San Antonio mayor
and Clinton Cabinet member Henry Cisneros now runs
the Every Texan Foundation, which ostensibly is raising money to
fund nonpartisan grassroots voter registration drives in the Lone
Star State. In fact Clinton recently appeared with Cisneros to
headline a fundraiser for the group.
Although by law Every Texan is supposed to be nonpartisan, its
backers have a different idea. “I thought it was a Democrat group,”
says one Houston-based donor who cut the foundation a $1,000 check
recently. “Cisneros, Clinton, and they tout Democrats here.”
Cisneros has modeled his project on Jesse
Jackson’s get-out-the-vote program of the late 1980s and
early 1990s.
