Media Fund
Media Fund
In the March 8, 2004, issue of The American Standard, David Tell's "Who's Afraid of George Soros?" says that "Campaign finance reform bites the hand that passed it." Tell sorts through two news items both published February 19, 2004: The first, "Advocacy Groups Permitted to Use Unlimited Funds . . . Ruling Favors Democrats," was the lead story in the New York Times; the second, "FEC Moves to Regulate Groups Opposing Bush," appeared in the Washington Post. [1]
Tell relates that "The Democratic plan got under way in earnest during a meeting of strategists convened last summer at the eccentric multibillionaire's (George Soros) Southampton, Long Island, beach house. Two of the attendees, Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, and Ellen Malcolm, longtime president of EMILY's List, had just cofounded something called America Coming Together (ACT), an organization through which they hoped to direct 'a massive voter contact program . . . to defeat George W. Bush.' Soros rather liked this idea, seeing as how--he would later tell a Washington Post reporter--Bush's defeat had developed into 'the central focus of my life.' So Soros pulled Rosenthal and Malcolm aside, away from the other guests, told them he'd like to get in on their ACT, and promised to give the group $10 million, just like that. At least half this pledge has since been fulfilled. [2]
"Not coincidentally," Tell adds, "ACT remains the richest and best known of the new anti-Bush 527s. But there are a handful of similar enterprises so closely affiliated that--except on paper--it's difficult to determine where one of them ends and the next begins. Down the hall from ACT, on the same floor of the same Washington office building, is another Soros-supported 527 called the Media Fund, which will produce and purchase all the television ads. Raising additional money for use by both ACT and the Media Fund is a third 527, Joint Victory Campaign 2004. ACT's CEO Rosenthal and Service Employees union president Andy Stern, who serves on ACT's executive committee, are also executive director and board chairman, respectively, of still another 527 called Partnership for America's Families. The Partnership plans a voter registration drive focused on union households, women, and 'communities of color'--whom it will 'inform and engage' about the 'disastrous impact' of 'failed Bush administration policies.' And ACT executive Cecile Richards, previously a top aide to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, is doing double duty as president of America Votes, a 527 whose job it is to ensure that a long list of cooperating nonprofit groups traditionally friendly to the Democratic party--Planned Parenthood, the NEA, the Sierra Club, People for the American Way, the trial lawyers, and so forth--don't work at cross purposes with ACT and its satellites." [3]