Like mushrooms, “grassroots” campaigns grow best in the dark
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they farm mushrooms, not sod
Run by stooges, manipulated by dark money operators
Mark Tapscot:
LET’S TALK ABOUT REAL DARK MONEY: If you’ve ever wondered why there always seems to be some kind of Lefty protest group, with ready-made signs, talking points and protesting bodies, Alana Goodman of The Washington Free Beacon lays it out this morning:
“In May, a group called Accountable Tech, which calls itself a ‘small nonprofit taking on Big Tech companies,’ organized a corporate boycott to protest Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. In the midwest, a group called Opportunity Wisconsin, which bills itself as a ‘coalition of Wisconsin residents,’ ran a deluge of TV ads slamming Republican senator Ron Johnson for his tax policies. And in Arizona, an organization of ‘grassroots racial justice’ activists called Just Democracy released a video blasting Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema for failing to support the Biden administration’s legislative agenda.
“None of these groups actually exist. They are all registered trade names for the North Fund, a shape-shifting nonprofit group that uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes from a shell office in Washington, D.C., according to corporate records.”
(From the Free Beacon’s article)
And while "astroturf" groups are nothing new in politics, critics say the North Fund is part of a new breed—moving away from specific policy advocacy and delving into electoral politics.
"North Fund has said screw it," said Hayden Ludwig, a senior investigator with the Capital Research Center. "They've just decided to be as partisan as they can."
"Their money has been pretty much exclusively focused on Senate races, on ballot initiatives, and a few things kind of related to that," Ludwig added. "The general theme there is cementing permanent Democratic majorities in Congress."
… "From trying to make D.C. a state to funding [Democratic operative] Marc Elias's politicized lawsuits, North Fund's presence is often felt but their very existence is virtually unknown," Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of the Americans for Public Trust watchdog group, told the Washington Free Beacon. "If untraceable money is flooding the latest policy or legislative fight under the guise of grassroots activism, chances are, North Fund is behind it."
Critics say organizations like the North Fund can also have an outsized impact on the private sector, because corporations have a hard time discerning its work from bona fide grassroots groups.
"Corporations rarely understand that a vast majority of these boycott campaigns are organized and run by hyper-partisan political hacks instead of thoughtful and experienced policy experts," one tech industry insider familiar with these boycott campaigns told the Free Beacon. "They disguise themselves in idealistic sounding group names while structuring their organizations in such a way that hides the true motivations and identity of their large donors."
The North Fund received $66 million in 2020, according to its public tax disclosures, nearly all of it from large contributors. Over 93 percent came from donors giving over $1 million.
While the North Fund doesn't disclose the names of its contributors, it is required to report the donation amounts. Americans for Public Trust was able to trace some of the funding using grant data from other nonprofits.
And yes, it is yet another manifestation of the hydra-headed Arabella Advisors.
Arabella Advisors (commonly called “Arabella”) is a philanthropic consulting company that guides the strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar left-leaning nonprofits and individuals. [1] Arabella provides these clients with a number of services that ease their operations and that enable them to enact policies focused on environmentalism and other left-of-center issues. [2] The company was founded in 2005 by Eric Kessler, a Clinton administration alumnus and long-time staffer at the League of Conservation Voters who remains a senior managing partner and principal at the firm. [3]
Arabella Advisors manages four nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, and the Windward Fund. These nonprofits have collectively hosted hundreds of left-wing policy and advocacy organizations since the network’s creation (referred to by critics as “pop-up groups” because they are little more than websites.) [4] [5] A fifth nonprofit, the North Fund, is significantly funded by Arabella’s nonprofits, is housed at the company’s address, and pays Arabella consulting fees.
In 2020, Arabella’s nonprofit network boasted total revenues exceeding $1.67 billion and total expenditures of $1.26 billion, and paid out $896 million in grants largely to other left-leaning and politically active nonprofits. [6] In 2019, Arabella’s four nonprofits reported combined revenues of $731 million. [7]
Altogether, between 2006 and 2020 Arabella’s network reported total revenues of $4.7 billion and total expenditures of $3.3 billion. [8] A January 2020 profile of Arabella Advisors’ network by Inside Philanthropy noted that the company “handles over $400 million in philanthropic investments and advises on several billion dollars in overall resources.” [9]
These funds originate primarily with major left-of-center foundations and individual donors, not with the company Arabella Advisors, and are controlled by the nonprofits, which in turn “hire” Arabella Advisors to consult in exchange for a fee. Many of Arabella’s top officials, including firm founder Eric Kessler and former managing director Bruce Boyd, are current or former principal officers on the nonprofits’ boards of directors. [10] Between 2008 and 2020, Arabella’s nonprofits paid the company over $182 million in contracting and management services fees. [11]
Arabella’s nonprofit network has implemented over 300 different “pop-up” projects targeting a range of issues, including net neutrality, free speech, abortion access, Obamacare, and President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, and was highly active in funding pro-Democratic Party advertisements in the 2018 and 2020 elections. Its groups were also active in trying to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Census in left-leaning states and the subsequent 2021-22 redistricting process, when state legislative and congressional districts were redrawn by state legislatures. [12] [13] [14] Multiple former Arabella employees have also been traced to the Biden administration. [15]
Arabella Advisors specifically highlights projects in which it has helped its clients divest millions of dollars from traditional energy companies, invest in risky experimental companies, boycott the historically Republican-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce, enact a ballot initiative that freed 4,000 criminals in California, and lobby for a labor union-friendly policy in Oregon that was supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Oregon Nurses Association. [16]
….
In April 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s “system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors,” as “dark money,” calling the network “a leading vehicle for it on the Left.” [19]
In November 2019, Politico criticized the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the 501(c)(4) advocacy wing of Arabella’s nonprofit network, as a “little-known,” “massive ‘dark money’ group [that] boosted Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections with $140 million. “The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states,” the left-leaning website reported. Politico also noted that Sixteen Thirty Fund’s biggest single donation (made anonymously) was for $51.7 million, “more than the group had ever raised before in an entire year before President Donald Trump was elected,” adding that “the group’s 2018 fundraising surpassed any amount ever raised by a left-leaning political nonprofit.” [20] However, Politico failed to fully connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors’ nonprofit network.
The left-leaning Washington Post further criticized Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund as a “big campaign donor” in a November 24, 2019 opinion by the editorial board, which called on Congress to change nonprofit disclosure laws, noting in particular a $26.7 million anonymous donation to the Fund. [21]However, the Post also failed to connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.
….. In 2021, The Atlantic called Arabella’s network “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and Arabella Advisors the network’s “mothership,” adding: “Democrats have quietly pulled ahead of Republicans in untraceable political spending. One group helped make it happen.” In the Atlantic’sinterview with Arabella CEO Sampriti Ganguli it called the Sixteen Thirty Fund “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money” which funneled “roughly $61 million of effectively untraceable money to progressive causes,” making it the “second-largest super-PAC donor in 2020
Much more at the article itself (I was just quoting from the introduction). And of course, George Soros and his billions are intricately woven into Arabella’s customers’ activities.
