Big labor targets Steyer, Soros in massive 2016 fundraising effort
Documents show labor leaders aim to secure preferential treatment from major liberal funders.
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Brian Mahoney
| 6/26/15 5:12 AM EDT
Big labor, which once relied almost exclusively on member dues to fund its political activity, is now hoping to raise huge checks for its 2016 efforts from billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer, according to confidential documents.
The documents, obtained by POLITICO from a source outside the labor movement, show labor leaders have invested considerable time and union cash to secure preferential treatment from the preeminent club of major liberal funders, the Democracy Alliance, or DA. They also offer a rare glimpse into labor’s efforts to identify rich donors who could pump money into union-linked non-profits that can legally accept unlimited donations and do not have to disclose their contributors.
One briefing document shows that a leading labor non-profit called Working America — which works to organize non-union workers to seek higher pay and better working conditions, and to elect sympathetic candidates — is focusing on donors it considers “true progressives (who) care about labor.” It offers detailed profiles with information seemingly intended to cultivate wealthy donors. Ian Simmons, the silent funding partner of the small-dollar juggernaut ActBlue, is described as “an up and comer at the DA,” while healthcare software pioneer Paul Egerman, an Elizabeth Warren confidant, is listed as “important in Democratic Party fundraising circles.”
And there are signs that Working America is trying to reach donors whose animating issues haven’t always figured prominently into labor’s playbook, like climate change. Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund billionaire who in 2014 donated $67 million to a super PAC pressing for climate change action, is described as “an advocate of promoting economic development” who is engaged in “ongoing discussions with AFL-CIO and Working America about possible points of agreement and collaboration.”
Steyer’s political adviser Chris Lehane declined to say whether Steyer or his foundation has donated to Working America or the AFL-CIO. “Tom is working closely with our allies, including labor, to build a coalition that will talk to voters about the three justices – economic justice, climate justice and educational justice,” Lehane said.
Labor’s increasing forays into big-money politics come at a pivotal time for unions and the Democratic Party.
The longtime traditional allies appeared to be closely synched heading into 2016 until a simmering feud boiled over this week. Congressional Democrats sided with Republicans to pass trade legislation bitterly opposed by labor but backed by President Barack Obama and promoted by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. Unions and their allies are promising to turn up the heat on Democrats who don’t take labor’s side on trade. Yet unions are relying on Democrats to help beat back well-funded conservative attacks on bargaining power, and many Democratic candidates, including presidential favorite Clinton, are embracing labor’s causes, such as raising the minimum wage and requiring paid sick leave.
In interviews, labor leaders confirmed that they hope to expand the reach — and revenues — of outfits outside traditional unions, which have seen their ranks and budgets slashed by Republican efforts to limit organizing rights. Labor unions have enthusiastically embraced super PACs, which focus on election spending and were an outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. So-called “alt-labor” groups like Working America, which seek to organize non-unionized employees, such as fast-food workers, have been billed as the the labor movement’s future.
In April, four labor-linked non-profits won coveted spots among the Democracy Alliance’s portfolio of 34 groups recommended for funding. Insiders expect that to translate into serious 2016 cash for the labor groups added to the portfolio — Working America, the Working Families Party/Organization, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project.
The DA’s member donors (“partners,” in club parlance) must donate anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million to endorsed groups. And the club’s members intend to steer a total of $100 million or more to recommended groups during the 2016 election.
The list of DA partners now includes six prominent unions, with four (the American Federation of Teachers, the Communications Workers of America, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union) joining in the last two years, according to a list and other club documents obtained by POLITICO.
The partnerships require the unions to pay annual dues of $60,000. But they give the unions’ leaders access to the deep-pocketed donors and foundations who constitute the majority of the partners at the DA, which is a kind of nerve center and bank for the progressive movement, serving a similar — if less well-financed — role as the Koch brothers’ conservative funding network.
The finances of Working America illustrate labor’s efforts to diversify its funding.
The group was started in 2003 by the AFL-CIO, which originally provided 93 percent of its funding.
But by 2013 – the most recent year for which records were available – the AFL-CIO and other unions contributed only 40 percent of the $25 million raised by Working America and Working America Education Fund. The two arms are registered under sections of the tax code — 501(c)5 and 501(c)3, respectively — that do not require them to disclose their donors. But a significant portion of their budgets now comes from members who pay small voluntary dues, and deep-pocketed liberal foundations and donors who write five- and six-figure checks.
Big labor is now hoping to raise huge checks for its 2016 efforts from billionaires like George Soros. | AP Photo
Labor non-profits like Working America in recent years have seen their fundraising spike, with non-union sources playing a major role, according to a POLITICO analysis of filings with the Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service using data aggregated by the conservative Center for Union Facts. The analysis found that 18 leading labor non-profits (including Working America and the three others added to the DA portfolio this year) raised $52 million in 2013 — 15 percent more than in 2012, despite the presidential election that year — with 13 percent of the haul coming from liberal foundations (which are required to disclose their grants in their tax filings).
“There’s a huge upsurge in this type of activity,” said Larry Cohen, the outgoing president of the Communications Workers of America, who sits on Working America’s board and helped start a handful of labor non-profits that have received funding from the CWA and have delivered presentations to Democracy Alliance donors.
Since assuming the club’s leadership last year, LaMarche has worked to build bridges between labor and rich liberals who sometimes hold sharply different views on trade pacts and school reform – even the role of unions in public life.
“One of the good things about bringing labor and capital together in the DA is that they can have discussions about the issues on which they have been at loggerheads,” he said. He noted that the group last year for the first time elected a labor leader, National Education Association executive director John Stocks, as board chairman.
The emerging synergy is both ironic and worrisome to conservatives who track liberal money, to whom there are no greater threats than “Big Labor” and the Democracy Alliance.
“They’re constantly complaining about the horrors of our campaign finance system and yet this is a savvy way for them to make use of all the available political finance avenues to fight their battles,” said Scott Walter, executive vice president Capital Research Center, which studies liberal funding networks.
For its part, Working America says it’s more focused on courting moderate working-class members than liberal billionaire donors.
“We were delighted to be put among the groups within the Democracy Alliance and have some support, but it’s just not mostly who we are,” said the group’s executive director Karen Nussbaum.
Working America has demonstrated an ability to effect legislative and campaign fights in recent years, from city halls to Capitol Hill. It helped temporarily derail Obama’s trade deal and played a major role in lifting its preferred candidate to victory in Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral primary. Plus, it was a leading player in pushing through minimum wage increases in more than 15 states.
It’s planning an aggressive door-to-door campaign ahead of 2016, said Nussbaum, who declined to discuss funding sources for the effort. She said Working America sees Democracy Alliance primarily as a place to forge collaborations with like-minded groups, not as a funding source.
Yet the donor profiles produced for her group suggest the efforts to build collaborations and high-dollar fundraising relationships are not mutually exclusive.
The profiles — like those prepared by development staffs across Washington ahead of prospecting meetings — include donors’ contribution histories, pet causes, hometowns, spouses’ names, etc.
Investor Sandor Straus and his wife Faye Straus are described as “genuine progressives (who) have given $10k to (Working America) through the DA for past two years” – donations that previously have not been disclosed. They did not respond to requests for comment.
At the DA’s spring meeting in April in San Francisco, they co-hosted a panel to discuss “how aligned donor, labor, and foundation investments” in regional secret-money non-profits were “making progressive wins possible at the state and local levels,” according to an agenda obtained by POLITICO.
Likewise, the Working America briefing describes Ken Zimmerman, a top official for Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic network founded by the billionaire investor Soros, as “central to meeting with the AFL-CIO about possible collaborations.” An Open Society spokeswoman said Zimmerman “has no formal relationship or involvement with the AFL-CIO,” but added that foundation officials “meet with people all the time to talk about areas of overlapping interest.”
Indeed, a pair of foundations in Open Society’s network have donated more than $10 million to various alt-labor groups since 2001, with $600,000 going to an arm of Working America in 2012, according to foundation tax filings.
Sources familiar with Soros’s relationship with Working America say he donated $150,000 from his own pocket to the group in 2006 and $400,000 in 2008, when it organized a massive canvassing campaign supporting Obama and other Democrats.
But Steve Early, a former CWA official and the author of Save our Unions called labor’s courtship of foundation donors “troubling” at times because “these philanthropic institutions are not fundamentally on the same side as any real working class movement.” He said alt-labor groups “need to develop a dues paying membership base” to become permanent sustainable organizations.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/big-labor-donors-george-soros-tom-steyer-119454.html#ixzz3eGZciD5O
