Researcher: The Left has multiple Soroses

FPI / September 27, 2020

George Soros isn't the only high-profile leftist pumping mountains of cash into progressive candidates and causes in the 2020 election cycle, a researcher said.

“George Soros is certainly one of the most influential powerful men on the planet — an absolute pillar of the Left in all things nonprofit and political,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center told The Washington Times. “However, people need to understand that the Left has multiple Soroses.”

Walter cited billionaire Michael Bloomberg's announcement that he would spend $100 million into helping Democrats capture Florida in November, including paying off the debts of more than 30,000 felons so they would be eligible to vote in "the Democratic column."

Then there is California leftist billionaire Tom Steyer, whose brief shot at the Democrat presidential nomination quickly sputtered.

When it comes to individual contributions to federal campaigns, Steyere leads the pack in 2020, having thus far sunk $54 million into Democratic candidates and committees, according to Open Secrets, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics.

As for Soros, data show he has donated just $8 million to individual campaigns, but his total election spending to date approaches $60 million when donations to his Democracy PAC from his Fund for Policy Reform and Soros Management Fund are included, which the Washington Free Beacon reported already exceeds his previous high of $22 million in 2016.

The Democracy PAC’s donations include $8.5 million to the Senate Majority PAC; $5 million to the Win Justice PAC, founded by the SEIU and Planned Parenthood Votes; and $1.75 million to Color of Change, part of the Black Lives Matter network.

Walter noted the Left is infusing hundreds of millions into 501c3 nonprofits which are barred from endorsing candidates but not from making donations to 501c4 organizations.

The 501c3 avenue sees left-tilting groups out-raising right-tilting organizations by 3-to-1, Walter told The Washington Times.

A 501c3 also may engage in “nonpartisan” voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, but Walter said only the Left side of the philanthropy aisle is taking advantage of that opportunity:

“The Left does over $100 million a cycle just in voter registration and get-out-the-vote, because most people don’t know that any charity is legally allowed to register voters and to bus them to the polls — as long as it’s done in a nonpartisan fashion.”

Soros's Open Society Foundations network spent more than $700 million in 2018, but not far behind were the Arabella Advisors network and the Tides Foundation network, with about $600 million each.

“Steyer is enormous in this, and the Arabella Advisors empire is enormous in this,” Walter said. “The Tides empire is enormous in this. The Left is Goliath, especially in the large nonprofit sector. I’m not taking anything away from Soros’s bigness and badness, but there are more.”

Free Press International