A pair of progressive organizations operating in complete secrecy spearheaded a $32 million campaign during the midterms to push back against former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement.
The effort, first reported by POLITICO, was undertaken by two newly created groups: Pro-Democracy Center and Pro-Democracy Campaign. Those groups operated in states across the country as the election system faced unprecedented pressure from Trump and his allies, who falsely said that the 2020 election was stolen.
Among the initiatives funded included:
- Supporting organizations that were pushing for expansive ballot measures on voting in Arizona and Michigan.
- Boosting voter outreach programs, like groups hosting registration drives at local jails in Pennsylvania and “souls to the polls” events in Florida.
- Backing campaigns to urge local officials to expand access to early voting.
Altogether, the organizations funded 126 groups across 16 states, from national battleground states like Arizona and Pennsylvania to places like South Carolina and New Jersey, where most statewide races have not been particularly competitive.
“It was very clear that there was a mobilized constituency that cared about democracy, but it was on the wrong side,” David Donnelly, the veteran progressive operative behind the groups, said of conservative election activists after 2020. “And there wasn’t as big of a response to what we needed to have to defeat it.”…Donnelly said that his organizations are not going away, and are “going to continue to support groups building their capacity over time.”
But he did note some uncertainty among large donors in the space about whether the fight is over.
A concern he hears in the fundraising world is that some feel “like, ‘oh, we averted the kind of disaster scenario of all these elections deniers winning in key offices, therefore we don’t have to worry about this right now. Trump’s on the field, but he’s not as powerful anymore,’” Donnelly said.
“That is a whistling by the graveyard attitude,” he continued. “We narrowly held the line, and nobody is going away on either side.”