Sell Hillary

Secret effort to sell Hillary Clinton to rich liberals

Campaign targets unenthusiastic donors on the party’s left.

By Kenneth P. Vogel

Hillary Clinton’s allies are working to win over unenthusiastic rich liberals by pitting her against the Kock brothers and prospective GOP rivals rather than more progressive Democrats, according to a draft of a secret memo obtained by POLITICO.

The memo was prepared for Clinton enforcer David Brock ahead of an April major donor meeting in San Francisco. But the concerns it reveals about liberal donors’ coolness toward her presidential candidacy – with some even holding out hope for a robust primary challenge from the left – are just as acute today, Clinton allies say.

Winning over such donors is seen as critical to Clinton’s White House prospects.

The Clinton forces are counting on a constellation of allied outside groups to raise as much as $500 million to take on a Republican big-money machine that has been raking in cash from dozens of super-rich and highly engaged partisans. By contrast, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has struggled to collect million-dollar checks.

Part of the reticence stems from liberal queasiness about the expanding role of big money in politics since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. But there’s also some discomfort with Hillary Clinton, the former New York Senator and Secretary of State, who is seen as too hawkish on foreign policy and insufficiently progressive on key issues like fighting climate change, income inequality and the role of big money in politics. Additionally, Democratic finance operatives say, efforts to rustle up seven-figure checks are suffering from a lack of a single, unifying enemy on the right.

All those concerns are addressed in the Brock memo, which appears to have been drafted in preparation for his appearance at the annual spring meeting of the Democracy Alliance major liberal donor club in April in San Francisco. The memo is written as a question-and-answer exchange between Brock and Democracy Alliance donors .

The memo suggests that Brock, who has built a fleet of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Clinton, is taking a conciliatory approach to assuage donors’ concerns – conceding she’s not as liberal as some donors wish, but emphasizing her progessiveness in public service and minimizing the prospects of a vigorous Democratic primary.

“You say the Kocks represent all that is bad in this broken system, yet our presumptive nominee is in the pocket of big Wall Street banks,” begins one of the memo’s hypothetical donor questions. “Aren’t we going to have a hard time going after the Kocks’ big money when some could argue that Sec. Clinton is bank rolled by Wall Street and therefore there is a pox on both our houses?”

The answer Brock should give, according to the memo: “It is no secret that Sec. Clinton is fair-left and not far-left. I think it is safe to say that there will be a dramatic difference between Sec. Clinton and whoever is the Republican opponent. She has spent a lifetime advocating for women and children and fighting for the middle class and there is not one GOP candidate who has that record.”

Brock did not dispute the authenticity of the memo, which leaves a pair of questions about the internal politics of the Clinton big-money effort unanswered. But he declined to comment on the memo, or whether it reflected his fundraising approach or his presentation at the Democracy Alliance, which was closed to the press.

The three-day meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a group that includes more than 100 individual and institutional donors and various unions — took place at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel just as Clinton officially launched her campaign.

While some of the group’s major donors — including billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer — have displayed varying levels of support for Clinton, others have grumbled mostly privately that she doesn’t reflect their worldviews. Many Democracy Alliance members supported then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary and urged Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run in 2016.

The group’s importance to Democratic big-money efforts was underscored by the attendance of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who held a briefing on the sidelines of the San Francisco meeting. Podesta founded the Center for American Progress think tank, which has benefited from Democracy Alliance support, and he has close relationships with many club members. At least one – CREDO Mobile co-founder Michael Kieschnick – told Podesta during the side session that his campaign role made Kieschnick more supportive of Clinton.

Another donor who attended, Utah-based investor Art Lipson, told POLITICO that Podesta didn’t overtly seek support for Clinton’s campaign. “First of all, that would have gone over badly. And he is much too smart to say it and doesn’t need to say it,” said Lipson, who has donated about $2.5 million over the years to Democratic candidates and committees.

Lipson said he recently donated to a super PAC trying to draft Warren into the Democratic presidential primary. In an assessment that could apply to many Democracy Alliance members, he said “her message is exactly my message, so I am 100 percent behind her. But there is no chance she is going to run.” Lipson plans to attend a fundraiser this month in Salt Lake City for Martin O’Malley’s Democratic presidential campaign and said the former Maryland governor “comes across as being highly intelligent.”

Lipson said he’s “fine with Hillary” given “that it would take some sort of a national disaster to have some other Democratic candidate” win the nomination. But he said that, while he’ll vote for her over prospective Republican rivals, he does not plan to donate to her campaign, let alone any supportive super PAC..

Brock has sought to rally donors who might not otherwise give to Clinton by highlighting expected attacks against her from the most reviled of liberal bogeymen – the billionaire industrialist mega-donors Charles and David Kock and their conservative political and policy network.

“They have their sights on Sec. Clinton,” reads the memo prepared for Brock ahead of the meeting.

He spoke on a panel called “The Electoral Arms Race,” focused on the unprecedented $889-million spending spree planned by the Kock network in the 2016 run-up, according to an agenda obtained by POLITICO.

At the meeting, sources say, Brock detailed a new initiative of his American Bridge political outfit to highlight key 2016 states in which Kock Industries, the brothers’ multinational manufacturing conglomerate, could be used against GOP candidates. The model for this project, the sources said, were the attacks that Democrat Gary Peters and his allies leveled against the Kocks and Republican Terri Lynn Land in his successful 2014 Michigan Senate race.

“This is a brand new project and we project it will cost around $3 million,” reads Brock’s memo. “We think it is critical to start the project early and we are looking for support to get staffed up very soon. We are hoping to get immediate support coming in at the $250,000 level.”

The memo also includes responses to questions about how liberals could justify their criticism of the Kock groups for not disclosing their donors when some of Brock’s groups – including Media Matters and American Bridge 21st Century Foundation – also do not disclose the identities of their donors.

“How can we stand up here and expect to be taken seriously talking about what they are doing when we are doing the same thing?” reads one question. In the suggested answer, Brock expresses disapproval for the proliferation of so-called “dark money,” which Clinton herself has criticized, but adds, “We will play by the existing rules in this election because we cannot unilaterally disarm – too much of what we care about is at stake.” And he asserts: “There is a major difference here – the Kocks are flooding the political system with money for pure self interest and self gain,” alleging Kock-backed groups back policies and candidates committed to “slash(ing) government regulations so they can pollute with abandon and increase their bottom line. People in this room are not motivated by personal gain, and often work against their own self-interest.”

The Kocks’ allies reject this argument on its face, contending that their activism is motivated by a belief that society as a whole stands to benefit from small-government policies that allow the free market to thrive.

Told of the characterization in the memo, James Davis, a spokesman for the Kock network umbrella group Freedom Partners, said its members are focused on “advancing a future with more economic opportunities for every American.”

Davis accused the Kocks’ liberal critics of “launching personal attacks and taking away those freedoms.” And, alluding to support by Democrats including Clinton for reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, which Freedom Partners opposes, Davis said “many of them are rigging the system to fatten their wallets with taxpayer-funded corporate welfare. This is the culture of corruption in Washington that we’re fighting against.”