March, 2004

LENGTH: 4198 words

HEADLINE: Money Talks

BYLINE: By Mark Francis Cohen; Articles by Washington writer Mark Francis Cohen can be found on his Web site, www.markfranciscohen.com

HIGHLIGHT:

DC's Liberal Establishment Is United in Its Desire to Beat President Bush but Divided on How to Do It. There Is One Thing All Liberals Agree On:

BODY:

THERE'S A PINK STUCCO MANSION ON 29TH STREET IN GEORGETOWN known as Mille Fleurs--in French that means 1,000 Flowers. "Have you ever seen it?" asks a Democratic political operative. "It's spectacular." $ The two-story home is a showplace. Inside are maids in uniforms, marble floors, Rembrandt and Toulouse-Lautrec originals, a glass-enclosed atrium, an exercise room with a ballet barre, and a grand piano atop which are signed photographs of Barbra Streisand, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore. In the basement is a swimming pool surrounded by marble pillars and video arcade games. $ For liberals, Mille Fleurs is more than a palatial home. It was here that the late Democrat Paul Wellstone came to scare up money for his first underdog Senate campaign in 1990. While walking through the house, Wellstone walked face-first into a wall-size mirror. Wellstone told a reporter after the mishap, "I'm not used to being in places like this."

It was here that Hillary Rodham Clinton came to celebrate after she was sworn in as senator. And it was here that Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle in 2000, came when Democratic leaders threw a party for the six-year-old.

Mille Fleurs is a hub for Washington's liberal establishment. Elizabeth and Smith Bagley have opened their home relentlessly for galas, fundraisers, and strategy sessions. They have donated almost $1 million to Democratic candidates in the last ten years. A single event there typically raises $250,000 for a candidate or political-action committee.

Smith Bagley, an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, and his second wife, Elizabeth, came on the scene as uber Democrats in the late 1980s by amassing money for Michael Dukakis.

By the time Bill Clinton won the White House four years later, the new President was bombarded with letters--including one signed by 40 senators--entreating him to name Elizabeth chief of protocol. Clinton made her ambassador to Portugal.

FOR TODAY'S LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT, THE BAGLEYS AND their home have never been more important. Money has become the Democrats' obsession. It has always been important, but beginning in the late 1980s, liberals' allegiance to money surpassed their allegiance to labor, blacks, and the poor. It used to be that liberalism was about vision and determination. Today intelligence and passion take a back seat to fundraising prowess. Raising cash has become the surest way to power.

Consider the latest lineup of liberal leaders. The chair of the Democratic Party, Terry McAuliffe, is a prolific fundraiser who beat out the late black icon Maynard Jackson because of his connections to cash. Nancy Pelosi became the House Democratic leader--despite her reputation as being too liberal--because she was fanatical about raising and handing out campaign money. Dick Gephardt, who preceded Pelosi and had longstanding ties to labor, couldn't raise enough money to finance his 1988 presidential bid beyond the Iowa caucuses--which he won. Pelosi's deputy, minority whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, got his post after proving himself the second-biggest contributor to other House Democrats--second only to Pelosi.

In the Senate, Hillary Clinton, a Democrat with huge star power, has constructed a money machine with her political action committee, Hillpac. Clinton hosts fundraisers almost weekly in her 5,500-square-foot brick Colonial home, which she calls Whitehaven after the street it's on in the Observatory Circle neighborhood. These fundraisers are for herself, her PAC, and pols whose coffers she chooses to fatten. For 2004, Clinton's PAC is on pace to raise more money than the committees overseen by Pelosi and Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, which typically set the Democratic records.

Another rising star, New Jersey's Senator Jon Corzine, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, spent more of his own dollars to get himself elected than any senator in history. Even the new guard of liberals is led by buckrakers like the liberal-agenda Web site MoveOn.org--started by the millionaire couple who created the flying-toasters screen saver. And most recently, a spectrum of liberals has joined forces in an alliance to raise $300 million to defeat Bush in November.

Liberals say that circumstances have forced them to become increasingly focused on money. Conservatives tend to be wealthier than liberals, and they have easier access to cash. And money has become a bigger part of elections because much of the campaigning takes place on television, and airtime is expensive.

Recent changes to the campaign-finance system have given an advantage to Republicans. President George W. Bush is a war-chest builder who will raise more than $200 million--an amount that will shatter records for fundraising by a president.

THE LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT IS DIVIDED INTO THREE factions. First are the centrists championed by the Democratic Leadership Council and mostly associated with Bill Clinton. They consider themselves pragmatists. Next is the populist-left--union and civil-rights leaders, environmentalists, and pro-choice advocates who champion the people-versus-the-powerful position that Al Gore adopted in 2000. They consider themselves the progressives. The far left is a more radical segment whose members include the Green Party, young anti-globalization activists, and aging hippies. They consider themselves the principled.

Before the election of President Clinton, the populist left was the dominant faction. That was upended after 1992, as many levers of power were taken over by the moderates, and most policy debates were won by Clintonites. It's hard now to overstate the influence of the centrists on liberalism. Because of their ascension, liberals are now as likely to talk up charter schools, deficit reduction, crime-fighting, and tax cuts as conservatives are.

While the liberal establishment is always in flux, it's now more united than usual in its desire to win back the White House and majorities in Congress. Al Gore's "one-vote loss" to Bush four years ago--a phrase liberals use to describe the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision--has put pressure on the moderates. Did Gore ultimately adopt a centrist New Democrat strategy? Would a liberal have won if the Gore and Nader voters had been united?

The debate goes beyond the White House to the Democratic losses in congressional and state legislative races since 1994. The populists blame the centrists. The centrists blame Ralph Nader and the far-lefties. And the far left blames everyone else.

Nader has become persona non grata for most liberals, who believe his Green Party candidacy cost the Democrats the 2000 election. Gephardt literally sneaked Nader into his office after the election to learn more about his bloc of support; he refuses to comment on the meeting. The mention of Nader's name elicits boos at Democratic events. Moderates see him as a wacko corporate-conspiracy theorist. Even his friends are entreating him to swear off another presidential run.

One thing is for certain in early 2004: Almost all of the Democrats running for president this year struck a populist note--though that is typically the case during the primaries, whose outcomes are most heavily influenced by the party's base of traditional liberals, labor, and minorities. The exception was Joe Lieberman, who stayed a centrist course--and was the second serious contender out of the race.

Most of the Democratic candidates--certainly John Kerry, John Edwards, and Howard Dean--concluded early on that the way to beat George W. Bush is to act more like a traditional liberal Democrat, attacking the rich, criticizing corporations, pooh-poohing free trade, and highlighting the woes of the poor and unemployed.

Is it better when liberals act like real liberals? Or will such an old-style appeal make the Democratic nominee unelectable in November?

Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, couches the debate this way: "Do you win an election by appealing to base voters or swing voters? It's a silly schism because anyone with a calculator can tell you you have to do both." He adds, "We can't abandon the center."

So expect to see the Democratic nominee tack back toward the center as November nears.

SAY WHAT YOU WANT ABOUT AL FROM--HE HAS MANaged to convince many liberals that "liberal" is a nasty word. In 1985 he started the Democratic Leadership Council. The trigger was Walter Mondale's jaw-dropping defeat to Reagan. The goal was, as Bruce Reed puts it, "to get out of the political wilderness--and make the party a national party not a congressional party."

In other words, From and his allies were tired of losing presidential elections even as they held majorities in the House and Senate. The themes they espoused were pro-military, pro-law enforcement, and pro-trade. They eschewed the environmental, minority, and labor factions that had held sway over the Democratic Party since Lyndon Johnson. They wanted to woo back the Reagan Democrats.

From was as worried about message as he was about issues. He adopted "New Democrat" and "progressive" to describe his brand of politics. An arm of the DLC is the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. "Progressive" has evolved into the label of choice for most everyone on the left. Reverend Jesse Jackson, whose Rainbow/PUSH Coalition has been denounced by From, described the DLC as "Democrats for the Leisure Class."

From courted money, promising business leaders and left-leaning millionaires that Democrats were not the enemy. He worked to counterbalance union influence over the party and espoused a Southern strategy as the best way to get Democrats into the White House. From helped shoehorn the South-heavy Super Tuesday primaries into the nominating schedule before the 1988 elections--a maneuver designed to increase the power of moderate Democrats.

In 1991 From got behind the presidential candidacy of Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, one of the DLC's founding members. Once Clinton and Al Gore, another original DLCer, won the White House, From's place as a power player was set. He established regional and national groups, including the New Democrat Network, and got money from corporations like General Electric, AT&T, and Microsoft.

From saw his popularity dip in the fall of 2000 when Al Gore shifted to a more populist message and kicked him off his airplane, making him part of Joe Lieberman's traveling entourage. Next to Bush, From may be the figure most reviled by the populists. He is denounced in speeches and on liberal Web sites, where he's been called "hollow on the inside" and a "sellout."

Other key exponents of the DLC view are people like pollster Mark Penn, former Clinton policy adviser and current DLC president Bruce Reed, Progressive Policy Institute president Will Marshall, economist Gene Sperling, Maryland professor William Galston, DLC chair Senator Evan Bayh, and Representatives Rahm Emanuel and Harold Ford Jr.

ON JUNE 4, 2003, MORE THAN 1,500 PEOPLE FROM around the country came to DC's Omni Shoreham hotel for a conference dubbed "Take Back America." Most of the Democratic presidential contenders addressed the crowd, as did important populist-left leaders such as pollster Stanley Greenberg, Deb Callahan of the League of Conservation Voters, Ralph Neas of People for the American Way, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, and Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union.

The event was organized by Robert Borosage, a longtime liberal who worked on Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential run. He kicked things off by dressing down the New Democrats: "Those who counsel Democrats to tuck their tails and bite their tongues are simply wrong about where this country stands." Borosage has been attempting for the better part of a decade to rally the populist-left. With Economic Policy Institute cofounder Roger Hickey he started the Campaign for America's Future, a liberal leadership group similar to the DLC. He often appears on television--sometimes as a counterweight to Al From--and writes frequently in liberal journals like the Nation and American Prospect.

"What Bob has attempted to do is to show there is an alternative for the Democratic Party to the DLC," says Marcus Raskin, cofounder of the Institute for Policy Studies, the venerable liberal think tank.

Borosage's effort is twofold: He wants to win the showdown with centrist liberals but also co-opt conservative strategies. He has been haranguing liberals to act like conservatives by using winning language when they speak and coordinating their activities.

In the American Prospect in May 2002, Borosage wrote of the liberals' money hole: "The imbalance between right and left is neither secret nor surprising. The Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative think tank, runs on more than $25 million a year; the Economic Policy Institute, the premier think tank of progressives, gets by on less than $6 million annually."

Borosage has made a dent. The voice of the populist-left has mushroomed, especially over the Internet, which is beginning to match the echo chamber conservatives have created on talk radio. It's common to see an article by one liberal featured on, say, Tompaine.com and linked to an array of similar-minded Web sites, such as Buzzflash.com, Democraticunderground.com, and Dailykos.com.

At the same time, labor, environmental, and women's groups are coordinating their efforts. Liberals have seen an infusion of money from such financiers as George Soros and Peter Lewis, chair of auto insurer Progressive Corporation.

Al Gore, living mostly in Nashville these days, is trying to start a new cable news channel with a liberal slant. And Mark Walsh, a former America Online executive, is putting the finishing touches on Progress Media, a liberal radio network he hopes will compete with right-wing talk radio. On deck to headline programs for the network are satirist Al Franken, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Martin Kaplan, once chief speechwriter to Mondale.

On the populist left, Borosage is joined by Congressmen Henry Waxman, Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, and John Conyers and Senators Ted Kennedy, Barbara Mikulski, and Tom Harkin. Newcomers include Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. and Senator Jon Corzine.

Other prominent figures are veteran political strategist Donna Brazille, who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign; Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, who is running a new think tank, the Center for American Progress; political scribes John Judis and Ruy Texeira, whose analysis can be found on his Web site, EmergingDemocraticMajority.com; NAACP head Kweisi Mfume; Bob Greenstein, founder and director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Jeff Faux, who helped start the Economic Policy Institute in 1986.

ELLEN MALCOLM IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DEMocrats most Washingtonians have never heard of. At about the same time Al From was assembling the DLC, Malcolm was hosting gatherings of women in the basement of her home. Her goal was to get pro-choice Democratic women elected to Congress. They formed a political-action committee, EMILY's List--which stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast--to funnel money to female candidates.

EMILY's List was unusual. Rather than raise money directly, its goal was to channel money to candidates, thus allowing the group to avoid PAC contribution limits. Malcolm determined which candidates to support--the list--and asked donors to send checks to those candidates directly or through her.

The results were impressive. Today EMILY's List is the nation's biggest political-action committee. It has nearly 73,000 members and has helped elect thousands of women to national and state offices, including Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer. In the last four election cycles, Malcolm's group has raised more money--more than $22 million in 2002--than any other PAC, including the National Rifle Association.

As EMILY's List grew in stature, Malcolm started a subsidiary voter-turnout project called Women Vote!, which works to get women to the polls in select races. The group's rise spawned imitators on the left and right: Conservative powerbroker Stephen Moore started the Club for Growth in 1999 using Malcolm's blueprint.

Liberal women running for office aren't the only people currying favor with EMILY's List. Last year, for the first time, the group hosted a forum for the Democratic presidential candidates. On the eve of that event, Steven Weiss, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics--a group that monitors campaign contributions--described EMILY's List this way: "They have a huge influence in the Democratic Party, and it's not just financial. EMILY's List basically represents the Democratic women's movement. There are few groups in Washington that can match their influence."

MALCOLM HAS IRKED SOME ON THE LEFT WHO THINK EMILY's List is too stringent in its support of women and abortion rights. In 2002 Malcolm backed Representative Rahm Emanuel's primary opponent--a woman--in Chicago, though the two were practically indistinguishable on the issues. She has refused to support the campaigns of moderate women, even at the risk of having a seat fall into conservative hands. In 2002 Malcolm refused to lift a finger for her one-time ally, Louisiana's moderate senator Mary Landrieu, who found herself in a tough reelection fight because she voted to ban late-term abortions.

Malcolm recently helped create America Coming Together, or ACT, which is preparing to mobilize voters in 17 battleground states to unseat President Bush. ACT is one of the new nonprofit committees that cropped up in the wake of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms. Under the new rules, the national political parties can't take or make large donations, forcing their fundraising apparatuses into remission. To tap into the liberal funding well, Malcolm and others have formed tax-exempt political committees, called 527s, that are not boxed in by the new rules.

Malcolm started ACT with Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions. The biggest of the liberal 527s, ACT received $10 million each from George Soros and Peter Lewis, and Malcolm plans to raise $75 million--on par with what the Democratic and Republican national organizations used to raise for voter mobilization for the presidential election.

Malcolm is also running the Media Fund, another new 527, with Harold Ickes, the political guru and former aide to the Clintons. The Media Fund plans to raise $80 million to run independent advertising for the Democratic presidential nominee.

Other important political committees are the NAACP Voter Fund, run by Gregory Moore, who is gunning to get a million minority voters to the polls on election day, and the labor-supported Voices for Working Families, started by Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Coordinating the activities of the liberal 527s is America Votes, a council led by Cecile Richards, daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards. America Votes is also working with traditional activist groups like EMILY's List, the Sierra Club, and the Association of Trial Lawyers to keep them from duplicating efforts and competing unnecessarily.

WHAT'S THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM? IN NATIONAL POLLS, the politician named most often as the person Democratic voters want to see become president is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Most political observers expect the New York senator to run in 2008.

Clinton has everything an aspiring politician could want--intelligence, celebrity, a reputation as a workhorse, and a matchless cash machine. As a senator she has worked closely with Democrats and Republicans, even establishing a friendly relationship with Senator Lindsey Graham, who as a congressman was one of the impeachment managers against her husband. Senator Clinton has made pals all over the place--including the Democratic governor of Iowa, where the first presidential caucuses are held.

But like liberalism itself, Hillary Clinton has had a problem with identity. Was she the cookie-baking wife of a president or a two-for-the-price-of-one copresident? Was she a victim or an independent woman? Is she really a Yankees fan? What's with all the hair- and clothing-style changes? And what kind of liberal is she?

To the conservative mandarins who see her as a demonic symbol of the left and use her name relentlessly to raise money--STOP HILLARY NOW! is a feature on the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee's Web site--she is the most radical of liberals. Others see her, like her husband, as a centrist. Yet she often talks in ways that sound populist. In fact, Hillary Rodham Clinton is all the factions of liberalism rolled into one. And her success might determine the future of liberalism--just as the fate of liberalism might determine hers.

SIDEBAR:

Heavyweight Operatives

A MAINSTAY OF DC'S LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT IS THE CORPS of svengalis who counsel candidates and elected officials.

One of the heavyweights is Bob Shrum, a member of the populist left who cut his teeth as a speechwriter for Ted Kennedy. Shrum penned Kennedy's "dream will never die" address that lit up the 1980 Democratic convention. Although Shrum has had a string of failures, he is credited with helping Massachusetts senator John Kerry come from behind in 1996 to beat back a reelection challenge from Massachusetts governor William Weld and this winter to overtake Howard Dean and the rest of the field to become the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Also among the heavyweights are strategist, author, and raving TV personality James Carville and his colleague and cohost on CNN's Crossfire, Paul Begala; both achieved stardom with Bill Clinton's election in 1992.

Others are Bill Knapp, who worked for Clinton in 1996 and Gore in 2000; Anita Dunn, who helped steer Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential bid; Mark Fabiani, a Gore adviser who worked this year for Wesley Clark; ex-Clinton hand Mandy Grunwald, who helped Hillary Clinton run for the Senate and recently advised Joe Lieberman in his presidential bid; Chris Lehane, Gore's spokesman in 2000 who worked this season with Kerry before moving to the Clark camp; Tad Devine, a Shrum associate who's also advising Kerry; Steve McMahon, who coached the Howard Dean campaign; Eli Segal, who chaired Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and now advises Wesley Clark; and Peter Fenn, a Gore operative in 2000 who now advises the Democratic Party.

SIDEBAR:

Liberal Megaphones

LIBERAL JOURNALISTS, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO TALK A LOT on the airwaves, often shape public perception of what liberals think. Here are some of the most recognizable pundits and what liberals and conservatives say about them.

Margaret Carlson. Although she's a dead ringer for Velma from Scooby Doo, Carlson is too solipsistic to be the kind of nerd who solves mysteries. Her erratic navel-gazing became apparent when her poor-selling book, Anyone Can Grow Up, came out last year. In it she explained how she found Hillary Clinton's discussions of policy sleep-inducing, Bush's personality charming, and Al Gore "a tense technocrat intent on proving he was the smartest kid on the planet."

Eleanor Clift. With a whiny voice and television demeanor reminiscent of Archie Bunker's wife, Edith, Clift is by turns shrill and anemic, especially when she has to go toe-to-toe with John McLaughlin, Pat Buchanan, and Sean Hannity. But when she's on television, Clift is usually the only liberal standing, which earns her more credit than she may deserve.

E.J. Dionne. His analysis of politics and religion is incisive. Still, as conservative Grover Norquist says, Dionne is "a perennial optimist" who always thinks the whole country is about to undergo an epiphany and embrace a bevy of liberal ideas, and all the nation's problems will be solved.

Mark Shields. He's a witty quick-shooter who can cite an apt quotation from Tip O'Neill or figures from the Truman-Dewey election. Liberal or not, Shields is known for doing his shtick in private for big bucks for outfits like Lockheed Martin and the Independent Insurance Agents of America. He once told the Post's Howard Kurtz, "I don't feel I'm singing for my supper. What they're getting for their money is someone who makes them think and maybe even makes them laugh."

Juan Williams. He's the liberal punching bag on Fox News whose exchanges with tough-guy conservative Brit Hume make Sunday-morning viewers feel like they're witnessing the showdown at the OK Corral. Williams isn't always reliably left-wing. During the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill maelstrom in 1991, he wrote an almost heretical column declaring Thomas a victim of the "so-called champions of fairness: liberal politicians, unions, civil rights groups and women's organizations."

SIDEBAR:

Pushing Towardthe Center

SIDEBAR:

Populists and Beyond

GRAPHIC: Picture, Illustration By Steve Brodner; Sidebar Picture, Media consultant Bob Shrum has worked for heavyweights like Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, and John Kerry.; Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty/Newscom; Sidebar Picture, TV talking head Margaret Carlson is chripier than Eleanor Clift but is just asliberal in spreading the gospel.; Carlson photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images; Sidebar Picture, Democratic Leadership Council's Al From; From photograph courtesy of From; Sidebar Picture, Former Clinton policy adviser Bruce Reed; Reed photograph courtesy of Reed; Sidebar Picture, Progressive Policy Institute's Will Marshall; Marshall photograph courtesy of Marshall; Sidebar Picture, Illinois congressman Rahm Emanuel; Emanuel photograph courtesy of Emanuel; Sidebar Picture, Tennessee congressman Harold Ford Jr.; Ford photograph by Gary Hershorn/Reuters/Newscom; Sidebar Picture, Ralph Neas, People for the American Way; Neas photograph courtesy of Neas; Sidebar Picture, Democraticpollster Stanley Greenberg; Greenberg photograph courtesy of Greenberg; Sidebar Picture, Robert Borosage, voice of the populist left; Borosage photograph courtesy of Borosage; Sidebar Picture, EMILY's List maker Ellen Malcolm; Malcolm photograph by Leslie E. Kossloff/LK photos; Sidebar Picture, Gore 2000 strategist Donna Brazille; Brazille photograph courtesy of Brazille