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The Billionaire Building The Democrats’ New Machine

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earlier this month, a new Democratic machine scored a major victory in Connecticut. First-time congressional candidate Luke Bronin won his Democratic primary by a landslide, ousting 14-term progressive incumbent Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.). Bronin’s win is part of a larger, national push — funded by a secretive hedge fund manager — to elect more establishment-aligned Democrats. Who is this man pouring his millions into the fight?

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Lever reporters Katya Schwenk and Luke Goldstein to unmask the man behind the machine. They discuss Schwenk and Goldstein’s recent hit article exploring how one billionaire Democratic donor is attempting to handpick corporate-friendly candidates and crush their most progressive opponents in this year’s mid

You can check out more of Katya Schwenk and Luke Goldstein’s reporting here:

Want comprehensive 2026 midterm coverage? Check out The Lever’s new weekly newsletter, Midterm Madness, for election updates, analysis, and more.

This episode was produced by David Sirota and Natalie Bettendorf. The video and audio were edited and mixed by Ron S. Doyle. Our theme music is by Nick Byron Campbell. Marketing support, ad sales, and hosting from the Podglomerate.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] David Sirota: From The Lever's reader-supported newsroom, it's Lever Time. I'm David Sirota.

[00:00:03] WFSB Archive Clip: If we are gonna fix this mess that we're in, we need to build a Democratic Party that's bringing a whole new energy to this fight.

[00:00:10] David Sirota: Earlier this month, congressional candidate Luke Bronin won his Democratic primary in Connecticut by a landslide.

[00:00:16] WFSB Archive Clip: The former Hartford mayor denying incumbent John Larson a 15th term in Washington last night.

[00:00:22] David Sirota: Many media outlets have painted Bronin's victory as part of this year's insurgency of younger candidates defeating Democratic incumbents in primaries.

[00:00:30] WFSB Archive Clip: The primary was a test, whether voters want experience and seniority or a fresh face and new energy.

[00:00:37] David Sirota: Bronin is certainly a fresher face, decades younger than the 78-year-old incumbent Congressman John Larson.

But Bronin has few ideological commitments, offering up policy proposals with a populist sheen but that are hardly substantive. Larson, on the other hand, was the more progressive candidate in this race, a longtime champion of unions and Social Security. Behind the scenes, something else in this race was going on, and these two reporters have been peeling back the curtain.

[00:01:07] Katya Schwenk: I'm Katya Schwenk.

[00:01:08] Luke Goldstein: And I'm Luke Goldstein, uh, and we're reporters at The Lever.

[00:01:10] David Sirota: For months now, our reporters Katya and Luke have been investigating a new constellation of groups funded by big donors. These groups have built a secret political machine that aims to help corporate-aligned Democratic candidates crush more economically populist Democrats in key primaries across the country.

Today on Lever Time, we're taking a closer look at one of the biggest donors behind this whole battle, a billionaire who's put a dark money apparatus behind Bronin's Connecticut campaign. Who is Stephen Mandel? What exactly does he want? And how is he shaping the 2026 midterm election results? That's all coming up on today's episode of Lever Time.

Welcome back to Lever Time. I'm speaking today with The Lever's investigative reporters, Katya Schwenk and Luke Goldstein.

So a few months ago, the two of you did some digging and broke open this huge story about a constellation of groups aiming to help corporate-aligned Democratic candidates crush more economically populist Democrats in a bunch of primaries, and you exposed the big donors behind all of this.

So let's start by refreshing our memories a bit on all of that and who some of those big donors are.

Let's start with Luke.

[00:02:28] Luke Goldstein: Yeah. So for the piece that we did a couple months back, we were looking at two twin organizations that go by the name of The Bench and Majority Democrats. They funnel money between one another, share a lot of the same staff and donors. And they're these new players on the scene that made a huge splash, uh, in the Democratic primaries this year.

They've helped, um, boost, uh, Josh Turek to victory in his primary race for the Iowa Senate seat, James Talarico in Texas over Jasmine Crockett. And their handpicked candidate was Mallory McMorrow in the Michigan Senate race, who had to drop out actually before the primary date. They also backed Angie Craig, who lost to Peggy Flanagan in the Minnesota race.

And, you know, these, these new groups though have had a lot of success down ballot with congressional races, and they really offer two main kinda assets to candidates who are supported by them. They give them access to a really high-powered network of billionaire donors. Those include Tench Coxe, who's a, a venture capitalist, Michael Novogratz, who's a crypto AI investor, and another guy, Mark Heising.

But the big name that really sticks out is Stephen Mandel. Uh, and so, you know, what we really tried to do for our piece was kind of dig into who this, who this guy is, who's been the primary funder of this whole network, and try to dig into, you know, what the kinda ideological underpinnings may be of this project.

They tend to back more moderate candidates who are going up against progressives in Democratic primaries. The network has played a big role kinda putting their, their thumb on the scale in a handful of races, uh, launching them to victory.

[00:04:03] David Sirota: Okay, so then that raises the question, who exactly is Stephen Mandel? He's the biggest donor, or at least one of the biggest donors, prime mover and shaker behind this whole network. To figure out what he wants, ideologically speaking, from the candidates that he's backing, I think the— right, the first question is who exactly is he?

What can we know about his agenda?

[00:04:26] Katya Schwenk: Yeah. So, you know, Steve Mandel, he's not a household name. And so that, that really was our first question when we started looking into those groups and saw his name coming up again and again as by far the biggest bankroller of this sort of dark money apparatus across a few different PACs and nonprofits.

You know, who is this guy? And like, what, what does he want? What is he trying to accomplish? You know, Mandel is, has been a longtime Democratic donor, actually, is what we found. He is a hedge fund billionaire. His hedge fund, Lone Pine Capital, you know, made it really big in the '90s, and so he has quite a lot of money to spend, and he's been spending pretty prolifically for many years.

He even hosted, we found, you know, former President Joe Biden at his sort of Greenwich mansion in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential elections. But it's really been over the last, you know, year or so that Mandel has taken a more active role. He's bankrolling these organizations that aren't just pouring money.

It's not just like a dark money machine for, you know, the DNC, but he's really trying to pick, to play a role in these primaries and sort of handpick the candidates who might go on to, you know, win. So yeah, I mean, I think he's kept at the same time an extremely low profile. We dug back through his sort of history alongside his wife of charitable giving, as well as sort of a smaller and less well-known political apparatus that he's actually built up in his home state of Connecticut to try to figure out what are his motivations. Um, and we found that's just some pretty interesting results.

[00:05:58] David Sirota: So you've got this guy who's the proverbial man behind the curtain who's funding this infrastructure. And I will say the, the candidates that you mentioned, that this network has been supporting, I mean, they do seem to run a, some kind of ideological gamut depending on how you perceive them.

I mean, James Talarico is an example of somebody who's run very explicitly against billionaires and against money in politics, but who is also backed by this network and does kind of code as a more moderate Democrat in other ways. Josh Turek in Iowa is, is moderate coded, but has also sort of also tried to cast himself as a populist in certain respects.

I think the question is, what ideological commitments, if any, can we perceive the candidates backed by this network, uh, making, to somebody like Steve Mandel specifically or generally to a more corporate-friendly faction? I guess what I'm asking, Luke, is there a through line between the candidates that Steve Mandel is backing, and what they're proposing in terms of policy?

[00:07:11] Luke Goldstein: I think from the outset, to take these groups at their word, they have one commitment, and that's to find candidates who can win, more or less, right? They just care about fielding a set of Democrats who will go up against Republicans in a general election and, you know, help build Democrats a majority, right?

That's their kind of, you know, professed rhetoric, right? And I think what we tried to do in particular was take them at their word and also try to dig into what are the races where they've put the most resources, right? Where are they most heavily invested, and what does that field of candidates really, really look like?

And, you know, the Michigan race was really, for a while, their biggest investment, and I think Mallory McMorrow, who they were backing, had the prototypical bio of a candidate they were looking for. She was kind of in the middle between a more conservative Democrat and a more populist Democrat, and Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens on the other hand.

And, you know, McMorrow adopted certain positions that were very much of the moment. There was a kind of progressive sheen to that campaign. If you dig beneath the surface, there were a couple key issues where I think the network backing her really kind of showed their cards, and one was on the question of data centers.

So McMorrow's position in that race was very much adopted from a policy group in DC that's also part of the Stephen Mandel network called Searchlight Institute, and they put out a whole bunch of proposals that were in opposition to a data center moratorium, which has been backed by kind of more progressive candidates.

They wanted to do something that was tech companies, you know, pay as they go, right? They get to set up their data centers with few restrictions. There's a tax on them specifically to upgrade the underlying infrastructure of utilities, right? So it's this kind of middle path, and that kind of rhetoric we've seen pop up across other races where The Bench and Majority Democrats, funded by Steve Mandel, have invested.

Luke Bronin in Connecticut is another one that we can talk about. But I think just to kind of step back here, right, and, you know, we can try to point to what the wizard behind the curtain here may want. You know, his hedge fund, Lone Pine Capital, almost a third of their portfolio right now is invested very specifically in what's called the picks and shovels of the data center infrastructure build-out.

His portfolio has actually shifted away from what are called the hyperscaler, the Mag Seven AI companies, the Googles, the Microsofts, the OpenAIs, and invested all the way into the suppliers and the physical infrastructure companies that do data centers. So largely this was TSMC, which builds chips, semiconductors, which are crucial for data centers, other energy companies that have struck really particular power agreements with data center developers.

This is really kind of his whole, you know, MO, and I think it's pretty noteworthy that the general political apparatus he's funded has more or less tried to kind of support on the candidate level certain kinds of politicians who will strike this kind of middle path on what to do about AI and data centers, which will of course be the big question for Democrats and whatever party comes into power after the November elections.

[00:10:21] David Sirota: We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Lever Time.

I think there's like a chicken or the egg question here, to be honest. I think at one level we can look at somebody like Steve Mandel, who made his money as an investor, and so I think a logical question is, okay, if he's made his money as an investor, investing in this Democratic political infrastructure, is he looking for a return on investment?

I think another way i-is to ask the question, okay, i-in an alternate universe where these entities will never admit and don't admit that they're just an extension of s-some set of donors' attempt to invest and enrich themselves, where we take them at their word that they're making investments in what they perceive to be the kinds of Democratic candidates who can win.

Are they preferencing more moderate, quote unquote, more centrist, quote unquote, candidates as opposed to progressives because they genuinely believe that is the kind of positioning, that is the kind of Democrat who is best positioned to win in a general election? I'm not sure we can actually answer like what's in their mind, what's in their heart, but I just throw that out there for something that I'm thinking about.

Because

I think the question then, Katya, is knowing what we know about Mandel's investment, knowing what we know about Majority Democrats and the organization that they're funding, are they really only interested in so-called electability and therefore they're backing moderate candidates, or are there clues that this is a, like an investment strategy?

[00:12:01] Katya Schwenk: It's a really interesting question, and like you said, I don't know that there is a real straightforward answer. And I do think there is a way to think about Mandel and some of the groups that he's funding as sort of real ideologues, kind of separate from their material interests.

I think he really does. For instance, we wrote about his long-time, very devout support of charter schools, you know, and sort of a more, a controversial area in education that, of course, puts him at odds with teachers unions in many cases and more traditional supporters of public education.

But, you know, it does seem like this has been one of his central issues. And with respect to Majority Democrats, I mean, I, I think that they... You know, it's not only that they claim that they want to elect Democrats that can win. They— like, they do sort of have a strategy for that.

But that's a little bit outside of the bounds of just, you know, moderate or corporate wing of the party as we've sort of understood it up till now. Like, their sort of, their idea, their stated goal is to build, like, a new center, you know, a new wing of the Democratic Party modeled on the corporate wing of the party that existed in the 1990s that sort of revitalizes the establishment.

And I think that's where you see, I think that's how you understand why they're backing some candidates like Talarico, for example, who have like a, a little bit of a populist sheen or something that they, you know, they go after, that they're sort of tapping into the more progressive or populist wing of the Democratic Party and, you know, perhaps co-opting it a little bit.

But it is sort of part of this mission to, like, not just support moderate Democrats 'cause they think that they can win, but build this new corporate wing, kind of reinvent what that even means, and I think that's why we can see why their candidates, in some cases, have more, like, heterodox views.

But yeah, I mean, certainly, I think Mandel's interests and the interests of all the billionaires that are kind of donating alongside him are critical to understanding, you know, where these candidates stand on a variety of positions.

[00:13:56] David Sirota: Yeah. To me, there's a through line here, right? And I always like to look at history. There's a through line from first they were called the Atari Democrats, then they were called the DLC Democrats, the New Democrats, then they were called Third Way. Now I think they're called Majority Democrats and The Bench.

I mean, Luke, is that like a fair way to look at it or am I, or am I being unfair?

[00:14:20] Luke Goldstein: I think the way they present themselves outwardly is, is different, but that's kind of the point. You know, it's this kind of nebulous project that always seems to fit purely to what they think is most politically expedient. And one example of this in particular is that what we should mention along with just the dedication, I guess, to winning, is they've really leaned into this whole political moment, where there's a backlash against, you know, the gerontocracy, right?

This is another kind of big hobby horse for them, right? And we can dive into, you know, why they've been sort of selective, right, in certain races that they've picked out to make this kind of crusade against the gerontocracy a big issue. But Majority Democrats, one of the groups we're talking about here, put out a whole video that kind of was presenting and showcasing this new project that they're doing of trying to topple older incumbents.

And in the, in the video, the very first politician that pops up on the screen is Bernie Sanders, and then it's followed by a bunch of other older members. Elizabeth Warren is one of them. But I don't think you have to read into it too much to see what is trying to be demonstrated there, right?

It's that this fight against the gerontocracy isn't kind of left, or moderate, right? But they're very clearly picking out certain kinds of members to be the face of this gerontocracy. And that was the case in the race for Connecticut's first district between Luke Bronin, who is the Stephen Mandel handpicked candidate.

He was actually on Stephen Mandel's payroll for a number of years. He was a former Hartford mayor, just very kind of generic Democrat, had a bunch of dust-ups with the teachers unions in the state over charter school initiatives at the time, which we dug into. And then several years later, when he's kind of biding his time figuring out what to do next, Stephen Mandel puts him on the payroll for The Connecticut Project, which is one of the nonprofits he's set up in the state.

The Connecticut Project, totally identical in a lot of ways to these new national groups like The Bench that Steve Mandel has also helped set up. There's really a pretty one-to-one parallel there. And then Luke Bronin launches this race against John Larson, who's a 14-term congressional incumbent, is just turned seve— 78 years old.

He's definitely older, right, but has a lot of progressive bona fides. He's supported by union groups. He was supported by Working Families Party, known as, you know, a proponent for expanding Social Security. And I think it's very indicative that this political network felt emboldened to take on someone like Larson with a candidate like Luke Bronin, who was really in many ways running to Larson's right on key questions, you know, like data center, tech policy and AI.

You have progressive challengers against incumbents who are older as well, and they focus on the candidate's age as a way to talk about that incumbent's record on certain issues, if that's healthcare or Medicare for All and such, to show that that politician is older and out of touch on the issues.

Luke Bronin didn't have any of that. There was no policy critique at all of Larson other than the fact that he was, you know, old and, and should have really stepped a— stepped aside. And I think that is one small microcosm for kind of understanding the political operations of this whole network.

[00:17:22] David Sirota: So it's essentially using strategically, selectively the age argument as a way to almost smuggle in a, a different ideologically coded kind of Democrat, a more corporate-friendly Democrat. That seems to be what happened in Connecticut. What comes to mind also is the Massachusetts Senate race that's happening right now.

I mean, you have a, a similar situation where the more progressive candidate, uh, is the incumbent senator, Ed Markey. The younger candidate is the much more, uh, e-economically conservative, corporate-friendly candidate Seth Moulton, who is a, a, a congressperson. Is this network playing in that race? Do we know?

[00:18:02] Luke Goldstein: So not a lot of the core groups. However, Seth Moulton is being backed by another super PAC that's in this network called VoteVets, which we haven't talked about yet. They're ostensibly supporting Moulton because I believe he was in the Air Force, he had some military background.

However, this cycle, VoteVets has really moved in lockstep with this whole political network. They intervene in races alongside The Bench and Majority Democrats all the time. They spent $10 million to help Josh Turek coast to victory in the Iowa Senate primary race, and one of their largest donors this cycle is Stephen Mandel, who has not ever given to VoteVets in any other cycle other than this one.

And, uh, it seems pretty clear they share actually some of the same staff, that there's some coordination strategically in these races for VoteVets to be a major outside spender, whereas The Bench kinda operates more behind the scenes where we'll offer strategic and consulting kind of media advice for campaigns.

[00:18:57] David Sirota: And just to be clear, you broke a big story about VoteVets. Tell us a little bit about that.

[00:19:02] Luke Goldstein: Yeah, I think it fits sort of within this whole, um, uh, picture, 'cause one of the groups that we've been reporting more on since our, our last investigation is, is VoteVets and what role they're really playing in this whole network. So one of their top officials is simultaneously, at the same time that he's involved in this whole network spending, getting, intervening in Democratic primary races, he's been running this astroturf lobbying operation in Washington, D.C. on behalf, very explicitly on behalf of banks and credit card companies to try to kneecap reform efforts to pass legislation that would bring down what are called swipe fees. It's kind of like junk fees that merchants and consumers have to pay because they're reliant on these credit card companies and their payment networks in order to just do basic business.

It's a huge cash cow for banks and credit card companies, and they've enlisted, you know, the top official for a major Dem super PAC to do their bidding in D.C. at the same time.

[00:19:54] David Sirota: I mean, so this speaks to kind of the overlapping interests at play here, where there's a— You know, when people refer to the political class, I mean, I think this is what we're talking about, right? This political class is this blob of like donors, operatives who are working at overlapping organizations, different agendas, not necessarily super transparently.

And I, I glean from all of this that this is, this is an ideological project, being essentially smuggled into Democratic politics under the, uh, auspices of electability, and we just wanna win. Now, I think if that is the case, then I think after these elections, after the midterms, that what we're gonna see, whether by the way these candidates, The Bench's candidates, Majority Democrats candidates win or lose, this is like a trial run to my mind for what is likely to happen in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary.

That they're actually revving up this network and testing it out, kicking the tires, pressure testing it for deployment in the 2028 presidential election when there's gonna be a lot of candidates competing for a lot of different lanes, ideological lanes, branding lanes, moderate, centrist, progressive, et cetera, et cetera.

And obviously money lanes. Who, which donors are they gonna, are g— are they gonna get? Do you have a, a, a sort of a vision of what this might look like in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary?

Which I should remind everyone is gonna start like the day after the midterms.

[00:21:31] Katya Schwenk: Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth noting that, you know, Majority Democrats, the organization was sort of founded explicitly right aft— in the wake of Kamala Harris' loss in 2024. The founding document for the project was, you know, authored by the consultant Seth London, who's been a longtime advisor to big Democratic donors.

So I think we can very explicitly understand Majority Democrats, you know, Mandel's, an organization funded by Mandel that's part of this dark money apparatus, as being founded to, like, basically chart out a path to 2028 for the Democratic Party. So, you know, I think it's really, I think it's correct to sort of understand what's happening right now as, you know, just one step toward that, for this network.

And I think it's been useful for them 'cause they've really been able to build out their political capital and figure out how, you know, th-they can operate more smoothly. But yeah, I mean, I think they're going to be playing a big role in that primary.

Like, their goal is not to just, you know, give a lot of money to whoever the Democratic nominee is, it seems, as, which is what Mandel had historically done. But now he is sort of playing this really big role in who wins, like, the Democratic nomination. I think we can imagine that playing out similarly in 2028.

[00:22:46] David Sirota: We're gonna take one more quick break. Before we continue, I just want to tell you about The Lever's other award-winning podcast, Master Plan. Master Plan's new season, The Kingmakers, traces the decades-long effort to manufacture an all-powerful presidency, from Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to Dick Cheney and now Donald Trump.

The podcast shows how a fringe legal theory has been used to hijack the machinery of American government. If you want to understand the world we're living in today, follow Master Plan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Lever Time.

I think the final question is about what these midterms mean for that project moving forward. You've got, a-as we've mentioned, you've got these billionaires who are trying to create this network that's essentially trying to infiltrate the Democratic Party.

They've got electoral organizations, Majority Democrats, The Bench. They've got think tanks like the, the so-called Searchlight Institute that's putting out policies, uh, that are designed to try to blunt the, uh, progressive uprising inside the Democratic Party. This is being, uh, engineered and orchestrated by, for instance, Lis Smith, the Democratic political consultant who ran Pete Buttigieg's, uh, 2020 presidential primary.

So this is all leading up to 2028. But I, I wonder what the results of the 2026 elections might mean for this project. So I think the, Luke, I'll throw to you on the final question about this is, if this network is not successful in 2026, and like for instance, their, one of their most high-profile candidates, Mallory McMorrow, had to end her campaign because it was really failure to launch.

There was a lot of hype behind it, and her campaign ended. If other candidates who this network is promoting as electable, if they are not successful in the 2026 midterms, progressive populist candidates are quite successful in this, in the midterms, does that potentially change how influential these groups are, even though they're gonna be funded, even though they're gonna be active?

Does that change the story they're gonna have to tell? Is it gonna change how influential they are in making their case in the 2028 election?

[00:25:09] Luke Goldstein: Well, dude, I hate to break it to you, but in my experience, there hasn't been a lot of precedent for just the pure merits or victories really determining which way the party goes because this network has the money, right? They have access to Steve Mandel and this whole host of billionaires, so I think a lot of people in Democratic leadership, people who are calling the shots, kind of have to listen to them one way or another.

But yes, it'll change how they message and how they try to control the narrative after the midterms. I think it should be said, there's been a lot of coverage already about all the kind of, you know, all the success that The Bench has already racked up in these primaries. There was a Politico piece that almost was doing a, a score count, you know, of, oh, The Bench has four victories out of five or whatever.

Along with Mallory McMorrow dropping out, which was a big loss for them, the Majority Democrats' handpicked candidate, Angie Craig, also lost in, in Minnesota to Peggy Flanagan, who is, despite being a lieutenant governor, was also more of the progressive pick in that race, was kind of stronger with her rhetoric on ICE than Angie Craig, who has been much more kind of accommodating to immigration enforcement. But yeah, I think that The Bench has a couple big tests ahead for them about whether the Democrats that they have fielded and brought to success through the primaries are actually gonna be able to stand the test against Republicans in the general election. And granted, and really, you know, these are difficult races in, you know, Texas and, and Iowa and such.

There's another congressional candidate, Cait Conley, that their whole network is really invested who's running against Mike Lawler for New York's 17th, which is in the suburb, in the suburbs outside New York. I think that the one other point I guess to make here, depending on what happens in November, is that what we've gathered is that The Bench is more directly involved in these midterm races.

Majority Democrats, the other arm of their apparatus, is the one that's really gearing up for 2028. One of their kind of lead spokespeople really at this point is Senator Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, who's much more explicitly part of the moderate faction among Democrats. They've been really kind of trotting her out doing these kind of splashy, well-publicized kind of town halls almost and conversations with voters, and it's been reported that Elissa Slotkin is likely a presidential hopeful in '28, or if not, she's still positioning herself to be like a behind-the-scenes operator in kind of vetting and selecting who the other candidates will be that will launch races.

I don't really know exactly what gives her the authority to do that, but I guess, you know, she did win a, a swing state that matters for Democrats despite being a one-term senator. So I think that m— you're gonna be hearing a lot about Majority Democrats on The Bench moving forward, even if it's more behind the scenes in terms of funneling money and orchestrating these kinds of kind of political stunts and town halls and such.

[00:27:54] David Sirota: Yeah, and I think the f— the flip side is also gonna be true. I mean, I think that if populist candidates who have defeated this network's candidates in primaries don't win their general elections, I'm guessing that Majority Democrats, The Bench, Searchlight Institute, this whole newfangled corporate faction in the Democratic Party, the DLC, the New Democrats by another name, they will argue that those losses of populist progressive candidates proves that in the 2028 election those candidates should not be nominated.

I'm thinking about Michigan, to go back to that. I think it's very clear in watching this network operate, watching the corporate Democratic faction operate, that that faction, if they were forced to answer, they would say, "Yeah, it would be great if Abdul El-Sayed loses in Michigan, even if that means Democrats don't win Congress, because that gives us a powerful story to tell that, 'Oh, we have to have more corporate-friendly moderates become our general election nominees.

Don't nominate people like Abdul El-Sayed. Don't nominate people like Peggy Flanagan. Don't nominate progressives because they can't win.'" And they would point to those losses in the 2026 election as a kind of cautionary tale, a tale that we've heard, frankly, for my entire lifetime, this faction telling that tale.

I mean, Katya, do you think th— that if El-Sayed loses, if Flanagan loses, if some of these other candidates who have defeated the corporate faction in these primaries lose, that this network is going to spring into action to make an argument, that proves that their argument, their more moderate argument, must win the day?

[00:29:38] Katya Schwenk: Yeah. I mean, I think you can see them, or at least the corporate media and establishment gearing up for that in the Michigan race. Like, there was a headline, I think it was The New York Times, right after the win that was like, "Is Abdul El-Sayed going to cost us Michigan?"

You know, and that is like immediately what the narrative has pivoted to, ginning up fear around that. And I think, yeah, of course, I think they'll take it and run with it. Because again, they want to make the point that McMorrow or their favorite candidate could have won in the general, even if she couldn't won in the primary, didn't win in the primary.

So yeah. And you know, and they've, they've made their opinions on sort of the, the left or the progressive wing of the party very clear. That is the reason when they explained their rationale for the existence of the network to begin with, or the Majority Democrats, you know, they pointed to the progressive groups, progressive nonprofits, like sort of progressive litmus tests as the reason that Kamala Harris lost in 2024, sort of exculpating the donor class as potentially a reason here.

So I, I think, you know, they are clearly averse to taking any kind of accountability for losses like that, and I think they'll definitely use losses of progressives or populists in the party to their own advantage.

[00:30:51] David Sirota: Yeah. I mean, I feel like this has been playing out honestly since McGovern. McGovern losing in 19, has been the cautionary tale against the progressive wing of the Democratic Party for, at this point, 50 years.

But this is the latest iteration o-of that, of the sort of corporate business-friendly wing of the party weaponizing the idea that the progressive wing of the party cannot win general elections. Uh, and I think that's, that is going to be the big debate in the early part of the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, and I think this is all just prelude to it.

And again, I think the reporting that, that you both have done about specifically Steve Mandel, the billionaire, one of the billionaires behind this network, suggests that argument is not the only thing operating on its face, just a concern for whether Democrats win. There are different forces underneath that, financial forces, uh, looking for a, a return on political investment in the form of potentially policy.

I mean, you mentioned data centers. There's deregulation. There's all sorts of different policies that billionaires, crypto policy. There's all sorts of different policies that billionaires are interested in, and I just feel like there's this top-line argument about who is electable that kind of obscures what is actually going on in terms of what the politics are actually about, which is why the reporting on a billionaire like Steve Mandel is so important.

So Luke, Katya, thank you so much for doing the reporting. Thanks for talking to us today.

[00:32:21] Katya Schwenk: Thanks, David.

[00:32:22] Luke Goldstein: Yeah, thanks.

[00:32:24] David Sirota: Thanks for listening to another episode of Lever Time. You can check out more of Katya and Luke's reporting linked in our show notes below. Lever Time is a production of The Lever. This episode was produced by Natalie Bettendorf. Our theme music is by Nick Byron Campbell.

Marketing support from The Podglomerate. Our director of podcast production is Ron Doyle. You can subscribe to Lever Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're at it, leave us a comment or a review. We really appreciate hearing from our listeners, and it truly helps spread the word about this show.

Remember, for ad-free episodes, exclusive bonus content, and access to The Lever's entire archive of investigative journalism, please consider becoming a premium subscriber right now. Head over to levernews.com to learn more about becoming a paid subscriber or click the link in this episode's show notes.

I'm David Sirota. We'll be back next week with another episode of Lever Time.

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The New Democratic Machine — And The Billionaires Behind It

the scandal was minimal, a blip in a Democratic primary race in New York’s Hudson Valley. But the incident was an early sign of a powerful new political machine playing an unprecedented role in Democratic primaries.

The problem emerged in February. Jackie Rosa, a political communications strategist, had been fielding press questions for Cait Conley, a combat veteran vying for New York’s 17th Congressional District, as though she were a campaign spokesperson. But when controversy erupted after Rosa circulated a memo bashing Conley’s opponent as a “far left political operative,” the strategist claimed she’d mounted the attack on behalf of an outside group, not the campaign.

However, Rosa’s email sign-off listed an affiliation with a different political group — and her email address was tied to yet another organization, a shadowy Delaware consultancy.:}:

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Four separate entities, all tied to a single strategist, seemingly collaborated on messaging against a candidate, even though campaign finance law theoretically limits close coordination between campaigns and outside spending vehicles. What exactly was going on?

All of the organizations, it turns out, belonged to a new dark-money-backed enterprise of unparalleled scale and complexity. The influence network brands itself as boosting Democrats’ electoral prospects ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. But the project’s true ambitions go much further.

Born from the ashes of the party’s 2024 defeat, this new operation has taken inspiration from Democrats’ free-market neoliberal turn after stinging defeats in the 1980s and 1990s and infused it with the deregulatory zeal of the abundance movement. Funded by Silicon Valley billionaires with skin in the game, the network is exploiting the country’s increasingly threadbare campaign finance laws to elect a new generation of leaders on board with bringing the party back to the “moderate” middle.

The machine operates as two big-name new organizations, Majority Democrats and the Bench, both tied to a single venture capitalist-turned-secretive Democratic adviser. Under this umbrella, the influence network is dispersing millions through a sophisticated nesting doll of political action committees (PACs), nonprofits, consultancies, and LLCs, while sharing the same big-money donors, political consultants, and often the same policy proposals.

The convoluted arrangements are sowing confusion on the campaign trail about the roles various campaign operatives play and who pays them.

The ambiguity may be the point. Political influence networks backed by super PACs — which have no limits on the money they can collect from billionaire donors — have become widespread. But the many-tentacled network of Majority Democrats, the Bench, and their affiliates appears to be intervening in campaigns’ day-to-day operations to an unprecedented degree.

Experts say these legal workarounds could undermine campaign finance rules governing coordination between political campaigns and outside groups, designed to limit elected officials’ financial obligations to wealthy special interests.

“These groups are major players behind the scenes,” one Democratic campaign strategist, granted anonymity in order to speak candidly, told The Lever. “I’ve never seen a setup like this where the political action committees are openly coordinating with campaigns to the extent that they are.”

In response to The Lever, Majority Democrats and the Bench disputed this characterization.

“These practices are fully compliant with the law and not uncommon,” said a Majority Democrats spokesperson. “We understand the urgency of this moment demands challenging the broken status quo and elevating the next generation of leaders who can build a sustainable majority.”

A spokesperson for the Bench told The Lever that it “has a strict firewall policy [between campaign and super PAC activity] that adheres to federal regulations.”

There’s no denying these groups’ financial might. New filings reviewed by The Levershow that Majority Democrats and the Bench have together raised $8 million so far this year, most of which came from tycoons like hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel and Nvidia board member Tench Coxe, as CBS Newsreported this month. Other major donors to the network include venture capitalist Bill Helman, Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, and crypto CEO Michael Novogratz.

Those donations build on seed funding from the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, who spent millions supporting Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris while urging her to go easy on antitrust and Big Tech.

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A substantial amount of the funds is going to pay high-profile political operatives working to elect the influence network’s chosen candidates in pivotal elections, often to the detriment of more progressive challengers.

This setup became a point of controversy in the Texas Senate primary last month and is currently playing a role in Michigan, where the Bench-endorsed Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow is facing off against progressive challenger Abdul El-Sayed, a physician endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Democrats may very well embrace these groups’ purported focus on electability and their heavy spending to claw back control of the House and Senate in 2026. But others worry that this new configuration may give wealthy donors an even greater voice in elections extending all the way down to campaign personnel, a corrupting influence that may not necessarily benefit the Democratic Party’s long-term electoral prospects — or democracy itself.

“It seems like a new frontier,” Michael Beckel, the money in politics reform director at advocacy group Issue One, said of Majority Democrats’ network. “When you continue to blur the lines of the existing anti-coordination rules, and when you continue to erode those anti-corruption safeguards in the process, that’s giving wealthy donors more access and influence in dictating the terms of the campaign.”

“A Party Within The Party”

Majority Democrats and the Bench, along with their various offshoots, are the brainchild of Seth London, a venture capitalist and adviser to major Democratic donors.

In the weeks after the Democrats’ disastrous performance in the 2024 elections, which bestowed the GOP with a trifecta of power under President Donald Trump, London released a blueprint, to much media fanfare, for rebuilding the party. At the time, Democratic circles were debating whether the Harris campaign floundered because the party had become too left-wing — or too beholden to corporate power.

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London’s memo firmly aligned with the former viewpoint, calling on the party to moderate on a host of issues and usher in a new generation of “common sense Democrats.” While light on policy prescriptions, the memo aligned its priorities with the “abundance agenda,” a liberal project focused on reducing housing costs and building out clean energy mostly through “supply-side” private-sector solutions.

But abstract ideas of “abundance” and “moderation” would only be impactful if those who agreed with London could wield power in Democratic primary races and shape the ideological character of the party’s foot soldiers. To do so, London’s memo proposed an organizational infrastructure — “a party within the party” — modeled on the Democratic Leadership Coalition, a powerful organ for the corporate neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, financed by Wall Street.

As London’s road map dictated, several new PACs would serve as the central nervous system for this project, to be headed up by high-powered political consultants, including Lis Smith, an alum of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, and Steve Israel, a former New York congressman turned lobbyist.

Months later, as the primary season ramped up, Democratic operatives began to notice a new group of political enterprises amassing outsize influence. The organizations moved together as a pack to back candidates, shared consultants, and appeared to direct the messaging of political campaigns to a remarkable degree.

They all bore London’s imprint.

A Tale Of Two Groups

In July 2025, a new group with ambitions to “remake the image” of the Democratic Party staged its launch: Majority Democrats. London was “involved” in the project, per The New York Times, though his precise role remained elusive.

In an inaugural post on Majority Democrats’ Substack, London argued that Democrats’ main problem was their “fear of backlash from interest groups, donors, and online activists; fear of being labeled racist, transphobic, or a sellout.” Majority Democrats, he announced, would “replace fear with confidence” in order to “revive a party that can compete everywhere.”

Majority Democrats’ executive director, Rohan Patel, a former Tesla executive and Obama White House official, was more explicit in a subsequent post. He noted that “a party that can win everywhere” required “recruiting candidates who can credibly compete in tough general elections,” and “rejecting the notion that they need to adopt unpopular, left-wing positions in the primary.”

At launch, Majority Democrats touted a roster of around 30 lawmakers. Those include Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), both first-term Senators elected in 2024 and already rumored to be presidential contenders in 2028. All are relatively young, consistent with Majority Democrats’ criticism that the party establishment is too old.

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For the most part, the politicians and candidates endorsed by Majority Democrats align ideologically with the establishment wing of the party, although some have adopted more unorthodox platforms. (At least one of their candidates, Bob Brooks, a House contender in Pennsylvania, has been endorsed by Sanders.)

By the end of last year, Majority Democrats had amassed a multimillion-dollar fundraising war chest and had embedded itself in a number of Democratic primary races for both House and Senate seats.

Then, in January, another organization staged a splashy launch: the Bench, advertising a supposed mission of “changing the Democratic Party from the inside.” The Bench promised to “help strong candidates launch with the tools they need to succeed — from communications and digital strategy to fundraising and staffing — so they can focus on what matters most: talking with voters and winning tough races.”

The Bench has endorsed a broad slate of candidates, including McMorrow in Michigan, James Talarico in Texas, Josh Turek in Iowa, Angie Craig in Minnesota, and Conley in New York.

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Although they are separate entities on paper, with slightly different organizational structures, Majority Democrats and the Bench share a deeply interlinked fundraising apparatus and ground game.

In March, for example, Majority Democrats announced a nationwide “Built to Last Tour,” featuring several Bench-endorsed candidates.

While those operations hit the campaign trail, the Searchlight Institute, a new center-left D.C. think tank founded in part with London’s financial assistance, has served as the policy brain trust for both groups’ positions on various issues, seemingly shaping the platforms of their endorsed campaigns.

For instance, in March, McMorrow’s campaign in Michigan released its platform on data centers — a plan that mirrored a Searchlight Institute white paper recommending “data center developers pay their way,” a tech-friendly alternative to the moratoriums on data center development that some lawmakers are advancing.

Majority Democrats and the Bench also share a joint fundraising arm, the Majority Fund, which pools fundraising hauls with minimal contribution limits, allowing different players in the network to benefit from the same large donations. Mandel, a billionaire hedge fund manager whose portfolio is now significantly invested in the data center build-out, and his wife, Sue, are the network’s largest financial backers, having collectively donated $9.3 million to entities tied to Majority Democrats and the Bench since their inception.

Other donors have also provided hefty support. Mark Heising, a billionaire tech mogul, has contributed $2.1 million; Tench and Simone Coxe, a megadonor couple with ties to AI chipmaker Nvidia, have given nearly $300,000. And James Murdoch, one of the heirs to the Murdoch media empire, has with his wife Kathryn given over $300,000.

Several of those donors, including Simone, sit on the Searchlight Institute’s board.

[The “Moderate” Think Tank Backed By AI Money

The Searchlight Institute has pushed Democrats toward lighter regulation of AI and data centers while keeping quiet about board ties to Simone Coxe, whose family fortune is linked to Nvidia.

These megadonors have provided the operation with significant financial firepower to intervene in Democratic primaries. For example, Majority Democrats’ joint fundraising arm is the largest outside contributor to Craig’s Minnesota Senate campaign, transferring $100,000 to her operation in September and another $32,000 last month.

Mapping out the connective tissue of these operations quickly becomes a difficult endeavor. The Bench operates a super PAC, a traditional PAC, a joint fundraising committee, and a 527 nonprofit — a hodgepodge of entities that can engage in political spending with varying restrictions. All of them raise and spend money, at times in coordination with Majority Democrats, which has its own small galaxy of political committees.

All of these entities tie back to London, including through a shadowy Delaware consultancy: Precinct LLC, which per state business filings obtained by The Lever, was incorporated in January 2025 with London’s signature.

The entity — which has no website or hardly any other online footprint — appears to operate as a kind of central hub for the network. The firm’s managing director is Ami Copeland, a senior advisor to Majority Democrats.

The Bench’s PAC, which has no full-time staff of its own on payroll, has paid Precinct over $750,000 for general consulting costs, amounting to almost two-thirds of the PAC’s total operating expenditures for 2025. Precinct also collects regular payments from campaigns. In total, it has received over $1 million from campaigns and PACs associated with Majority Democrats.

“Bench candidates work with a variety of teams, including Precinct, among many others,” said a Bench spokesperson in response to The Lever’s questions. “Precinct’s work for campaigns is not subsidized by the Bench.”

Rosa, the Conley consultant, has used an email address associated with Precinct — as have other consultants in the Majority Democrats network, including Smith and communications strategist Andrew Mamo. One of those operatives, Stef Feldman, also works as a senior fellow at Searchlight.

A spokesperson for Majority Democrats, who was using a Precinct email address, initially declined to answer questions about Precinct. However, when The Levercontacted other Precinct affiliates, Rodericka Applewhaite, the rapid response director at Majority Democrats, subsequently answered several questions on Precinct’s behalf.

Asked about Precinct’s relationship with the Bench and Majority Democrats, Applewhaite said, “Precinct works with a variety of clients including campaigns, non-profits, and other mission-aligned organizations.”

Majority Democrats and the Bench share other top-brass consultants, most prominently Smith, the Buttigieg campaign alum, who sits at the head of the operation, working as a senior adviser for both the Bench and Majority Democrats and advising several campaigns supported by those groups.

A Majority Democrats spokesperson said that while the Bench and Majority Democrats are “aligned,” they are separate organizations.

Supercharging Citizens United

Majority Democrats and its affiliates, including the Bench, rely on a series of campaign finance law loopholes and rollbacks originating from the *Citizens United* Supreme Court case, which made it easier for moneyed interests to dominate campaign races.

The high court’s 2010 decision tore apart long-standing campaign finance restrictions and greenlit unlimited election spending through outside spending vehicles known as super PACs. While PACs must disclose their donors, Citizens United left the door open for so-called dark money to be funneled to PACs through opaque nonprofits, so the original donors couldn’t be traced.

Such dark money, which is now more prominent in Democratic campaigns than in Republican ones, has fueled Majority Democrats’ fundraising machine. One arm of the operation, a nonprofit called the Bench 527, has received nearly $2.5 million over the past three years from one of the largest Democratic dark money groups, Our American Future. The group’s donors are unknown, even though it spends tens of millions on elections.

One of the few restrictions spared by Citizens United bars super PACs from coordinating with campaigns on advertising and media buys. But political operatives and donors have spent the last decade and a half chipping away at that restriction.

The result is a new frontier in American politics where campaigns effectively outsource ever more of their work to big-money super PACs, which aren’t subject to the same campaign finance restrictions, operating at donors’ beck and call.

“The [Federal Election Commission]’s approach to coordination has been very problematic,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel on campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center, a legal advocacy group working on campaign finance and ethics. The agency’s weak enforcement, Ports said, has “created an atmosphere where voters don’t have much faith that campaigns and super PACs are actually functioning as separate entities.”

In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC, the primary arm of the Israel lobby, and other big election spenders stretched these campaign finance loopholes to new limits to work more closely with campaigns — including taking over their door-knocking operations, typically work that campaigns alone would conduct.

That included billionaire Elon Musk, whose America PAC ran on-the-ground canvassing operations in key battleground states for the Trump campaign. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) opened the door for this activity by issuing a March 2024 opinion that allowed outside groups to canvass on behalf of campaigns.

The barriers between candidates and outside groups are also eroding thanks to joint fundraising committees, which allow multiple campaigns to band together to solicit donations collectively. Through a joint fundraising vehicle, a major donor can cut a single large check for multiple candidates, evading typical campaign contribution limits.

In August 2024, the FEC released an opinion that expanded the power of joint fundraising committees by allowing super PACs and campaign committees to jointly fundraise together.

Now, Majority Democrats’ network is pioneering a supercharged version of this model.

Its joint fundraising committee, Majority Fund, currently funnels donations to 31 candidates’ direct campaign committees as well as hybrid super PACs Majority Democrats and the Bench are using to support those campaigns, which have no limitations on how much they can collect from billionaire donors. (Hybrid PACs are super PACs with a separate arm that can give directly to campaigns.)

The new arrangement is now being deployed in Democratic primary elections to benefit candidates approved by Majority Democrats’ operation.

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Ground Zero

The Michigan Senate race, which is expected to see razor-thin margins in the general election, has become ground zero for the Majority Democrats network’s efforts to shape the Democratic primaries.

In that primary, the new political machine has thrown its weight behind McMorrow, a millennial state lawmaker who quickly rose to leadership in the state Senate and $_{delivered a viral speech}_$ in 2022 bashing Republican demagoguery on LGBTQ issues.

She’s facing off against El-Sayed, a progressive who has campaigned with popular streamer Hasan Piker, and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is favored by Democratic leadership and widely considered to be the pick of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

McMorrow is endorsed by the Bench, and her campaign committee is part of the Bench’s joint fundraising committee, although she has yet to receive any cash from the committee. Heising, the private-equity billionaire and key donor in the network, has also donated to McMorrow’s campaign. (McMorrow’s website proclaims that she doesn’t take “any corporate PAC money.” Her campaign did not respond to The Lever’s request for comment.)

But Majority Democrats’ donors aren’t just contributing money to McMorrow’s campaign; the network also appears to be staffing her war room.

At least three consultants paid by the McMorrow campaign are also working for super PACs and other entities connected to Majority Democrats and the Bench.

Last year, McMorrow paid $78,000 in consulting fees to Smith, the senior adviser to both the Bench and Majority Democrats, and $60,000 to Mamo, the Majority Democrats communications adviser who’s also a spokesperson for the Bench.

In one case, a salaried staffer on the McMorrow campaign payroll was at the same time paid by Majority Democrats’ hybrid PAC through his D.C. consultancy, an unusual arrangement.

Majority Democrats declined to comment on the overlapping consultants in McMorrow’s campaign, saying that the candidate was not a Majority Democrats member but rather supported by the Bench.

“All required disclosures have been made,” a spokesperson for the Bench said of the arrangements.

The prevalence of high-paid consultants in Democratic politics playing both sides is not unprecedented.

“That’s how consultants and political operatives really make their money — by getting hired by lots of different groups,” said Sarah Bryner, the director of Public Agenda, a political accountability organization. “It’s also how these groups become more powerful.”

But the practice can quickly enter a legal gray area, given that campaign consultants have access to privileged information about the campaign that can’t always legally be shared with outside spending outfits.

“Whenever you see a person showing up with both a campaign and a super PAC or hybrid PAC, it raises questions, and I think it warrants a hard look,” Ports said. In particular, she noted, “a campaign staffer is not allowed to work for a super PAC” if that super PAC is spending money on the same race.

“That would violate coordination rules,” Ports said.

But there are widely used loopholes that can allow arrangements like the ones Majority Democrats and the Bench have now adopted on a much larger scale. Under some circumstances, consultants can work for both campaigns and outside PACs as long as they maintain a strict “firewall” between their various projects.

A Majority Democrats spokesperson told The Lever that the Bench maintains a firewall for any paid media work, but Majority Democrats’ PAC does not need to, as it “does not do independent expenditures.”

Hybrid PACs can provide campaign services to candidates, but the cost of that work has to be limited to the same financial caps as monetary contributions and registered with the FEC as “in-kind contributions.”

Although the Bench at its launch touted that it would provide staff, fundraising, and digital services to campaigns, no candidate’s campaign has disclosed in-kind contributions from the Bench or from Majority Democrats.

The Bench noted that while the organization “advises Bench candidates on strategy, press, and messaging,” it “does not incur expenses that support any specific candidate” beyond its firewalled independent expenditures.

“A Mockery And An Outrage”

It’s not just the McMorrow campaign that’s receiving heavy-handed support from the Majority Democrats network. At least four other campaigns — including U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Conley in New York — are paying consultants who are also working with the outside operation.

“Unless the individual claims to have multiple personality disorder, I don’t see how you can work on both sides [to this extent],” said Larry Cohen, the former president of the Communications Workers of America and Democratic National Committee member who has spent decades working on campaign finance reforms. “In any functioning democracy, that’s a mockery and an outrage.”

The arrangement sparked controversy in the Texas Senate primary race, where Talarico, a state lawmaker, defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) last month.

At a campaign event in February, Crockett bashed her opponent for his affiliation with Smith, the senior adviser to both Majority Democrats and the Bench, because of her past work on behalf of disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.). Crockett claimed that Talarico had been “running away” from his ties to Smith. In news reports, Smith was described as a strategist for Talarico; she said on a $_{podcast}_$ that she had “done some work” for the campaign, but then later claimed she was not involved in the race.

In a comment to The Lever, Smith clarified that she “gave [Talarico] advice pre-launch, but wasn’t involved during the campaign.”

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However, Majority Democrats and the Bench backed Talarico and contributed to his campaign through various spending arms — and Talarico’s campaign paid Precinct, the Delaware consultancy affiliated with the Bench and Majority Democrats. Smith advises both groups and has a Precinct email address.

According to campaign finance experts, Precinct’s mysterious operations raise further questions. Consultancies like Precinct aren’t subject to the same disclosure rules as PACs. So it’s not always clear precisely what services the firm is providing to campaigns like Talarico’s and McMorrow’s and what it is spending its money on.

For instance, in the Hudson Valley primary race, the controversial opposition memo, originally produced by the Conley campaign, appears to have been potentially shared with the Bench via Precinct and then distributed to the press on the PAC’s behalf.

“This would be another situation where I think you’d need more facts to know what exactly is going on,” Ports said.

“From a public policy perspective, it’s not ideal that it’s this murky,” Ports added. “Voters should be able to look at an arrangement and just know that everything is aboveboard and have confidence that campaigns are working separately from super PACs.”

Conley’s campaign did not respond to The Lever’s request for comment.

The power players running Majority Democrats’ “party within the party” seem to recognize voters’ concerns about outside groups and special interests playing an ever larger role in U.S. elections.

At its launch, Majority Democrats promised it would not accept “corporate PAC money,” a claim repeated by several of the candidates it’s supporting.

But the pledge is a sleight of hand. The term “corporate PAC money” conveniently excludes billionaire donors and billionaire-funded super PACs that are pouring money into the network.

Yet voters are catching on. In Texas, Minnesota, and New York, the billionaire and dark money support being funneled to Majority Democrats’ candidates has become a flash point. In Michigan, McMorrow’s opponent, El-Sayed, has seized on the issue.

He’s now opening his speeches with a tagline: “Money out of politics, money in your pocket.”

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The Billionaire Building The Democrats’ New Machine

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You can check out more of Katya Schwenk and Luke Goldstein’s reporting here:

Want comprehensive 2026 midterm coverage? Check out The Lever’s new weekly newsletter, Midterm Madness, for election updates, analysis, and more.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] David Sir

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