The Lincoln Project Sells Revenge Rather Than Results: Who Are These People?

The Lincoln Project Sells Revenge Rather Than Results (full series)
What You Get for Your Money | Unburdened | Who Are These People?
Unforced Errors | Will Never Trump Survive Trump?

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Who Are These People?

Sarah Lenti, Lincoln Project executive director during the 2020 campaign, told Showtime the Arizona and Georgia outreach was critical because Lincoln wanted to “be able to go back and say we actually were in these states, with these ads, moving these voters.”

Without that proof of concept, Lenti presciently predicted “people would view us as just a group of former Republicans who are pissed off and creating viral ads and are just going out into the ether and doing nothing.”

Similarly, with the Showtime cameras rolling during one contentious Lincoln Project strategy meeting about a nasty attack ad, co-founder Jennifer Horn tried to dial down their venom.

“Our job is to persuade people to vote for Biden,” warned Horn. “Insulting people doesn’t do that. . . . I just want to make sure that we don’t forget that that’s our priority. Sorry to bring the crowd down. It sounds like a fun ad.”

Then she admitted to a Showtime interviewer that the videos can be “tough to watch,” but said the messaging decisions were being driven by the other co-founders: Galen, Madrid, Rick Wilson, and Steve Schmidt.

The abysmal failure of the “New Southern Strategy” is doubly ironic because Madrid, according to his LinkedIn page and multiple other sources, is “a nationally recognized expert on Latino voting trends.” He regretfully concedes to Showtime that he worked Latino outreach for Republicans until 2016—or most of his professional career.

In 2012, Barack Obama took 71 percent of Latino voters nationwide, up 4 points from 2008. In 2024, Kamala Harris received just 51 percent of Latinos, a 20-point decline.

Republican presidential candidates began doing very well with Latinos almost instantly after Mike Madrid and his Lincoln buddies stopped helping them.

Who still paid for “help” from these former Republicans after that was exposed?

At $1 million, Lincoln’s largest single donor for 2024 appears to have been Michael Moritz, a billionaire investor from the San Francisco area. He also gave $7.8 million during the 2024 election to the AB PAC, a committee that spent $58.5 million in the futile effort to defeat Trump.

With his wife, Moritz is also the co-founder of the Crankstart Foundation, which gave grants totaling $203 million in 2023, according to the last publicly available IRS filing.

The New Venture Fund received $7 million from Crankstart in 2023, and the Sixteen-Thirty Fund another $3 million. Both are left-wing nonprofits managed by Arabella Advisors. In a 2021 headline, The Atlantic described Arabella as “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of.”

For example, during the 2020 election, Sixteen Thirty shipped $300,000 over to the Lincoln Project. Who gave Sixteen Thirty that money and then told them to send it to Lincoln? Who knows?

Crankstart also gave $500,000 each to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund in 2023. Both are stridently anti-energy advocacy groups that even oppose nuclear power, the largest source of carbon-free electricity used by Americans.

The Lincoln Project’s second largest donor during the 2024 cycle, at $720,000, was Joseph Kaempfer. From McLean, Virginia, Kaempfer is the chairman of the MacArthurglen Group, a developer of outlet malls domestically and in Europe. In addition to Lincoln, Kaempfer gave millions more to other Democratic candidates and committees during the 2024 election, including at least $1.7 million to the Harris Victory Fund, $900,000 to the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, and more than $400,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

Tech and banking entrepreneur William Harris gave $600,000 to Lincoln in 2024. He also gave millions to other Democratic-aligned candidates and committees, including more than $500,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and at least $480,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Google, a California corporation that needs no introduction, gave the Lincoln Project $350,000. While Democratic-aligned committees received most of Google’s political money for the 2024 federal election, Lincoln was far and away the biggest beneficiary.

Property developer Richard Robbins also made Lincoln his favorite political project in 2024. He gave $251,000 to Lincoln and lesser gifts to Democratic committees such as the Harris Victory Fund.

Christy Walton is the 48th wealthiest name on the Forbes 400 list. Forbes also reports she was “one of the biggest backers of the Lincoln Project” in 2020. The $200,000 she gave to Lincoln in 2024 was still tops on her list for the campaign cycle. Smaller totals were shipped off by Walton to other Democratic political causes, such as the Harris Victory Fund.

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In the next installment, the Lincoln Project has had no shortage of scandals.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-lincoln-project-sells-revenge-rather-than-results-part-3/