A liberal fundraising group has been fabulously successful—raising almost $400 million—at funding everything from political campaigns for hard-left Democrats to ballot initiatives that promote far-left causes.
Recent FEC disclosures show that the Sixteen Thirty Fund raised and spent nearly $400 million to defeat Donald Trump and several Republican Senators. What makes the Sixteen Thirty Fund especially noteworthy is, first, the rank hypocrisy of the left, who tried to convince the American people that dark money would be the downfall of American democracy.
But more than the hypocrisy, it’s the eye-popping amounts from individual donors that make the Sixteen Thirty Fund stand out in the crowd.
Sixteen Thirty Fund’s total 2020 fundraising came to nearly $390 million — a new record for the group, and nearly three times more than the approximately $140 million it raised in 2018 and 2019.
Half of the haul came from just four donors, who gave contributions of $86.2 million, $52.7 million (in the form of stock), $45.7 million and $45 million to Sixteen Thirty Fund.
“Altogether this is absolutely one of the largest fundraising machines I have ever come across,” Robert Maguire, the chief investigator for the open-government group Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW) and an expert in political nonprofits, told Politico. “I am really struggling to think of any other group, especially recently, that could rival it.”
Not even the conservative fundraisers, the Koch Brothers, can match it. Indeed, the Kochs have stopped donating to most political campaigns but even in their heyday, they never came close to the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
One of the Fund’s mega-donors came clean and admitted to the massive contribution.
Tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, disclosed earlier this year that they were responsible for the $45 million gift, which went to Civic Action Fund, a fiscally sponsored project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Another four donors gave between $10 million and $20 million, and 27 more gave between $1 million and $5.3 million.
There were also foreign contributors to the fund.
As a nonprofit, Sixteen Thirty Fund is not required to disclose its donors, even though it spends significant sums on politics. But in addition to Omidyar’s self-disclosure, the New York Times revealed earlier this year that Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss’ nonprofits gave more than $135 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund in recent years, which was earmarked for non-electoral purposes. A person with Sixteen Thirty Fund, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that contributions from organizations funded by Wyss did not increase in 2020.
The Open Society Foundations, founded by liberal mega-donor George Soros, also lists nearly $17 million in 2020 grants to the Sixteen Thirty Fund on its website.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund helped finance the vote-by-mail effort that steamrolled Republicans in 2020.
IRS rules prohibit a group like the nonprofit Sixteen Thirty Fund from spending more than 50 percent of its contributions on political activity. They spent tens of millions of dollars to elect Joe Biden and even more to attack vulnerable Senate Republicans. Their largest expenditures were given to groups backing left-wing ballot measures in several states.
So far, Republicans have no counter for this left-wing fundraising juggernaut. If they want to regain their majority in 2022 and win back the White House, they better get busy before Democrats bury them.
