WITH $1.6 BILLION, CONSERVATIVES PLAY CATCH-UP. With lots of other news going on, you might have missed an important development in the never-ending political battle between the Left and the Right. A conservative billionaire, Barre Seid, has made one of the largest-ever single donations to a political nonprofit organization, giving $1.6 billion to fund a new group called the Marble Freedom Trust.
The group will be headed by Leonard Leo, the longtime Federalist Society official who has played a major role in Republican judicial nominations over the years. Most notably, Leo was, outside of former President Donald Trump himself, the most important player in the Trump administration’s success in confirming judges to the Supreme Court and the federal bench more generally. If conservatives want to give money to their movement’s most effective activists, Leo would be a top beneficiary.
Some coverage of the Seid gift focused on its giver as “ultra-secretive,” which seemed odd since the contribution is public knowledge. “An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history, worth $1.6 billion,” reported the liberal outlet ProPublica, “and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.”
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But the important thing to remember about the story is that, despite all the references to “dark money” — the ProPublica piece uses the phrase six times — the Seid contribution is not only publicly known but also part of a conservative effort to catch up with Democratic spending in the “dark money” category.
Just look at this New York Times story from a few months ago — Jan. 29, 2022. The headline was “Democrats Decried Dark Money. Then They Won With It in 2020.” The subheading was, “A New York Times analysis reveals how the left outdid the right at raising and spending millions from undisclosed donors to defeat Donald Trump and win power in Washington.”
The article went on to explain that in the 2020 presidential cycle, groups aligned with the Democratic Party spent a lot more than groups aligned with Republicans. “Fifteen of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020,” the paper reported, “compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the GOP.”
The money gave Democrats an advantage. Now the Right has Seid’s $1.6 billion. But remember, that is the entire endowment. The Marble Freedom Trust will likely spend some of the earnings from the endowment every year, not the whole endowment. Remember that the Democratic-aligned groups actually spent $1.5 billion in 2020. So the Seid gift is not instantly going to overshadow all that Democratic spending. Indeed, the New York Times chose its words carefully when it reported that the Marble Freedom Trust’s new money “could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending.”
In a statement to the press, Leo portrayed the gift in the same way. “It’s high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjorg Wyss, Arabella Advisors, and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our Constitution and its ideals,” he said. Soros is the well-known funder of all sorts of left-wing causes. The Swiss billionaire Wyss is less well known and is not a U.S. citizen and cannot contribute to American political candidates but has pumped more than $250 million into Democratic causes in just the last few years.
And then there is Arabella Advisors, which is a network of groups, many of which are funded by anonymous donors. The New York Times reported Arabella spent about $1.2 billion in 2020. Do you know the Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who was so effective in filing lawsuits to make voting conditions in a number of states more favorable to Democratic candidates? Where did he get the $20 million or so he spent on the job? From Arabella, which, it must be said, got tremendous bang for its buck from Elias. (You can read about Elias’s work in Mollie Hemingway’s Rigged.)
So Leo is right. The $1.6 billion windfall for the Marble Freedom Trust is a significant step, but it’s a step toward parity with the Left. Conservatives are playing catch-up with the Democratic spending machine.
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