Billionaire political activist George Soros appears to be getting back in the game of funding local races for district attorney, this time trying to hand-pick the winner in the Philadelphia contest.
A group called “Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety” was registered as a political action committee earlier this week, which has numerous fingerprints that link back to the Hungarian-born investor. In the newest play, almost $280,000 is ready to go on TV and radio ads in support of candidate Larry Krasner in the primary election, according to Philly.com. Krasner told the paper the creation of the PAC was “interesting news,” but said he hadn’t known about it until he got a phone call from a reporter.
All elements of the Philadelphia effort mimic the strategy Soros employed in 2016, in which 10 of the 12 candidates he backed went on to win.
In the 2016 campaign, Soros created local, independent expenditure committees or political action committees which allowed him to bypass the individual contribution limits on giving to a candidate’s own committee. Soros was then able to spend unlimited amounts on mailers and television ads on behalf of the candidate, provided there was no coordination between the Soros-created PAC and the candidate.
In most of the 2016 contests, the Soros PAC or committee also unveiled itself very late in the game, often times catching the other candidates completely unaware at a point so late in the election cycle they were unable to counter-fundraise to ward off the mountains of money they faced.
Another strategy that paid dividends for Soros in 2016 was trying to overwhelm primary elections in which the Democrat winner was all but assured of being the general election victor as well, based on the constituency. For example, it was February of last year when “Illinois Safety and Justice” spent about $400,000 on candidate Kim Foxx. Once Foxx won her primary in March, Soros was basically free to fold up the effort there, knowing her election in Cook County was assured based on the heavy Democratic voter registration advantage there.
Soros has only given hints as to his motivation. But from all appearances, the strategy hopes to pick DAs who provide a greater emphasis on criminal justice reform, including a stress on how police shootings are handled, correcting wrongful convictions, and implementing reform that would reduce racial disparities in areas like drug sentencing.
Naturally, the strategy has critics who say the billionaire is using outside committee spending to overwhelm small races that have never been based on six-figure fundraising totals.
One of the DAs who survived the Soros assault was Pete Weir in Jefferson County, Colorado. Weir told the Washington Examiner that the Soros strategy included having the new district attorney use their prosecutorial discretion to unwind years of hard-won consensus that came out of state legislatures writing criminal justice law.
“He is trying to identify candidates that will follow Soros’ view of social justice and [his] political agenda. And he does this by bypassing the legislative process,” Weir said.
Weir also noted that if the Soros strategy will ever be effectively countered, it would take a nationwide consortium of donors to set aside a war chest that could be mobilized quickly once it’s known where Soros would be staging his effort.
“I think it’s important to level that playing field,” Weir said. “I wouldn’t necessarily like to see the PACs come in in support of a candidate where Soros’ money is not involved, but, it would also be very, very beneficial that you could not have an individual such as George Soros come in and buy justice.”
