Third Way's fundraising consultant's biggest client is a group devoted to defeating Third Way Democrats.
Lee FangSenator Elizabeth Warren is among political leaders Third Way attacked in a recent editorial. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)
If Third Way is truly concerned about electing Democrats, they chose a strange fundraising firm to partner with.
When Third Way’s president and senior vice president of policy published a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week decrying the economic positions of Bill de Blasio and Elizabeth Warren, namely, taxing the rich and expanding entitlement programs, their arguments rested on (weak) grounds that such ideas are bad for Democratic Party electoral prospects.
Earlier this week, TheNation.com obtained the latest disclosure forms for Third Way and reported that the think tank relies on a corporate lobbying firm called Peck, Madigan & Jones—a company featured by The Hill as among the “Top Lobbyists” of 2013—to raise more than half a million dollars a year. What makes Peck, Madigan & Jones such a top player on K Street?
Peck, Madigan & Jones’s largest client is the US Chamber of Commerce, a corporate trade group that represents large corporations like AIG, Bank of America and Dow Chemical. The Chamber, through its financial policy and legal affiliates, has paid Peck, Madigan & Jones $570,000 this year alone.
While the Third Way op-ed made a point of claiming that progressive economic policies wouldn’t play well with voters in Colorado, in 2008, their fundraisers’ client ran nasty attack ads against a Third Way leader in the state. When Third Way co-chair Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) first ran for the Senate, the US Chamber sponsored an advertisement against him on energy policy, declaring, “Every time he’s blocked American energy production, he’s made the tyrants and sheiks happy. But we’ve paid the price.”
Last year, Third Way co-chair Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) faced a barrage of attacks from the Chamber. One ad during the election last year instructed viewers, “Call Claire McCaskill. Tell her Missouri doesn’t need government-run health care. Support the repeal. We need jobs!” Watch it:
As The Huffington Post’s Luke Johnson reported, other Third Way co-chairs have commented on the growing controversy over the Wall Street Journal column. Representatives Joseph Crowley (D-NY), Allyson Schwartz (D-PA) and Ron Kind (D-WI)—all Third Way co-chairs—have distanced themselves from the arguments laid out in the piece.
We noted earlier this week that several Third Way trustees gave campaign money to Mitt Romney. But it might be even more problematic for the group that it has ties to the US Chamber, an organization that is dedicated to unseating Third Way leaders.
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Lee FangTwitterLee Fang is a reporting fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. He covers money in politics, conservative movements and lobbying. Lee’s work has resulted in multiple calls for hearings in Congress and the Federal Election Commission. He is author of The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right, a recently published book on how the right-wing political infrastructure was rebuilt after President Obama's 2008 election. More on the book can be found at www.themachinebook.com.