SWAMP WATCH
A non-profit pushing leftist causes out of a shell office in Washington, D.C. is shaping up to be a major dark-money player in the 2022 midterm elections, a report said.
The North Fund, founded in 2018 and led by a handful of Democrat operatives including former Clinton aide Jim Gerstein, uses a number of aliases to push its leftist agenda, the Washington Free Beacon reported on May 16.
The North Fund received $66 million in 2020, according to its public tax disclosures, nearly all of it from large contributors. Over 93 percent came from donors giving over $1 million, the report noted.
The North Fund operates under at least eight aliases, according to D.C. corporate records.
They include:
• Accountable Tech, which in May organized a corporate boycott in protest of Elon Musk's bid to purchase Twitter.
• Opportunity Wisconsin, which bought TV ads critical of Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and his tax policies.
• Just Democracy, which released video in Arizona slamming Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for failing to support Team Biden's legislative agenda.
• 51 for 51, which is pushing for statehood for the heavily Democrat District of Columbia.
• Democracy Docket Action Fund, which has helped finance state-level redistricting lawsuits across the country that favor Democrats.
Despite its large budget, the North Fund "has almost no physical footprint," the report added. "When the Free Beacon visited its office in downtown D.C. — a co-working rental space managed by the company Carr Workplaces — the front desk manager said the North Fund uses the address but doesn't maintain a presence there. 'I'm not sure where they're actually located,' " he said.
"North Fund has said screw it," said Hayden Ludwig, a senior investigator with the Capital Research Center. "They've just decided to be as partisan as they can. Their money has been pretty much exclusively focused on Senate races, on ballot initiatives, and a few things kind of related to that. The general theme there is cementing permanent Democratic majorities in Congress."
"From trying to make D.C. a state to funding [Democratic operative] Marc Elias's politicized lawsuits, North Fund's presence is often felt but their very existence is virtually unknown," Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of the Americans for Public Trust watchdog group, told the Washington Free Beacon. "If untraceable money is flooding the latest policy or legislative fight under the guise of grassroots activism, chances are, North Fund is behind it."
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