Rob Stein, Who Changed How Politics Is Funded, Dies at 78

Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist who helped change American politics and a leader of wealthy liberals in new political debates and ways to influence elections, died Monday in a Washington hospital. He was 78 years old.

His son Gideon said the cause was metastatic prostate cancer.

Mr. Stein may have found his true calling after the 2002 election, when he founded a venture capital fund, a senior adviser to the Clinton administration's Democrats, and a non-profit organization. .

The president's party usually fared poorly in midterm elections, but that year, with George W. Bush in the White House, Republicans seized the Senate and controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. They had a majority of governors and provincial parliaments. This worried Mr. Stein that if Democrats didn't understand the "political tactics" their opponents thought were best, they could target Republicans' long-term advantage.

For months he worked with the collective groups and think tanks of the conservative movement. He stayed up after midnight studying tax proposals to map the flow of money to these groups.

And he crystallized his research in a PowerPoint presentation called The Money Matrix of the Conservative Messaging Machine, which was sort of a cornerstone for Rosetta to understand the Conservative movement and its funding. He began to show his Democratic political actors, his main donors in the country, his growing following among the left's most influential figures.

After President Bush was re-elected in 2004 after winning the Republican majority in Congress, he formed the Liberal Donors Coalition, the Democratic Alliance, to offset the Republican advantages outlined in Mr. Stein's presentation. Each member had to pay at least $200,000 a year for the bloc's proposed bloc, including clothing that supported the Democratic Party's progressive goals like climate change and protecting abortion rights.

Its founding members included some of the biggest left-wing donors, including financier George Soros.

The organization said Alliance donors have donated more than $2 billion to the proposed groups. Your donations have helped build the most powerful organizations on the left, including Voice of America, Media Affairs and American Progress.

It wasn't long before Republicans were trying to form their own donor coalitions to emulate one of the strategies of the Democratic Alliance.

"It just changed the way people think about their philanthropy," said David Brock, former Democrat and Lead Democrat և founder of Media Matters.

Mr Brock said Mr Stein is an educator and helped him write a business plan for the company that became Media Matters.

According to him, during the 2022 election, Media Matters և Mr. Brock is ready to spend $100 million on a network of related groups that will be formed later. Mr. Brock added that this would not have been possible without Mr. Stein's Alliance for Democracy.

“That was our revolutionary side, the only reason we built a stable democratic infrastructure over the last 20 years.

Robert J. Stein was born on October 26, 1943 in Willing. His father Charles had a wood chain and his mother Janice (Harrison) Stein was involved in community service, religious and local arts. organizations.

He graduated from the Linsley Military Institute (now the Linsley School) at Antioch College in Willing, Ohio, home of progressive politics and activism.

The forced transition shaped Mr. Stein's policies.

"It opened my mind to conservative, liberal values. I respected both, although I became more liberal over time," Mr. Stein said in an interview last month.

He studied law at George Washington University in Washington, DC and will have a home for life.

He worked as a public defender for 10 years and then helped set up or run a number of non-profit organizations focused on issues such as nutrition, refugees, institutional governance and voter turnout.

Until 1988, Mr. Stein was employed by the Democratic National Convention to prepare voter mobilization proposals. During his presidency, Ronald H. Brown served as an adviser to the Democratic National Committee and then as trade secretary to Mr. Brown Clinton when Mr. Brown was appointed chief of staff in 1993.

Mr. Stein left the Ministry of Commerce shortly before he died in a plane crash in Croatia in 1996 to help set up a venture fund for women's businesses. He introduced the principles of venture capital in founding the Alliance for Democracy.

In addition to his son Gideon, Mr. Stein is survived by his wife Ellen Miley Perry since his marriage which resulted in his divorce from Mary Ann Efroimson; her daughter Kate Stein; Two children from his first marriage: Dorothy և Noah Stein; և five grandchildren.

While Citizens United's Supreme Court ruling in 2010 led to a surge in political spending, largely funded from unknown sources , Mr. Stein became increasingly concerned that large sums of money were increasing the burden of distrust in government.

He called on the Democrats not to "unilaterally disarm" and spoke about ways to settle party differences and reform policies. That's what got Mr. Stein the most attention in 2016. After the Trump election.

He recommended several groups to form donor-player coalitions across the political spectrum to counter the shift to authoritarianism that Trump was pushing.

Mr. Stein used the Democratic Alliance mindset and strategy to "create a new infrastructure to support democracy," said Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican activist who is trying to unleash Mr. Trump's strength in the party.

"He paid particular attention to the right, which we never shared with the Democrats," said Ms Longwell, who helped found and run two anti-Trump organizations, their allies, the Bulwark website and a political group . We stand together for democracy.

He described Mr. Stein as a "ruthless animator of the democratic project".