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

Rob Stein, the Democratic strategist who helped transform American politics by giving wealthy liberals new avenues to influence political debate and elections, died Monday at a hospital in Washington DC. He is 78 years old.

His son Gideon said the cause was metastatic prostate cancer.

After a career in which he became a public interest lawyer and top adviser to the Democratic Party and the Clinton administration, as well as building nonprofits and venture capital funds, Stein may have found his true calling after the election. 2002.

The president's party usually runs poorly in the midterm elections, but Republicans, with George W. Bush in the White House, took over the Senate this year, giving them control of both the House of Representatives and the presidency. They also hold most of the governors and seats in the state legislature. This made Mr. Stein worried that Republicans could achieve long-term dominance if Democrats were unable to understand and oppose the tactics and political machinery of their rivals, which he thought were best.

For months, he spent months researching the rights groups and thought groups that make up the conservative movement. He usually stayed up late, checking tax returns to show the cash flow going to these groups.

And he crystallized his research in a PowerPoint presentation entitled "The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix," which was intended to be a kind of Rosetta stone to understand the conservative movement and its financing. He began showing it to Democratic politicians and major donors across the country and gained followers among some of the most influential figures of the left.

After President Bush was re-elected and Republicans increased their majority in Congress in 2004, Stein formed a large coalition of liberal donors, the Democratic Alliance, to offset the Republican gains described in his presentation. Each member must donate at least $ 200,000 a year to Alliance-recommended groups, including organizations supporting progressive causes such as climate change and abortion rights, which generally support the Democratic Party.

Its founders include some of the left's biggest donors, including financier George Soros.

Alliance donors have joined forces to donate more than $ 2 billion to the recommended groups, the organization said. Her contributions helped find some of the most important left-wing organizations, including America Votes, Media Matters, and the Center for American Progress.

It was not long before Republicans were trying to organize their donor coalition to mimic some of the strategies behind the Alliance for Democracy.

"It just changes the way people think about their philanthropy," said David Brock, a former Conservative journalist turned Democratic Party leader and founder of Media Matters.

Brock said Stein became a mentor and helped him write a business plan for what became Media Matters.

In the 2022 election cycle, Media Matters and she later by Mr. Brock is ready to spend $ 100 million, he said. Mr. Brock added that none of this would have been possible without Mr. Stein and the Alliance for Democracy.

"This has been revolutionary for us and this is the only reason a stable democratic infrastructure has been built over the last 20 years," he said.

Robert Jay Stein was born on October 26, 1943 in Wheeling, West Virginia. His father, Charles, owned a chainsaw, and his mother, Janice (Harrison) Stein, was involved in local social, religious, and artistic causes. Organization.

He graduated from the Linsley Military Institute (now Linsley School) in Wheeling and then went to Antioch College in Ohio, a hotbed of progressive politics and activism.

The sudden transition shaped Mr. Stein.

"I opened my mind to conservative and liberal values ​​and started to respect both, although over time I became more liberal," Stein said in an interview last month.

He entered law school at George Washington University in Washington DC, where he remained for the rest of his life.

He worked as a public interest lawyer for 10 years and then helped establish or run a number of nonprofit organizations dealing with issues such as food, refugees, governance, and voting.

On the eve of the 1988 National Democratic Convention, Stein was tasked with delivering presentations on voter mobilization. This led to posts as an advisor to the National Democratic Committee under Chairman Ronald H. Brown and later as Mr.'s chief of staff. Brown when President Bill Clinton appointed him trade secretary in 1993.

Mr. Stein left the Department of Commerce shortly before Mr.'s death. Brown in a plane crash in Croatia in 1996 to help find an entrepreneurial capital fund focused on women-owned companies. When he founded the Alliance for Democracy, he introduced the principles commonly associated with venture capital investment.

In addition to his son Gideon from his marriage to Mary Ann Ephroimson, which ended in divorce, Mr. Stein has left behind his wife, Ellen Miley Perry; her daughter Kat Stein; two other children from his first marriage, Dorothy and Noah Stein; and five grandchildren.

After a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on the organization of United Citizens sparked an increase in political spending , most of which was funded from unknown sources , Mr Stein said there were growing concerns that big money was promoting polarization. and increased distrust of government.

While urging Democrats "not to disarm unilaterally," he also began talking about ways to overcome party divisions and reform policies. That got a lot of attention, Mr. Stein, after the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016.

He advised groups to form donor coalitions and activists from across the political spectrum to counter Trump's growing authoritarianism.

Stein implemented the Alliance for Democracy's thinking and strategy to foster "a new bipartisan infrastructure for democracy," said Sarah Longwell, a Republican agent who has long worked to weaken Trump's control over the party.

"He cared deeply for us on the right that they never had the same interests as the Democrats," said Longwell, who helped create and run two organizations opposed to Trump and his allies: the Bulwark website and political groups. Let's defend democracy together.

He said Stein, whom he considered a mentor, was a "tireless supporter of the democratic project".