But perhaps the best chance liberals have of creating a new policy incubator to rival the likes of Heritage and the American Enterprise Institute rests with Rob Stein. Like Cherny, he is eagerly working to emulate the conservative model, creating the intricate web of connections that his rivals in the ideological war have spun by folding journals and think tanks into well-oiled influence machines. Stein, the founder of the Democracy Alliance that has the Manhattan Institute’s Weismann so worried, is a former private equity investor with the Women’s Growth Capital Fund and was a Clinton-era Commerce Department official. The 2004 elections also spurred him to action. He took to the road to convince affluent liberals such as George Soros and Peter Lewis that conservative advocacy think tanks enjoyed a funding advantage of roughly two to one over liberal groups.

Stein says that he has recruited donors to make minimum grants of $200,000 per year for at least five years. The Democracy Alliance will recommend funding opportunities to its members and use their money to build think tanks and advocacy groups. The donor grants add up to a promise of at least $90 million, or $10 million more than Weismann estimated. But despite Stein’s success, even the most optimistic liberals realize that they and their allies have years of fund-raising and infrastructure-building work ahead before they can hope to match the influence of the conservative advocacy think tanks. What lies ahead is a battle of not only ideas, but of wealth. 

Elizabeth Harris is a staff writer for Worth.

Additional Information

 Michael Milken's Middle Way
 A Thinking Man's Guide
 Case Sudy: Estate Tax Repeal