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michael bloomberg
The Billionaires Backing the Neoliberal 'Abundance Coachella' Gathering Draw Ire From Progressives
"Given the WelcomeFest lineup, it's clear that the donor class views Abundance as key to carrying out this self-serving crusade against populism."
Jun 03, 2025
Days after a national poll showed that the vast majority of Democratic voters want their party to focus on fighting corporate power and promoting policies that help working people instead of adopting the "Abundance" agenda pushed by centrist pundits and conservative Democrats, a watchdog revealed a new reason many voters may be unconvinced by the "Abundance universe."
According to an analysis by Revolving Door Project, the Abundance movement's political action committee counts a number of conservative, corporate-friendly billionaires among its funders, including members of the Walton family, former New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and Wall Street executives Rob Granieri and Mark Heising.
The analysis was released the day before the centrist Welcome Party is set to host its annual event, WelcomeFest, featuring a lineup of speakers including U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who has slammed progressives' use of the term "oligarchy," conservative Blue Dog Caucus chair Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Derek Thompson, co-author of the book Abundance, which has been adopted in recent months a seminal text for politicians and commentators who reject progressives' demands for a true populist agenda.
The book argues partially that regulations and other bureaucratic "bottlenecks" make it harder to produce new housing and infrastructure.
"Given the WelcomeFest lineup, it's clear that the donor class views Abundance as key to carrying out this self-serving crusade against populism," said Henry Burke and Vishal Shankar of the Revolving Door Project.
Even more telling, said the group, is the list of donors to WelcomePAC, the Welcome Party's political action committee.
The PAC has received:
- More than $1.8 million since 2021 from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who opposed the Biden administration's antitrust policies and bankrolled campaigns to defeat progressives including former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner;
- $625,000 from Samuel R. Walton, grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton and owner of natural resources holding company;
- $150,000 from Carrie Walton Penner, granddaughter of Sam Walton and a donor to the anti-public education charter school movement; and
- $2.5 million from James Murdoch, estranged son of News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch, and his wife Kathryn.
"The 'Abundance' movement is funded by GOP mega-donors," said Turner.
As Burke and Shankar wrote, organizers of WelcomeFest—or "Abundance Coachella"—are seeking to juxtapose their event with "the purportedly left-wing" Democratic National Convention, rejecting so-called "purity tests" but failing to offer "a compelling explanation for why swing and red state voters are flocking to the progressive-populist fight against oligarchy."
As it promises to offer "a vision for a depolarized United States, WelcomeFest "proudly touts the label of 'centrist insurgency.'"
The Welcome Party attempted to convince five House Republicans to caucus with Democrats in its push for depolarization, but "failed spectacularly," wrote Burke and Shankar—suggesting that the party and its agenda are now really focused only on moderation in one of the major political parties.
In a column at Common Dreams on Sunday, Aaron Regunberg of Public Citizen noted that proponents of the Abundance agenda like Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.), have taken pains to dismiss comparisons between "populist and abundance messaging."
The recent poll by Demand Progress made the comparisons impossible to ignore, Regunberg argued, showing that 81.6% of respondents said they'd be much more likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to "get money out of politics, break up corporate monopolies, and fight corruption."
Just 47.7% said they would prefer a candidate who promised to reduce "regulations that hold back the government and private sector from taking action" for working and middle-class Americans.
"At a moment when Democrats' efficacy in defeating Trumpism carries such existential stakes, these survey results demonstrate why many of us on the left have found the campaign to make abundance the new face of the Democratic Party so deeply concerning," wrote Regunberg. "If abundance isn't going to help Democrats defeat MAGA, then abundance advocates—or at least the ones who care about ending Trumpism—should stop trying to 'define the future of the Democratic Party.' Let's leave that work to the Democrats who are trying to orient our party around a vision that voters actually do find compelling."
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Billionaire Grandson of Gilded Age Plutocrat Gives Trump Super PAC $50 Million
Timothy Mellon is one of at least a dozen billionaires backing Donald Trump's bid for another four years in the White House.
Jun 21, 2024
Billionaire businessman Timothy Mellon, the grandson of Gilded Age plutocrat Andrew Mellon, made a $50 million donation to a pro-Donald Trump super PAC last month, a day after the former president was convicted by a New York jury on 34 felony counts.
Mellon had previously donated $25 million to super PACs backing both Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate. The New York Timesnoted late Thursday that Mellon, a reclusive GOP megadonor who has described safety net programs as "slavery redux," is "now the first donor to give $100 million in disclosed federal contributions in this year's election."
"The grandson of Andrew Mellon peering out from behind a shrubbery to drop $50 million on an effort to defeat the strongest anti-monopolist element in government in decades is poetic," The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote in response to Mellon's donation, alluding in part to the Lina Khan-led Federal Trade Commission's bold efforts to fight corporate consolidation.
Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote in his book on monopoly power and American politics that Andrew Mellon used his corporate empire and appointment as U.S. treasury secretary "to fuse government and business to make the world safe for monopolists."
"Unlike other tycoons, he did not specialize in one area. At one point, five Fortune 500 companies owed their lineage directly to Mellon: Alcoa, Gulf Oil, Mellon Bank, Carborundum, and Koppers. He controlled a network of ninety-nine banks. He had interests in coal, steel, chemicals, oil, sleeping cars, railroads, building construction, utilities, magnesium, and airplanes," Stoller wrote. "Mellon even commandeered the use of an entire element of earth—aluminum—through his control of the monopoly aluminum producer Alcoa."
Timothy Mellon's donation to the Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC was the largest single campaign contribution this election cycle and accounted for most of the roughly $70 million that the pro-Trump outfit raised last month.
The Times reported that "within days of the contribution," the super PAC "said in a memo that it would begin reserving $100 million in advertising through Labor Day."
Mellon is one of at least a dozen billionaires supporting Trump's bid for another four years in the White House. The former president has solicited donations from fossil fuel executives and hedge fund investors, promising to deliver regulatory rollbacks and more tax cuts if he defeats President Joe Biden in November.
Trump has also actively courted casino billionaire Miriam Adelson—his biggest 2020 donor and a fervent supporter of Israel—with apparent success: Politicoreported last month that Adelson is "planning to play a major role in funding Preserve America, a pro-Trump super PAC founded during the former president's 2020 reelection campaign."
"How much Adelson will donate to the super PAC is not clear, though the person familiar with her plans said the group was expecting to spend more than it did four years ago when Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon, donated $90 million to Preserve America," the outlet noted. "Their funds accounted for about 85% of what the organization raised in total."
Biden's campaign, meanwhile, has received roughly $20 million in donations from billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Washington Postreported Thursday that "the transfer of funds includes a $19 million check to FF PAC, an independent pro-Biden group also known as Future Forward, and a max-out donation of $929,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, an amalgamation of Biden campaign and Democratic Party committees."
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RFK Jr.’s Choice of Running Mate Shows How Money Distorts Politics
The unlimited spending of self-funding candidates helps drive up the costs of campaigns, making them too much of a rich person’s game and limiting the choices available to voters.
Mar 29, 2024
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that his pick for vice president is Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy tech entrepreneur and lawyer. Shanahan’s prior political activity seems to be limited to giving money, including a $4 million donation to a pro-RFK Jr. super PAC to help fund a Super Bowl ad.
Kennedy’s campaign has raised far less than the 2024 front-runners, and he may see a running mate with the ability to self-fund as necessary to keeping his bid afloat.
In addition to the super PAC donation, Shanahan had given Kennedy’s campaign the maximum contribution of $6,600, but as a member of the ticket she can put up however much she wants. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, rich people, corporations, and other special interests can make unlimited donations to super PACs. But since super PACs are not supposed to coordinate their activity with campaigns, there are big advantages to Kennedy’s campaign having its own big-money spigot.
Politics should be open to all, not just a privileged few.
Kennedy’s choice highlights the crushing pressures of fundraising in today’s elections. Campaign costs have soared in the Citizens United era of unlimited donations to super PACs and “dark money” groups that keep their donors secret due to a boom in spending by the richest donors, making bigger and bigger donations increasingly essential to running for office.
The richest Americans increasingly throw their own hats in the ring, even though self-funders rarely win. In the 2022 congressional elections, 44 candidates each spent more than $1 million of their own money on their bids, and only six won. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, spent $1 billion on his own 2020 presidential campaign, which lasted just three months.
Even though they often lose, self-funders distort politics. Their unlimited spending helps drive up the costs of campaigns, making them too much of a rich person’s game and limiting the choices available to voters. In the 2018 Illinois gubernatorial election, voters faced a choice between two wealthy self-funders, each of whom spent tens of millions on their bids. Many otherwise promising candidates never even run, for fear of being unable to secure financing.
Some have suggested that self-funding candidates can’t be corrupted by special interests, because they are too rich to bribe. But that misses the reality that wealthy candidates typically already represent a special interest: the business and industry that got them (or their parents) rich. More generally, studies show that the affluent have different policy views than most Americans. For example, they unsurprisingly tend to oppose higher taxes on the wealthy.
Politics should be open to all, not just a privileged few. One key reform is public financing through small donor matching, which allows candidates without wealth or big donors to run people-powered campaigns. We should heed the warning of the first RFK to make a mark on American politics, who said, “we are in danger of creating a situation in which our candidates must be chosen from among the rich… or those willing to be beholden to others.”
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