The Shadow Party – The Fifth Sister

Continuing my series on the excellent book written by David Horowitz and Richard Poe entitled "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party" in which I excerpt key portions to highlight the danger America faces from the new left. 

In the first post I posted about the overview the authors gave of The Shadow Party, the second post was about the first of Seven Sisters comprising the Shadow Party, MoveOn.org and then onto Hillary’s thinktank – the Center for American Progress in this post.  The third sister, America Votes, was highlighted in this post, the fourth – America Coming Together in this post.  Now I present the fifth sister of the Shadow Party, Joint Victory Campaign 2004:

Harold Ickes formed the Joint Victory Campaign 2004 on 5 November 2003 – the same day he also formed The Media Fund, which focuses on campaign messages.  Joint Victory was the chief fundraising entity for the Democrat Shadow Party.  A 527 committee, it was run jointly by America Coming Together and The Media Fund.  Joint Victory collected contributions for these two groups and divided the money between them, whence the funds were disbursed further down the line, as needed.  In 2004 alone, Joint Victory channeled more than $53 million into the Shadow Party network – $38.4 million to The Media Fund and $19.4 million to American Coming Together.

Since it was little more then a money conduit, Joint Victory drew less press attention then its sister organizations but surfaced briefly in a 5 February 2004 Washington Post editorial questioning the shadowy nature of its financial transactions.  The editorial noted that a mysterious 527 committee caling itself the Sustainable World Corporation had suddenly sprung into existence in Houston, Texas on 10 December 2003.  Seven days later, it donated $3.1 million to Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which then divided the money between ACT and the Media Fund.  The Post failed in its attempt to discover the source of the $3.1 million donation.

When the Post called Harold Ickes, it was lucky enough to catch him in a candid and forthcoming mood – which is not his usual posture toward the press.  Though under no legal obligation to answer the Post’s questions, Ickes generously explained that Houston investor Linda Pritzker of the Chicago Hyatt hotel family was the mystery benefactor behind Sustainable World Corporation.  "It’s nice that Mr. Ickes answered.  But a system that permits these kinds of huge donations to be made under a cloak of anonymity is deeply troubling," commented the Post.  Janice Ann Enright – Ickes’ partner in the Washington lobbying firm  The Ickes and Enright Group – also acted as Treasurer the the Joint Victory Campaign 2004.

Harold Ickes, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, has been a longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton as this recent article noted:

There are men who have become naturalized citizens in Hillaryland, of course, most prominent among them Penn, who runs the campaign’s polling and crafts the message, as he did for Bill Clinton; communications director Howard Wolfson (a Hillaryland member since 1999); and the ubiquitous but unofficial adviser Harold Ickes, a longtime liberal activist, Clinton loyalist and expert on New York politics.

And has been a chief cashola raiser for her and her husband for more then a decade:

If Mrs. Clinton’s strategy is to project an aura of inevitability, when will her fund-raising begin to match its potential? Remember, Team Hillary employs the Democratic Party’s two unrivaled moneymen — former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who raked in more hard money during the 2003-04 cycle ($394.4 million) than the Republican National Committee ($392.4 million); and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, who oversaw the financing of Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election and was the Democratic soft-money maestro in 2004, when liberal 527 cash vastly exceeded conservative 527 dough.

So you can bet that he is behind the scenes this election cycle creating front companies to keep the million dollar donations anonymous.

Curt

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