{"id":1492,"date":"2026-08-16T15:06:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T15:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1492"},"modified":"2026-08-16T15:06:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T15:06:05","slug":"how-a-billionaire-is-using-his-fortune-to-reshape-the-democratic-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1492","title":{"rendered":"How a Billionaire Is Using His Fortune to Reshape the Democratic Party"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the summer of 2023, gearing up for his bid for a second term, President Joe Biden gathered with a cadre of wealthy donors at a $7.5 million mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. As the $25,000-a-seat fundraising dinner began, the president turned to thank his host: Stephen Mandel, a billionaire hedge fund manager and devoted Democratic donor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be here, standing here as president of the United States, without a lot of you in this room,\u201d Biden told them. Mandel and his wife, Susan, who have spent tens of millions supporting Democratic candidates over the past decade, were likely at the top of that list.<\/p>\n

Three years later, Mandel, 70, is the largest bankroller of a nascent political machine promising to \u201credefine\u201d the Democratic Party after its disastrous performance in the 2024 election. Rather than keeping to closed-door fundraising events, as he\u2019s done in the past, Mandel has adopted a newly assertive approach as a mega-donor. <\/p>\n

With $15 million in financial support from the Mandels, two recently launched organizations, Majority Democrats and the Bench, have made waves in Democratic primaries across the country. Their slate of chosen candidates, often challenging more progressive opponents, is bestowed with powerful campaign infrastructure \u2014 and Mandel\u2019s money. <\/p>\n

The network has helped deliver recent primary victories to candidates like James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa, among others across the country. All told, the hedge fund billionaire and his wife have contributed over $24 million so far this primary season, their largest spend in an election year to date. <\/p>\n

Majority Democrats and the Bench profess to be focused on one goal: cultivating candidates, usually younger and free from strict ideological bounds, who \u201cknow how to win.\u201d <\/p>\n

But the nebulous rhetoric papers over a more ideologically driven operation. The network pledges to return the party to the more \u201cmoderate\u201d middle, blaming the party\u2019s failures on its progressive wing, rather than its donor class. To do so, Majority Democrats is backing more establishment-friendly candidates over progressives in a quest for a \u201cnew center.\u201d In Michigan, for instance, the operation threw its weight behind state Sen. Mallory McMorrow over Bernie Sanders-backed candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who last week secured a narrow victory over Rep. Haley Stevens to win the Democratic nomination for the Senate race. <\/p>\n

There could be more than just ideology driving the political machine. With some exceptions, many of the networks\u2019 candidates are pushing to lightly regulate artificial intelligence, an industry in which Mandel\u2019s hedge fund, Lone Pine Capital, is heavily invested. <\/p>\n

Yet Mandel\u2019s broader agenda remains elusive. The billionaire has continued to avoid the media spotlight and rarely makes public appearances. His small orbit of think tanks and political operations is oddly tight-lipped about what, precisely, his motivations are. Many insiders, including people who work at groups funded by Mandel, say they rarely speak to him, if they have done so at all.<\/p>\n

The answers may be found in Mandel\u2019s home state of Connecticut, which has served as a proving ground for his grander ambitions. There, the billionaire has shifted from passive donations to building a well-oiled political apparatus, fomenting upheaval and distrust among some lawmakers and advocates who spoke to The Lever<\/em>. Similar concerns are already arising around Majority Democrats and the Bench.<\/p>\n

\u201cMandel wants power and control, and all across the advocacy space he\u2019s gotten it,\u201d said one lawmaker in Connecticut. The legislator asked to speak anonymously, out of fear of reprisal from Mandel\u2019s money machine. <\/p>\n

Mandel\u2019s aggressive approach will be put to the test in Connecticut\u2019s primary election this Tuesday, where incumbent Rep. John Larson (D), a longtime union proponent backed by left-wing groups like the Working Families Party, is being challenged from the right by former Hartford mayor Luke Bronin. Bronin has amassed a sizable war chest, thanks to the Bench and other PACs that trace back to Mandel.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Bronin used to be on the payroll of a nonprofit funded by the billionaire, and his campaign\u2019s policy stances reflect the network\u2019s influence.<\/p>\n

Whatever happens in Tuesday\u2019s election, the field of Democratic candidates now headed into the general elections this November bears Mandel\u2019s imprint.<\/p>\n

The Mandels did not return The Lever<\/em>\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

The Tiger Cub<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Mandel grew up in Connecticut\u2019s wealthy coastal suburbs, where his father ran a successful business buying and selling welding products. After doing a tour of elite education in the Northeast \u2014 Phillips Exeter Academy, followed by Dartmouth College and then Harvard University \u2014 he ultimately returned to Greenwich to build a career in finance. <\/p>\n

For a time, while working at Goldman Sachs, Mandel took the train before dawn from Connecticut to the Wall Street firm\u2019s austere offices in Manhattan. Mandel recalled in one rare interview that as he approached each morning, he thought to himself, \u201cThere are more smart people, good people in that building maybe than in another building in the United States.\u201d (That was perhaps not completely true, he admitted, but \u201cdirectionally true.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In 1990, Mandel departed Goldman for Tiger Management, a hedge fund led by the mercurial \u201cwizard of Wall Street\u201d Julian Robertson. Many of Robertson\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9s \u2014 the \u201ctiger cubs\u201d \u2014 eventually departed Tiger to start their own hedge funds. Mandel was one of them; in 1997, he struck out on his own and founded the investment firm Lone Pine Capital. Over the next decades, he and Lone Pine proceeded to make quite a lot of money.<\/p>\n

Lone Pine employs a high-conviction investment strategy concentrated in a handful of stocks \u2014 an approach Mandel learned from his mentor. The tiger-cub mindset would eventually come to define Mandel\u2019s pattern of political giving: The portfolio can withstand losses as long as a few big bets pay off. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an approach that\u2019s paid off for his hedge fund, which today is heavily invested in artificial intelligence. This year alone, Lone Pine notched a 43 percent gain for investors in the first six months, trading far above the S&P 500\u2019s 10 percent uptick during that same period. <\/p>\n

In one podcast interview, Mandel described his approach to AI investing as identifying the \u201cpicks and shovels\u201d for data center projects. \u201cWe know that running all these data centers\u2026 requires a huge amount of energy,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo we\u2019ve basically invested in everything from energy itself to producers of energy to all the way up to\u2026 the hyperscalers and basically the whole value chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lever<\/em>\u2019s review of Lone Pine\u2019s SEC disclosures shows that companies supplying the data center build-out make up roughly a third of Lone Pine\u2019s overall stock portfolio. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a dominant chipmaker, was Lone Pine Capital\u2019s single largest investment in 2025. Now the firm\u2019s biggest investment is in the energy company Vistra, whose stock became a hot commodity after it signed power purchasing agreements with tech giants Meta and Amazon to supply their data centers\u2019 massive energy demands. <\/p>\n

The fund\u2019s earnings from the AI sector have only added to Mandel\u2019s soaring net worth, now an estimated $5 billion. The billionaire in turn pumps the money into political causes, as he\u2019s done for decades.<\/p>\n

The Coup<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 2001, Mandel established the Lone Pine Foundation and the Zoom Foundation, pledging $75 million worth of shares in Lone Pine to the latter. For the next two decades, these foundations were the center of Mandel\u2019s charitable efforts, doling out millions of hedge fund money to the couple\u2019s causes of choice.<\/p>\n

Like with his political spending, Mandel launched these ventures alongside his wife, Susan. The couple met at Harvard Business School, and have three children. Although they operate in tandem, their interests diverge. \u201cShe kind of focuses on the environment,\u201d Mandel has said, \u201cAnd I focus largely on education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Education was Mandel\u2019s focus from the beginning. He took a more traditional route to start, donating large sums to his alma maters. But by the mid-aughts, the billionaire had taken an interest in one issue in particular, which would become the core, and perhaps only, ideological throughline that can be traced through his decades of spending: charter schools.<\/p>\n

At that time, charter schools were particularly prominent in the zeitgeist, hailed by many of their advocates as a panacea for troubled public school systems. Charters are typically publicly funded but are operated by private actors outside the oversight of public school systems, a model that has earned them opposition from unions and traditional champions of public education, and support from some families and education reformers. And as their critics point out, charters are known for their billionaire benefactors.<\/p>\n

So when, in 2011, a disinvested Connecticut district ran into financial trouble, Mandel was quick to intervene.<\/p>\n

That summer, state education officials in Connecticut took the unorthodox step of ousting the local school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut\u2019s largest city. The 20,000-student district, already strapped for resources, was facing a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

It emerged that Mandel had for months been urging Connecticut state officials to take this drastic move. Though no specific figure was agreed upon, a consultant for his foundation implied that the Mandels could offer private funding for the school district \u2014 if the state moved ahead with a leadership shake-up. <\/p>\n

Eventually, the state did just that. State officials ousted the school board and brought in one of the most prominent charter school advocates in the country, Paul Vallas, to lead the district \u2014 with his salary paid for by a fund set up by anonymous donors. (It remains unclear whether Mandel was involved with the fund, but his foundation has in the past donated generously to the Fairfield County charity that distributed the money.)<\/p>\n

An enemy of teachers\u2019 unions and vociferous proponent of market-based strategies in education, Vallas had previously razed the public school system in New Orleans and ushered in a new and polarizing system that revolved around charters. \u201cHe sold our schools off to the highest bidder,\u201d critics say of Vallas\u2019 record.<\/p>\n

In Bridgeport, the courts later restored the school board leadership, finding that the ouster broke the law, and sent Vallas packing to Chicago (where he proceeded to launch several unsuccessful political campaigns). But the Bridgeport \u201ccoup\u201d is still remembered bitterly by advocates for public education in Connecticut, and has poisoned Mandel\u2019s reputation among some in the state.<\/p>\n

Mandel would go on to spend millions more funding charter school advocacy groups, in Connecticut and nationally. He also served for a time on the board of Teach For America, a national nonprofit with a polarizing reputation in education, in part because of its close relationship with the charter school movement. Yet all the spending proved less fruitful than he had hoped, Mandel would later say. He began searching for a new way forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with education in this country is the system,\u201d Mandel said in a 2021 interview. The path to positive change was clear, he continued: \u201cIt\u2019s not pouring a lot more money. It can be done with the amount of money we spend now. But what is required is for both politics and \u2014 I\u2019ll call it \u2014 embedded structures to change, and that\u2019s really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

It appears he set about forcing that change \u2014 starting in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

The Puppet Master<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hartford\u2019s Bond Ballroom, a swanky venue overlooking the Connecticut state Capitol, has long been a venue of choice for lobbyists and influence-peddlers hoping to sway state policy. For some years, a local lobbying shop threw an annual gala in the old hotel ballroom, a boozy event for state lawmakers that carefully exploited ethics loopholes to offer wine on the house.<\/p>\n

The tradition had died out in recent years. But this spring, a new political heavyweight on the scene threw a gala for Connecticut\u2019s power brokers that harkened back to the old days of hors d\u2019oeuvres and Champagne. The mixer was staged by the Connecticut Project, a nonprofit organization founded by the Mandels in 2021.<\/p>\n

Some guests described the event, the \u201cPower in Policy\u201d mixer, as a \u201cmassive influence effort\u201d showcasing the political sway the group had amassed in just a couple of years over the state capital. Mandel, however, was nowhere to be found, according to multiple attendees. It was typical of the billionaire\u2019s modus operandi as an absentee kingmaker.<\/p>\n

The Connecticut Project today champions an \u201caffordability\u201d agenda as its raison d\u2019\u00eatre, with an emphasis on bread-and-butter issues. In the early days, however, the group launched with a generous endowment but no obvious north star. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Connecticut Project brings together people, ideas, and resources to build opportunity,\u201d its website announces. Its mission: \u201cEmpower families, break down barriers, and create a brighter future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Connecticut\u2019s cash-strapped nonprofit world, the newcomer quickly attracted allies by cutting big checks. The organization began handing out generous grants to far-flung initiatives and trusted progressive organizations in the state \u2014 local YMCAs, homeless services organizations, education nonprofits, criminal justice reform groups \u2014 often with few strings attached. <\/p>\n

These philanthropic efforts have earned the Mandels praise in the state. Eva Berm\u00fadez Zimmerman, the coalition director of Child Care for CT, an advocacy group that receives financial support from the Connecticut Project, called the group a \u201cphenomenal partner.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey consistently give the space and breath to focus on the movement and activate partners in the coalition,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

By 2024, the organization\u2019s annual spending on its various charitable endeavors and operational expenses had reached nearly $20 million. According to its most recent tax filings, the nonprofit disperses funding to over 70 organizations and projects in Connecticut, with grants often totaling in the hundreds of thousands.<\/p>\n

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Along with acting as a passive funder, the organization has established close ties with Connecticut\u2019s power brokers, thanks to its in-house lobbying team. The group launched a 501(c)(4) advocacy arm, the Connecticut Project Action Fund, to lobby lawmakers and the state directly. In 2025, the action fund spent $680,000 on lobbying, according to the Connecticut Office of State Ethics, the second largest sum of any lobbying group in the state that year. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the number of staff they\u2019ve been able to employ at the capital, Connecticut Project has definitely formed a lot of relationships with House and Senate leadership in the past few years and in the governor\u2019s office,\u201d said a Connecticut lawmaker, who, like several Connecticut insiders who spoke with The Lever<\/em>, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.<\/p>\n

Mandel\u2019s critics in the advocacy world contend that the organization has given one billionaire couple outsize influence over the state\u2019s nonprofit and political ecosystem. Another Connecticut lawmaker described the risk as a \u201cdependency arc, where all of these organizations can\u2019t operate without funding from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re sitting at the table with a bunch of groups and realize the Connecticut Project has their hand in the back of a lot of these organizations, almost like a puppet master,\u201d said a political insider familiar with the organization. <\/p>\n

Insiders say it\u2019s unclear if the operation \u2014 and by proxy, Mandel \u2014 has an ulterior motive. \u201cEveryone is sort of waiting for the shoe to drop,\u201d said a different lawmaker, noting Mandel\u2019s fidelity to charter schools.<\/p>\n

Impact CT, the campaign arm of Mandel\u2019s Connecticut operation, has already made its position on the issue clear.<\/p>\n

Launched in the lead-up to the 2024 elections, the organization, which is funded by Mandel, is staffed by people with deep experience in the charter school movement. The operation is chaired by former New Haven mayor and charter school booster Toni Harp, and its primary consultant, Ruben Felipe, is the former executive director of the Connecticut Charter Schools Association. <\/p>\n

Over the last two years, the group has supported several charter school advocates and others in long-shot primary challenges against progressives and pro-union incumbents in the state. This year, at least two candidates who were paid by Impact CT as part of its leadership training program went on to primary incumbent progressives, though neither made it on the ballot. The most prominent example was a failed primary bid this year by an education reform advocate against four-term state senator Matt Lesser after he vocally opposed a charter school in his district. <\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that the voters should get to decide who represents them, not wealthy special interests or Wall Street,\u201d wrote Lesser in an email to The Lever<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Felipe told The Lever <\/em>that dozens of people had gone through Impact CT\u2019s training program, and the organization does not operate with strict ideological bounds. <\/p>\n

\u201cAny attempt to position the organization as anti-progressive is completely false,\u201d Felipe said. \u201cIt\u2019s an attempt to assassinate the character of the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Connecticut Project\u2019s own personnel moves haven\u2019t put ideological concerns to rest, either. The organization is helmed by Garth Harries, a former superintendent of the New Haven public schools who oversaw a controversial effort to expand charter schools in the city.<\/p>\n

Mandel\u2019s imprimatur, therefore, comes with some risk. Some groups funded by the Connecticut Project have allegedly faced skepticism from lawmakers thanks to the billionaire\u2019s money.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese organizations he funds have not had an easy path,\u201d said Berm\u00fadez Zimmerman at Child Care for CT. \u201cIn the legislature, when you mention the Connecticut Project, there\u2019s a good contingency of elected officials who do not play ball with them and are wary of them, because the roots are Steve Mandel.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Connecticut Project\u2019s ambitions grew, its policy priorities started to shift, as some had feared. After years of supporting and funding efforts to pass a child tax credit in Connecticut to alleviate child poverty, the Connecticut Project abruptly pulled back from the child tax credit coalition to focus on other priorities, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. <\/p>\n

Instead, the Connecticut Project pushed for its own signature proposal in the most recent legislative session: a tax credit for renters to afford the rising cost of housing. The two policies, while theoretically compatible, are competing for slim state resources because of recent austerity measures imposed by Gov. Ned Lamont. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople felt betrayed,\u201d said one advocate with knowledge of the internal discussions.<\/p>\n

The Connecticut Project denies that it left the coalition and says that the group still \u201cideally\u201d backs both a child tax credit and a renters credit. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe see them as complementary,\u201d said Melvin Medina, vice president of advocacy at the Connecticut Project. \u201cThe cost of living has increased year over year over the last decade, and families are struggling to make ends meet.\u201d <\/p>\n

To child tax credit proponents, the group\u2019s retreat from the coalition indicated a desire to plant a flag and put its own wins on the board, potentially to please their chief benefactor. That sharp-elbowed approach appeared to come at the expense of other causes.<\/p>\n

When the legislature convened in January, the very first bill introduced into the state Senate with the support of the party leadership included the renters tax credit, a testament to the Connecticut Project\u2019s influence. The child tax credit, which would be competing for the same funding, was put on the back burner. <\/p>\n

Mask Off<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At the start of this year, a buzzy new Democratic organization called the Bench made headlines with its call to, as The Washington Post<\/em> put it, \u201cchange the Democratic Party from the inside.\u201d The group pledged to do so by introducing \u201cthe next generation\u201d of Democrats and steering those candidates to victory in their races through a deep donor network and well-connected D.C. consultants. <\/p>\n

One of those fresh faces was former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who\u2019s vying for Connecticut\u2019s first congressional district in Tuesday\u2019s primary. <\/p>\n

Mandel and his wife have together donated $4 million to the Bench, and another $11 million to its sister organization, Majority Democrats, which share staff and back many of the same candidates. The couple\u2019s donations often are accompanied by those of other billionaires, including venture capitalist Tench Coxe, crypto CEO Michael Novogratz, and investor Mark Heising, all of whom have donated to multiple entities within the broader political network. <\/p>\n

Through The Bench and its affiliates, the Mandel machine is working to boost Bronin \u2014 the biggest test yet of his political operation.<\/p>\n

At 47, Bronin is relatively young, certainly compared to the septuagenarian he is taking on in the primary. He served in the military, deploying briefly to Afghanistan as an intelligence officer with the U.S. Navy, a fact that helps obscure his roots in New York\u2019s wealthy Westchester County. Critics charge that he has seemingly few ideological commitments, offering up policy proposals with a populist sheen but light on substance.<\/p>\n

His opponent, Rep. John Larson, 78, is an old-school progressive, backed by unions and a longtime champion for expanding Social Security. He boasts 14 terms in Congress, and has rejected all calls to step aside due to age (despite suffering a visible seizure while speaking on the House floor last year). <\/p>\n

While certainly a member of the Democratic Party\u2019s gerontocracy, Larson is also the kind of aging incumbent that the Mandels feel empowered to take on in Connecticut: A septuagenarian, but a progressive one.<\/p>\n

The ideological fault lines of the primary race are stark. For this reason, the race has been described as a \u201cmask off\u201d moment for Mandel and the Bench by some observers who have tracked his spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Larson race is the key to understanding Mandel\u2019s operation,\u201d said Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group. \u201cIf it\u2019s all just about electing \u2018electable\u2019 Democrats, then why would you be primarying John Larson from the right with Mandel\u2019s hand-picked candidate and throwing everything they have at him?\u201d <\/p>\n

Bronin served two terms as the mayor of Hartford, but he has long harbored bigger ambitions. Before Bronin\u2019s first mayoral term was up, he was already exploring a gubernatorial campaign (despite promising that he would not seek higher office before finishing out his first term). After all, Bronin\u2019s peers had already achieved greater heights \u2014 at Oxford, he was housemates with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), and he has long been close with former Transportation Secretary and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.<\/p>\n

Whether Mandel and Bronin have a personal relationship is unclear. But during his time in Hartford, Bronin appeared to support charter schools, Mandel\u2019s pet issue, a matter that became contentious in the city at the time, pitting labor unions against business groups. During Bronin\u2019s reelection campaign, the Hartford Teachers Union rescinded his endorsement because he accepted contributions from charter school advocates.<\/p>\n

Once Bronin wrapped up his second term as mayor, he scored a cushy gig at the Mandel-funded Connecticut Project. In 2024 and 2025, as The American Prospect <\/em>reported, the organization paid Bronin $237,000 for consulting services. During this time, Bronin co-authored a report on fiscal policy in Connecticut, but there\u2019s no other public trace of his work there. (The nonprofit is \u201cone of the most effective progressive policy organizations in the state,\u201d Bronin said in response to criticism of the job.)<\/p>\n

Bronin launched a bid for Congress in the summer of 2025. Support from Mandel\u2019s political spending vehicles soon came flooding in.<\/p>\n

Impact CT, for instance, has thrown its weight behind Bronin in the weeks before the Aug. 11 primary, spending over $400,000 on mailers, canvassing, and digital media in support of his candidacy. <\/p>\n

Impact CT\u2019s Felipe said that the group\u2019s decision to support Bronin was not a directive from Mandel. The billionaire has made a commitment to allow Impact CT\u2019s board and staff \u201cto steer the ship,\u201d Felipe said. \u201cI can honestly, without exception, say there has never been a time that he said, \u2018I want you guys to work on this race.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In July, a deep-pocketed Democrat-aligned super PAC called VoteVets launched a million-dollar ad campaign to boost Bronin\u2019s candidacy, becoming his largest outside donor. Mandel, his wife, and Mandel-funded PACs like the Bench are together among the largest contributors to VoteVets this election cycle, having given over $500,000.<\/p>\n

VoteVets has been active in several other races that Mandel\u2019s network has taken an interest in, spending millions to support Iowa Senate candidate Turek (who is not a veteran) and New York congressional hopeful Cait Conley (who is). From the organization\u2019s ads, which feature Bronin in uniform, it would be hard to tell that the group is part of a hedge fund billionaire\u2019s sprawling political apparatus.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the race, Bronin has staked out policy positions on the technology sector that fit neatly with his top donor\u2019s financial interests. The Bronin campaign\u2019s issues page on AI, titled \u201cGetting the Balance Right with Artificial Intelligence,\u201d takes a moderate path on data centers, acknowledging concerns while emphasizing that \u201cit\u2019s important that the United States continue leading the world in AI development.\u201d <\/p>\n

Such language is common across the ecosystem bankrolled by Mandel. In March, the Searchlight Institute, a policy think tank known to be funded by Mandel, released a white paper proposing to green-light and regulate data centers, rather than the moratoriums supported by the Democratic Party\u2019s populist left. This policy proposal soon appeared on the campaign platforms of several high-profile Senate candidates supported by Mandel. <\/p>\n

Still, Mandel\u2019s candidates have a diversity of views on the issue; Jamie Ager, the Bench-endorsed Democratic candidate for North Carolina\u2019s eleventh congressional seat, supports a short-term version of a data center moratorium. <\/p>\n

The Bench rejected the idea that Mandel is controlling its operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny assertion that the candidates we support are defined by anything other than their values and what\u2019s best for their constituents is wrong,\u201d said Andrew Mamo, a spokesperson for the Bench. \u201cWe were founded precisely because big donors have too much power over what candidates do and say.\u201d <\/p>\n

That proposition could be put to the test as the Bench\u2019s largest funder amasses his influence over the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMandel wants power and control,\u201d said one Connecticut lawmaker, describing the billionaire\u2019s growing political influence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nHow a Billionaire Is Using His Fortune to Reshape the Democratic Party - Smart Moving Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1492\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How a Billionaire Is Using His Fortune to Reshape the Democratic Party - 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