Soros pledges $10 million to group to defeat President Bush

Making a major foray into partisan politics, New York multibillionaire George Soros is committing $10 million to a new Democratic-leaning group aimed at spending $75 million to defeat President Bush next year.

Mr. Soros is the main financial backer of a new organization called America Coming Together, which has tapped political veterans from labor unions and liberal political action committees to energize voters in key swing states to support the Democratic nominee for president.

“What we’re going to try to do is build a very large infrastructure,” said Steve Rosenthal, chief executive officer of ACT and former political director for the AFL-CIO. “We modeled this after the program we used at the AFL-CIO, where we found that repeated communication with union members made a difference in how people voted.”

ACT has received commitments of $12 million from other philanthropists and $8 million from unions for a total of $30 million in seed money. That extraordinary amount of cash will be needed to get a new organization operational and effective with only 15 months to go before the presidential election.

Jim Dyke, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, pointed to the start-up of ACT as a victory for “a few special interests.”

“What you’re seeing is that, as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out, that 90 percent of donations of over $1 million went to the Democratic National Committee,” Mr. Dyke said. “Now you’re seeing these large donors giving to special-interest groups to elect Democrats.”

Mr. Rosenthal said ACT will concentrate on 17 states that were close in the 2000 presidential election, most of which were decided by 3 percentage points or fewer. It will also take the fight to Pennsylvania, which Al Gore won by 7 percentage points, but Mr. Bush has visited often since taking office.

“Bush has made 21 visits to Pennsylvania,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “He tapped the former governor to be his secretary of homeland security. This is an attempt to make sure that the majority of voters in that state understand how devastating Bush has been to the country.”

Democrats have lamented the ability of Mr. Bush to raise at least $34 million so far for his 2004 campaign in just a few weeks of effort. New campaign-finance laws this election cycle also make it harder for the Democratic National Committee to use its money to pay for “coordinated campaign” activities in the upcoming campaign.

Groups such as ACT will be trying to pick up the slack.

Mr. Rosenthal said his group “is allowed to talk” with the Democratic National Committee, but cannot coordinate activities with them.

Mr. Soros, 72, is a native of Hungary who survived the Nazi occupation, emigrated to the United States in 1956 and amassed his fortune by founding an international investment fund. Since 1979, Mr. Soros has financed countless left-leaning organizations and media outlets that promote globalism.