The Bonner Group
Established by Mary Pat Bonner, the Bonner Group has distinguished itself as a force in the progressive community through its unparalleled experience in major gifts cultivation and ability to develop and execute successful fundraising strategies for a wide variety of clients. Our services include extensive research and strategic planning, major donor solicitation, capital campaigns, event management, database development and grant writing. We interact regularly with key philanthropists, activists and strategists in Washington and across the nation to bring the highest level of service to our clients’ fundraising campaigns.
The Secret World of a Well-Paid ‘Donor Adviser’ in Politics | New York Times | Feb 5, 2015
A constellation of left-leaning nonprofits and “super PACs” are raising tens of millions of dollars to pave the way for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign — and nearly all of them have paid Mary Pat Bonner a cut.
Over the past several years, the groups, which include American Bridge 21st Century, Media Matters for America and the super PAC Ready for Hillary, have paid Ms. Bonner’s consulting firm in excess of $6 million to help them cultivate wealthy donors and raise money, according to tax filings and campaign disclosures.
Ms. Bonner’s contracts give her firm a commission, typically 12.5 percent, on any money she brings in. Her tenacity, ties to wealthy givers and mastery of making donors happy have made Ms. Bonner, 48, among the most successful practitioners of a trade that is virtually invisible to voters but has taken on immense power and influence in the post-Citizens United world.
Almost every candidate for high office must now court ultrarich donors to finance super PACs. And with each party more reliant than ever on networks of outside groups to supplement its advertising and opposition research, fund-raisers like Ms. Bonner hold the keys to the big-money kingdom.
“The Bonner Group gets us the best fund-raising product for the lowest cost,” said David Brock, the founder of the monitoring group Media Matters and the super PAC American Bridge. “In my experience, the commission incentivizes the fund-raiser to meet the ambitious goals we set.”
But the growing influence of paid fund-raisers has angered donors in both parties, who are skeptical of Washington’s consultant class and the secret, often lucrative deals they reach with campaigns.
Some organizations, like Freedom Partners, overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, emphasize their reliance on salaried staff members to raise money.
“I want my money to go to the candidate, to get them elected; I don’t want it to go to middlemen,” said Andrew Sabin, a prominent Republican donor.
Several Republican presidential contenders are now courting Spencer J. Zwick, Mitt Romney’s finance chairman in 2012. But some former donors grumble about the fund-raising fees paid by Mr. Romney’s campaign committees to limited liability companies established by Mr. Zwick: about $34 million, according to campaign disclosure reports.
In an interview, Mr. Zwick declined to describe his own fee. But he said that the bulk of the payments collected by the companies were in turn paid out to more than 50 other fund-raisers employed by the campaign.
“We raised more money than has ever been raised before at a better cost of fund-raising than has ever been done before,” Mr. Zwick said.
But few fund-raisers seem to command commissions as generous as Ms. Bonner’s. Political fund-raisers are typically paid monthly retainers, which can reach $25,000 a month during campaigns. The Bonner Group is paid almost exclusively on commission, a practice that is legal but frowned upon by some fund-raising consultants, who say it leads to fights with clients and other consultants over credit. It is considered unethical by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, partly because it can encourage abuses and, in the charity world, places self-gain over philanthropy.
“I think it’s a breach of fiduciary responsibility to pay fund-raisers on commission,” said Cindy Darrison, a professor at the George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University.
Allies say Ms. Bonner and her 20-member firm are worth the expense. The Bonner Group maintains a database of 70,000 donors and collects detailed information on their past giving, their families and their political relationships. Many praise her energy and personal touch: thank-you notes, for example, or tickets to Broadway shows.
“Without Mary Pat, we would never be where we are today,” said Craig T. Smith, a senior adviser to Ready for Hillary. Mr. Smith said the group had paid Ms. Bonner and some other fund-raisers a single-digit percentage of money raised.
Ms. Bonner, who cut her teeth as a campaign aide and fund-raiser for former Vice President Al Gore, is also known among colleagues for her aggressive tactics. During the 2012 campaign, Ms. Bonner, who was raising money for American Bridge, clashed repeatedly with other Democratic super PACs over joint fund-raising efforts.
Early in the cycle, American Bridge wanted a larger portion of shared fund-raising so it could begin tracking and researching Republican candidates. The other groups thought that Ms. Bonner was seeking to establish her client as a central financial clearinghouse for other Democratic groups.
Several recalled attending a meeting at American Bridge where they glimpsed a half-erased whiteboard diagram, showing money flowing into American Bridge and then back out to their super PACs.
Opacity surrounds political fund-raising. Priorities USA Action, a Democratic super PAC that is now preparing to back Mrs. Clinton, employed several consultants to bolster its fund-raising efforts in 2012. But a scan of the group’s disclosure reports shows mostly regular, round-number payments to them.
After The New York Times asked about payments to several specific fund-raisers, a spokesman confirmed that the payments constituted commissions to three of them. One, Andrew Korge, a Florida fund-raiser, was paid a 10 percent commission on a single million-dollar check. Another, Janet Keller, based in California, was paid a 5 percent commission on checks from a few wealthy donors totaling more than $2 million.
Irwin M. Jacobs, the billionaire co-founder of Qualcomm, said in an email that Ms. Keller had merely helped arrange for him to meet with two Priorities officials. “I was not aware that consultants might be paid a percentage of the political contributions that they raise,” Mr. Jacobs wrote.
In an email, Ms. Bonner said she routinely disclosed to donors that she was being paid on commission. “We charge all of our clients the same way, so there is no incentive for anyone in the firm to focus on one client more than another,” Ms. Bonner said.
But there is little question who her biggest client is. Mr. Brock’s growing empire, now composed of about 10 interlocking PACs and nonprofits, uses the Bonner Group for all of its development efforts.
Two years ago, reflecting her expanding role in Mr. Brock’s enterprises, Ms. Bonner moved her company and staff into his headquarters, though she continues to serve other clients. She and Mr. Brock have adjoining offices and even share a summer rental in the Hamptons.
Mr. Brock credits Ms. Bonner with helping persuade donors that news media monitoring and opposition research deserve large-scale financial support. His groups brought in more than $28 million in 2014, entitling Ms. Bonner’s firm to about $3.5 million in fees. Her commission represented his entire fund-raising overhead, Mr. Brock said, which compared favorably with that of other nonprofit groups.
He also emailed a statement from 40 donors attesting to the value her firm provided.
Not everyone seems convinced. Ms. Bonner’s fees have been a perennial source of controversy in the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy progressive donors, each obligated to contribute money to a select roster of liberal research and advocacy organizations.
Ms. Bonner originally worked there as a consultant, helping recruit new members. Later, when she moved to take on some of the funded organizations as clients, the alliance asked that contributions earmarked by its donors be exempt from Ms. Bonner’s commission. Eventually, the Alliance ended her consulting arrangement. But an Alliance official said that there was no formal policy in place and that its staff had no way of tracking Ms. Bonner’s commissions.
Ms. Bonner said in an email that she abided by the request. She continues to attend the alliance’s private donor conferences, however, as an unpaid “donor adviser” to Marcy Carsey, a prominent Hollywood producer. Current and former executives at liberal nonprofits complain about a perception that hiring Ms. Bonner would improve their chances of being included in the Alliance’s investment portfolio.
One Alliance donor, the billionaire Boston investor Vin Ryan, said that he had not been informed of Ms. Bonner’s commission before donating to Media Matters and later demanded a written guarantee from the group that his contributions would be exempt.
“I don’t know what her role in the D.A. is at this point, nor do I know who she actually is a donor adviser to, nor do I know what organizations she represents within the group of organizations who we are supporting,” Mr. Ryan said. “I think it’s outrageous.”
Brock resigns from Hillary Clinton PAC | Politico | Feb 9, 2015
David Brock on Monday abruptly resigned from the board of the super PAC Priorities USA Action, revealing rifts that threaten the big-money juggernaut being built to support Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential campaign.
In a resignation letter obtained by POLITICO, Brock, a close Clinton ally, accused Priorities officials of planting “an orchestrated political hit job” against his own pro-Clinton groups, American Bridge and Media Matters.
Those groups — along with another pro-Clinton group, the super PAC Ready for Hillary — had their fundraising practices called into question last week by a New York Times report. It pointed out that veteran Democratic fundraiser Mary Pat Bonner got a 12.5 percent commission on funds she raised for Brock’s groups and a smaller percentage commission on cash she raised for Ready for Hillary.
In his letter to the co-chairs of Priorities’ board — former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina — Brock alleged that “current and former Priorities officials were behind this specious and malicious attack on the integrity of these critical organizations.”
The letter — and Brock’s resignation — offer a rare glimpse into a network of groups upon which Democrats are relying to keep the White House and stave off increasingly robust big-money efforts on the right. The public airing of dirty laundry comes as sources say Priorities is struggling to live up to the hopes of some Clinton allies, who had argued it should aim to raise as much as $500 million to eviscerate prospective Clinton rivals in the primary and general elections.
Brock, who spent his early career in Washington as a self-described “right-wing hit man” before experiencing a political awakening and emerging as the leader of an empire of hard-hitting liberal attack groups, contends in his letter that Priorities is trying to damage his groups’ fundraising efforts, “while presumably enhancing Priorities’ own. Frankly, this is the kind of dirty trick I’ve witnessed in the right-wing and would not tolerate then. Our Democratic Presidential nominee deserves better than people who would risk the next election — and our country’s future — for their own personal agendas.”
Brock did not respond to requests for comment about the letter, his group’s relationship with Bonner or with the other big-money groups boosting Clinton.
Craig Smith, a senior adviser to Ready for Hillary, said his group is still working with Bonner, as well as with Priorities and Brock’s groups. “We have worked with them for almost two years. We continue to work with them. We all do very different things, so there’s not a lot of overlap.”
Asked whether he thought rivals on the left were circulating negative information on Bonner, he said, “I would hope not. Not that I’m aware of.”
Priorities spokesman Peter Kauffmann denied that Priorities had anything to do with the Times story, which also noted that his group paid fundraising commissions on at least $2 million worth of checks, including contributions from California tech billionaire Irwin Jacobs. Sources say Jacobs was upset by the revelations.
Kauffmann said Priorities no longer pays fundraising commissions and that it maintains close working relationships with the other groups boosting Clinton.
“Priorities USA Action and allied organizations demonstrated a clear ability to work together effectively in 2012 and we look to replicate that success again in 2016,” he said.
By early evening — hours after POLITICO broke the news of Brock’s resignation — Priorities USA Action issued a conciliatory statement from Granholm saying that the group was “working to address” Brock’s concerns, while Brock issued one saying he was “open to returning to the board.”
Brock in his statement said he’d talked “to several leaders of Priorities USA Action” and was “confident they want to address the situation.” The parties planned to meet “to work on establishing that path and strengthening our relationship and getting back to the important work we need to do in this election cycle,” he said.
Sources familiar with the events say the statement came after discussions between Brock, Granholm, Priorities board member Charlie Baker and Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist with deep ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Still, the groups — as well as Ready for Hillary — do to some extent compete with one another for big checks from wealthy Clinton backers. At one point, Priorities’ allies tried to force Ready for Hillary to shut down. But the groups — along with Brock’s — eventually entered into a sometimes uneasy alliance to lay the groundwork for the former secretary of state to run for president in 2016. Together, the groups formed an unprecedented shadow campaign that combined to raise millions in 2014. American Bridge’s Correct the Record Project defends Clinton against political attacks, while Ready for Hillary builds files of voters and small donors, and Priorities cultivates relationships with major donors.
The idea was to build an infrastructure that would allow Clinton to hit the ground running if and when she declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination and to project a financial show of force that would overwhelm any prospective rival in the primary or general elections.
The in-fighting is an ominous sign. It calls to mind the squabbles that helped sink Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. It, too, was regarded as an unrivaled cash juggernaut, but feuding among cliques of supporters stymied efforts to launch a planned big-money outside effort in time to neutralize a surprisingly robust insurgent primary challenge from Barack Obama.
This time around, her allies tried to pre-empt the sectarianism by cross-pollinating the various groups to keep everyone on the same page and minimize competition. Granholm is on the boards of both Priorities and Ready for Hillary, while Brock joined the board of Priorities, and longtime Clintonite James Carville has been paid by American Bridge for assistance with fundraising and strategic advice.
But there also are more groups competing for big checks from rich Clinton backers than there were in 2008.
In his resignation letter, Brock asserted a “serious breach of trust between organizations that are supposed to work together toward common ends has created an untenable situation that leaves me no choice but to resign my position.”
Liberal Super PAC Had Secret Bain Ties | Buzzfeed News | May 20, 2013
A top liberal super PAC in the 2012 election had undisclosed financial ties to the private equity firm Bain Capital — something that some people close to the group say interfered with its core mission of attacking Bain veteran Mitt Romney’s business record.
American Bridge 21st Century PAC was launched in 2012 as part of a multi-pronged Democratic effort to define and defeat the Republican nominee, a project of David Brock, a former conservative reporter best known as the founder of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters. By last January, it had amassed a vast store of opposition research, most of it focused on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital — and on the hard-edged private equity practices that would help define the Republican as an out-of-touch millionaire.
But in January, as Romney’s nomination — and the line of attack — became clear, American Bridge’s top fundraiser took a stand. In a series of meetings through the first half of 2012, several people close to the group confirmed, fundraiser Mary Pat Bonner demanded that the group avoid any public attacks on Bain. That’s because, two sources said, two top Bain executives are key contributors to the network of organizations maintained by Brock and Bonner, which includes Media Matters and American Bridge. And some familiar with the group’s work say it deliberately pulled public punches against Bain — though not against Romney — through much of the year.
“Anything that was discussed doing publicly in regard to Bain, even if it were just a quote piling on, was either shot down immediately, or there was a question, ‘Could Mary Pat be OK with this?’ And the answer was always no,” said one person privy to the group’s internal conversations. The group’s political staffers were “unhappy” about the conflict — but accepted it and tried to work around it, the source said.
People close to the group’s current leadership do not deny that Bonner fought to keep Bain out of the line of fire — and that she in fact at one point threatened to quit if Bridge put Bain at the center of the Romney story. But while some sources close to the group described her objections as a major drag on Bridge’s ability to attack the Republican nominee, the group’s current leadership describe it as a minor and ultimately insignificant issue that didn’t get in the way of the group’s efforts to spread opposition research behind the scenes.
A review of American Bridge communications paints a nuanced picture of a group struggling to attack Romney without smearing Bain. The group made passing mention of the company in 23 of the more than 200 press releases it sent this reporter in 2012, but generally maintained a just-the-facts-ma’am tone in relation to the company, a sharp contrast with the broad critique of “vulture capitalism” being advanced even by Romney’s Republican opponents. Even as Priorities USA, its most aggressive ally, made Romney and Bain synonymous with predatory finance, Bain made it up to the subject line of just one American Bridge email, a forwarded Huffington Post story on Jan. 17.
“American Bridge was at the forefront of educating the public about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain,” American Bridge president Rodell Mollineau said in an emailed statement. “We spent a year producing more than 2,000 pages of original Bain research and worked with our progressive partners to determine the most strategic way to use it. Our Bain-related content was featured in more than 40 print, television and online stories,” he said.
The group provided BuzzFeed with what it said were 14 instances of its “publically engaging” Romney on his time at Bain, which include a contribution to Politico by Mollineau responding to a question about whether attacks on Bain were legitimate. The response, which is in the affirmative, does not use the word “Bain.”
The group also considered, and rejected, the idea of creating a website to be a hub of research about Romney and Bain. One source said Bonner helped kill it; another person close to the group said that no donor objected to the idea of such a site.
American Bridge officials also argue that those public forays were never their main goal. As a group focused on opposition research, American Bridge was a prolific source of tips on Romney’s record at Bain to news organizations (including BuzzFeed), much of it provided on the condition the group not be credited, some of it provided with credit. It was also a key source of research to other liberal groups, said several progressive leaders prompted by the group to contact BuzzFeed.
It’s impossible for an outsider to arbitrate whether the group’s decision to operate largely behind the scenes was driven by Bonner’s relationship with Bain capital, as some people close to the group charge, or whether it was a purely strategic decision on the merits, as the group’s leaders forcefully argue. There is no dispute, however, that the group produced reams of research, much of which made its way into the slashing attack ads produced by Priorities USA.
“As someone who was an avid daily consumer of their research, I don’t think they pulled any punches,” said Paul Begala, a top adviser to Priorities and one of a few top Democratic figures who contacted BuzzFeed at the prompting of American Bridge to praise its work. Another Priorities USA official, Bill Burton, and Greg Speed, the executive director of America Votes, also contacted BuzzFeed to tout American Bridge’s research on Romney and Bain.
Begala said, however, that his group had sought the support of the same two left-leaning Bain executives tied to Bonner, Jonathan Lavine and Joshua Bekenstein — and said that they declined to support Priorities USA because of its plans to attack the private equity industry in general and Bain in particular.
“For our PAC it actually made sense for [the Bain executives] not to give, because we were very critical of Romney’s business practices, most of which occurred while he was at Bain,” Begala said.
The battle inside American Bridge offers a rare glimpse behind the curtain of money in politics — and an illustration of how much more complicated the question of political money is in practice than in theory. Even as campaign finance reformers denounce the role of billionaires in politics, fundraisers and operatives struggle to cater to the financiers’ perceived whims — often at great cost to their cause. Even as American Bridge’s political staffers pushed to overcome the fundraiser’s objections to Bain attacks, Republican donors with conflicting strategies and agendas were drowning out Romney’s own attempts to project a clear message.
The fact that Bain executives would double as major liberal donors also complicates the portrait of the group as a conservative bastion of high finance. One person familiar with the internal conversations at American Bridge said Bonner, battling “donor fatigue” from donors being tapped for Media Matters, American Bridge, and other groups, was particularly concerned about two men. The attacks could “ruin her relationship” with two big donors, the person privy to internal conversations said Bonner warned: Lavine, a Bain Capital managing director who was also a major fundraiser for President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012; and Bekenstein, another top Bain executive who also contributed more modestly to Obama’s campaign. Because American Bridge and Media Matters keep their donors secret, public records do not show either man’s contributions and BuzzFeed was unable to determine who had given to which group, and how much. Neither Bekenstein nor Lavine responded to email inquiries.
There is also no evidence that Bekenstein and Lavine directly participated in internal conversations at American Bridge, though Bonner was taken internally to be their proxy. American Bridge paid her Bonner Group $641,094 in 2012, about 5% of the $12.5 million it raised overall, according to federal filings. Bonner didn’t respond to a voicemail seeking her version of events.
Current and former staffers varied in their characterization of what one referred to as the “shadow” cast by Bain, with some saying it was merely a minor irritant, and others arguing that it distorted the group’s work. Senior aides have also told associates that they successfully worked around the uncomfortable bargain, though they denied to BuzzFeed that there was any discomfort at all.
Two senior aides, communications staffer Ty Matsdorf and a former Democratic National Committee research director, Shauna Daly, also departed American Bridge during the election. Matsdorf said he left solely because he wanted to work on the election’s front line in Nevada; Daly declined to comment in response to several emailed questions.
It’s also unclear what, if any, contact there was between Bonner and American Bridge staffers on one hand and the Bain executives on the other, or what amount they gave to American Bridge.
A source close to the organization, and speaking for the group, declined to disclose the names of its donors, but said that he found it “hard to believe anything Mary Pat said would have stopped a program from moving forward.”
“We have more than 300 donors and raised more than $40 million in the last cycle, and we’ve never had a donor who has ever given us reason to think their donations were in jeopardy based on anything we did or didn’t do. No donor concern has ever led us to compromise the integrity or effectiveness of our work,” the person said.
People close to the group also said that the concern waxed and waned, and that by the end of the cycle, the balance had tilted away from Bonner and toward more aggressive political staffers. On Oct. 28, American Bridge released the sort of searing public attack that many had expected from the start, a Priorities USA Action ad featuring an interview with a worker who begins, “Romney and Bain Capital shut this place down.”
The American Bridge version uses a portion of the interview that does not include the words “Bain Capital.”