Fix Our Senate, the obscure outfit leading a coalition of 70 liberal advocacy groups backing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) anti-filibuster drive, is a left-wing “dark-money pop-up,” according to a political nonprofit finance expert.
“We call these fronts ‘pop-ups’ because they’re websites which pop into existence, run attack campaigns, and disappear in an instant and almost never reveal their connection to Arabella or its nonprofits,” Ludwig told The Epoch Times on Jan. 4.
The CRC is a conservative nonpartisan foundation that specializes in tracking trends among the most influential charities, nonprofits, and special-interest groups affecting the public policy process in the nation’s capital.
“We study unions, environmentalist groups, and a wide variety of nonprofit and activist organizations. We also keep an eye on crony capitalists who seek to profit by taking advantage of government regulations and by getting their hands on taxpayers’ money,” CRC says of its purpose on its website.
He’s the former longtime communications director for Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), working for her in various positions from 2009 until 2019. He also was briefly in 2019 the managing principal for Precision Strategies, a Washington and New York City political consulting and marketing firm co-founded by Stephanie Cutter, who identifies herself as the former deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
“Because Fix Our Senate and other ‘pop-ups’ aren’t real nonprofits, they don’t file IRS Form 990 disclosures or publicly report their budgets, boards, or lobbying–making it impossible to trace their donors,” Ludwig explained. "Instead, all that money moves through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, itself created and managed by the for-profit company Arabella Advisors as a way for liberal mega-donors to quietly fund many of the Left’s most extreme causes.”
Ludwig said CRC has “traced about $10 million flowing from Arabella’s network funded by anonymous liberal donors to signatories on Fix Our Senate’s anti-filibuster coalition.”Prospects for the success of the Schumer/Fix Our Senate campaign to abolish or reform the Senate filibuster suffered a major blow on Jan. 4, when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters that he worries that “being open to a rules change that would create a nuclear option, it’s very, very difficult. It’s a heavy lift.”
With the Senate split 50-50, the loss of even one Democratic vote on a filibuster reform proposal would be fatal unless 11 Republicans would then be willing to join the effort, which is highly unlikely.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) also has spoken publicly against revising the filibuster process, and a senior congressional GOP source who asked not to be named told The Epoch Times on Jan. 3 that “at least a couple of other Democrat senators will oppose it if Schumer forces a vote.”