Billionaires like James Murdoch, Reid Hoffman and others are throwing their weight behind a new centrist push inside the Democratic Party.
At the heart of this effort is WelcomeFest, a Washington gathering aimed at energizing moderate voices and building a structured political movement to counterbalance the party's progressive wing.
What Happened: WelcomeFest, billed as the largest public gathering of centrist Democrats, kicked off with a clear mission: to organize, energize, and empower the party's moderate wing, the Salon reports.
The initiative is led by the Welcome Party, whose co-founder, Lauren Harper Pope, described the gathering as an attempt to reflect on the 2024 cycle's overperforming Democrats and define "what it means to be a partisan centrist."
Speakers included elected officials like Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), alongside political commentators such as Adam Jentleson, Derek Thompson, and Matt Yglesias.
Unlike left-leaning groups that often challenge incumbents in safe districts, the Welcome Party plans to support centrist candidates in competitive areas where progressives may struggle to win general elections. Harper Pope emphasized that the group's mission is to model itself on progressive organizing strategies while targeting a different voter base.
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Why It Matters: This centrist movement is being bankrolled by a select group of influential donors. James and Kathryn Murdoch, son and daughter-in-law of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, contributed $2.5 million to the Welcome PAC in 2024.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, gave $671,000. Samuel Walton, grandson of Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) founder Samuel Walton, donated $825,000. Joshua Bekenstein, a co-chairman of Bain Capital, added another $375,000 alongside his wife.
While progressive groups like Justice Democrats boast tens of thousands of grassroots donors, Welcome PAC’s funding so far has relied on a much smaller pool of wealthy backers.
The goal, according to Harper Pope, is to craft a message that resonates with the Democratic base, nearly half of whom, according to a Gallup survey, prefer the party move closer to the center.
"We want to be representative of the party overall," she said. "If the centrist faction of the Democratic Party can be strong, robust and vibrant, it can help us not only win more elections but also help us have the liberal democracy we aspire to."
Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a prominent figure within the left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party, is currently touring with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), who recently criticized Democrats for not having "much of a message for working people, other than to say Trump is dangerous," and wanting to maintain the status-quo.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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