The Democratic Fundraiser Opening Doors for Big Tech– readsludge.com
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EXCERPT:
If Democrats win control of the House in the midterms, leaders of the moderate New Democrat Coalition expect their 114-member bloc, already the largest ideological faction among House Democrats, to grow and advance its artificial intelligence agenda. The consultant raising money for the coalition’s political arm also runs a corporate-backed nonprofit that brings executives from Anthropic, Nvidia, and Oracle into private discussions with congressional staff and advises a tech industry group that seeks to shape the party’s AI agenda.
Helen Milby is the longtime treasurer and top paid fundraising adviser to the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund, a PAC that supports the coalition’s candidates. She also runs GlobalWIN, a bipartisan nonprofit with partners including Anthropic and a16z that sponsors congressional travel, private dinners, and policy discussions that connect lawmakers with business executives. Milby also serves on the advisory board of the tech industry group Chamber of Progress, whose corporate backers include Google, OpenAI, and Coinbase and which says it wants to “shape the kind of Democrats who win in 2026.”
These overlapping roles give the tech industry channels into both the electoral operation working to expand the New Democrats and the private policy conversations that reach their staff and members. The Action Fund has endorsed 50 candidates this cycle, including 36 of the 46 in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue program of districts it aims to flip. Its website says it has raised and bundled more than $12 million this cycle for its candidates. “We expect that our numbers are going to swell in the next Congress,” Action Fund Chair Greg Stanton, an Arizona Democrat, told Roll Call this month.
