Astroturf Warning: TPP Critics Call Out Fake 'Progressive' Group Pushing Corporate Trade Agenda

[Segami]

29. Not sure

about their initial startup ' seed-funding'....but they were eventually hired on as "the super PAC’s (Ready for Hillary) chief consultant" that "ultimately raised $15 million, according to a spokesman".....

A South Dakotan who served as field director for Senator Tom Daschle’s 2004 reelection, in which the minority leader was deposed by John Thune, Stewart became a linchpin of the Obama political apparatus: field director for the 2008 Iowa caucuses; battleground states director for the 2012 reelection. In between, Stewart served as founding director of Organizing for America, the Obama campaign-in-exile at the Democratic National Committee. In 2013, along with fellow Obama field hands Jeremy Bird and Marlon Marshall, Stewart launched 270 Strategies. Arguably the first of the truly new-wave political firms, 270 markets itself to clients inside and outside of electoral politics as a general consultancy equally versed in collecting petition signatures and targeting digital ads.

One of its highest-profile clients has been Ready for Hillary, a super PAC founded in early 2013 as a vessel to nudge Clinton into another presidential race. The group was initially viewed suspiciously by Clinton allies, uncertain what purpose a grassroots freelance effort could serve three-and-a-half years before election day in 2016. But the hiring later that year of Stewart’s 270 Strategies as the super PAC’s chief consultant was a purposeful signal to donors that the group’s aims and methods were serious, and that it was worth an investment. (It ultimately raised $15 million, according to a spokesman.) Stewart’s job assignment was simple: Help build a list of supporters that Clinton’s staff could inherit for their use whenever she became a candidate.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2015-04-15/meet-the-21st-century-political-alchemist-who-s-been-data-mining-for-hillary-for-the-past-two-years