The Rainbow Conspiracy Part 4: Steve Phillips’s PowerPAC+ – Marxist Money Machine for the ‘New American Majority’

The Rainbow Conspiracy Part 3 here.

With access to huge wealth through his marriage to Susan Sandler (daughter of billionaire leftist donors Herb and Marion Sandler), Steve Phillips has been able to elect stealth socialist  “candidates of color” all over the country.

San Francisco lawyer Steve Phillips is one the most influential, and from a Constitutional point of view, one of the most dangerous political operatives in the country today.

A “former” Marxist-Leninist, once close to the pro-China League of Revolutionary Struggle, and a leader of its successor organization Unity Organizing Committee, Phillips is using Maoist-style racial politics to take over the Democratic Party. With access to huge wealth through his marriage to Susan Sandler (daughter of billionaire leftist donors Herb and Marion Sandler), Steve Phillips has been able to elect stealth socialist “candidates of color” all over the country. He and his team have already chosen their favored Presidential candidates for 2020. In the meantime, they are focused on taking back the House for the Democrats in 2018, to completely neutralize the Trump Presidency.

Phillips also used his considerable influence to “salt” the Obama White House with several dozen operatives of his choosing.

Steve Phillips’ main vehicle for funding and electing his stable of candidates until recent times was PowerPAC+.

From the PowerPAC+ website:

Originally called PAC+, PowerPAC+ is a political action committee formed in 2012 to build the political power of America’s multiracial majority. It emerged from the groundbreaking work of Vote Hope in 2007-08. At that time, then-Senator Barack Obama was assembling his Presidential campaign and California’s primary moved from June to a more influential month, February. “We created Vote Hope, the first super-PAC aimed at supporting Barack Obama’s bid for president. Vote Hope was the largest independent effort in the nation to increase voter turnout in communities of color. It drew in $10 million, and expanded to 18 states during the primary season”.

After President Obama’s election, “we set up a DC office and worked closely with the administration’s personnel staff” to build a Diversity Talent Bank that the White House used to identify and hire more than 60 people including Associate Attorney General Tony West. During that same period, many in our network became leaders in non-profits, philanthropy, and government such as Vote Hope fundraiser and former board member Benjamin Jealous who became NAACP president”.

In 2009, “we convened” the leadership of the largest civil rights groups in the country and helped execute a media campaign targeting senators who were wavering on the health care reform bill. That effort led to the creation of a coalition of labor, civil rights, and progressive groups who conducted the One Nation Working Together 10/2/10 March on Washington.

Since then, PowerPAC+ has consulted with the leadership of the Democratic Party, organizations and campaigns about how to best build support in the communities of color.

Thanks to our many donors, we have been able to support some of the most exciting leaders to emerge in modern politics. From Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard – a two-time veteran and first Samoan in Congress, to Congressman Mark Takano – the first non-white openly gay member of Congress, to Ohio Minority Whip Nina Turner – who is standing up for voting rights in this important swing state – our group of social justice champions represent an exciting future for American politics.

Senator Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Senator Kamala Harris (California), Senator Cory Booker (New Jersey), Texas Congressman Mark Veasy and California Congressman Pete Aguilar are among the many new American leaders PowerPAC+ has elected on your “behalf.”

Watch this 2012 PowerPAC+ promotional video if you still have doubts about Steve Phillips’s influence.

While open and public in many ways, PowerPAC+ is still a stealth operation. Most PowerPAC+ people are covert Marxists. As are most of the candidates they support. Steve Phillips made sure that only trusted friends would serve in the PowerPAC+ leadership. Most of his inner circle  were old Stanford University comrades, or fellow California student radicals. The “Stanford Mafia” as they sometimes jokingly call themselves.

PowerPAC+’s key leaders include:

• Aimee Allison, Senior Vice President PowerPAC+. A Stanford graduate, Amy Allison and Steve Phillips knew each other well, even traveling to Alabama together in 1988. In 1989, Aimee Allison, served on the Stanford Council of Presidents (Stanford’s student government leadership body), with Chin-Chin Chen, David Brown and Ingrid Nava (a current PowerPAC+ board member). All were elected on the “Slate of the Times” ticket, which was supported by the League of Revolutionary Struggle-aligned “Peoples Platform.” Allison, then an Army Reserve combat medic, and active in Stanford University’s Ujamoa, African-American center, was also interviewed in the Unity Organizing Committee’s Unity of February 18, 1991, regarding conscientious objection to the Gulf War. Allison was later a director at the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women and led several sessions at the United Nations Commission on the status of women NGO conference.

• Julie Martinez Ortega, Senior Advisor to and former President of PowerPAC+. She is also a Stanford University graduate and an old Steve Phillips comrade. Martinez was active in the Stanford Latino Students Alliance and the radical “let’s return the Southwest to Mexico” group MEChA, which at Stanford was heavily infiltrated by the League of Revolutionary Struggle. Like Aimee Allison, she was also active in student politics, supported by the radical Peoples Platform. Julie Martinez went on to work on Capitol Hill as a Special Assistant to far left California Senator Alan Cranston. Dr. Martinez Ortega was voted one of Top 50 Influencers in US Politics by Campaigns and Elections Magazine for her work on the 2014 first ever outside audit of Democratic Party spending. She has undertaken “landmark research for numerous leading national foundations, major donors, the federal government and labor unions on a variety of issues, including mapping the new electorate, targeting and modeling progressive voters, protection and enhancement of workers’ rights, healthcare access, quality and equity, and economic policies that mitigate income inequality.” She served as Senior Adviser to the mega-influential, ultra-left Democracy Alliance on “research and data about voter behavior and has advised its Latino Engagement Fund as it developed a research agenda and quantitative metrics for the program work conducted by its grantees.”

POWERPAC+’s sister organization, PowerPac.org, is also run by Phillips’ old student radical comrades.

• Andy Wong is President of PowerPAC.org, POWERPAC+’s sister organization. He also serves on the PowerPAC+ board. Wong wasn’t educated at Stanford (he studied electrical engineering in Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley and Applied Math at San Francisco State University), but he worked very closely with Steve Phillips on radical student politics. Andy Wong was an active member of Unity Organizing Committee’s Student Unity Network. He worked on the Unity newspaper and in May 1992, guest-edited the paper with two current PowerPAC+ board members: Stacey Leyton and Ingrid Nava. Wong began his political career by winning a series of student government elections at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford. He went on to run city and county campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area, electing “people of color and gay community activists to Community College Board, BART Board, School Board and the Board of Supervisors.” Since then, he has “helped flip the most red to blue Congressional races for one state (California) and continues to run PowerPAC+’s support of candidates of color around the country.”
• Lisa Le, PowerPac.org Controller, was active in the Asia Pacific Students Union and was interviewed in that capacity in the League of Revolutionary Struggle’s Unity of April 30, 1989 issue.

Steve Phillips, Julie Marinez Ortega, Andy Wong and Lisa Le were all key organizers of the 1987 student March on Sacramento that drew 8,000 people to the state capitol to “support expanded educational opportunities for students of color.”

PowerPAC+’s board of directors is also clearly descended from the League of Revolutionary Struggle, its successor Unity Organizing Committee, Stanford University and radical student politics. The board is a who’s who of prominent non-profit execs, legal professionals, well-connected Democratic Party activists and media strategists, and particularly minority voter registration and “Get Out The Vote” experts. Almost all are from far left backgrounds.

Notable board members have included:

• Stacey Abrams, State Representative from Georgia, House Minority Leader for the Georgia General Assembly. Democratic candidate for Governor of Georgia.

• Greg Akili, a Senior Adviser to the Black Workers Center, Project Coordinator at Corporate Accountability International. Previously SEIU Local 1000, Obama for America, California State Assembly. Early member of Democratic Socialists of America.
• Iris Archuleta, CEO of Emerald Consulting, Antioch California. Formerly active at Stanford University.
• Keith Archuleta, Chair Antioch Economic Development Commission. Currently serves on Antioch Redevelopment Oversight Board, East County Business-Education Alliance Board and CSU Gateways East Bay STEM Network Steering Committee. Formerly active in the Stanford University Black Students Union. Contributor to the League of Revolutionary Struggle’s Unity newspaper and a member of the Unity Organizing Committee.
• Patricia Barrera, Director of Legislative Affairs & Community Advocacy at Alameda County Medical Center. Formerly a Stanford University MEChA leader with fellow PowerPAC+ board member Gina Hernandez.
• Ludovic Blain, former Special Projects Director of the Center for Social Inclusion, where he started StopDogWhistleRacism.com, tracking racism in the 2008 election cycle. Blain has run the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign and directed national felon voting rights and election day registration campaigns at far left non-profit Demos. Blain has written for the Democratic Socialists of America magazine, Democratic Left.
• Sherry Broder, founder and Executive Director of the Jon Van Dyke Institute of International Law and Justice which has sponsored symposiums, workshops and publications on International Ocean Law, International Environmental Law, Human Rights and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the East-West Center, in Hawaii.

• Gregory Cendana, Executive Director of Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance at the AFL-CIO. Former President of the United States Students Association.
• Subodh Chandra, founding and managing partner of The Chandra Law Firm, LLC, Cleveland, Ohio. Chandra served as Director of Law of the City of Cleveland, a billion-dollar corporation. He also sometimes served as the city’s acting mayor. In 1988, Chandra was co-chair of the Stanford Democrats. He graduated with honors and distinction from Stanford University, which awarded him the John Gardner Fellowship to work with Ohio Governor Dick Celeste,
• Anathea Chino, served as an Investment Adviser at the Democracy Alliance and prior to that, she was the Development Director at NARAL New Mexico and a Regional Field Director for the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of New Mexico. She is also a co-founder of Indigenous Women Rise and a senior adviser to a Women Donors Network-funded reflective democracy project called Advance Native Political Leaders.
• Maria Echaveste, currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a co-founder of the Nueva Vista Group, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., that works with nonprofit organizations, associations and corporations on such issues as immigration, healthcare, telecommunications, labor and finances. Her clients include AOL, Time Warner and the Rockefeller Foundation. From 1998 to 2001, Echaveste served as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton. Echaveste managed President Clinton’s domestic policy initiatives on education, civil rights and immigration. At Stanford University in the mid-1970s, Echaveste was a leader of MECHhA and in a small group called “Students for Equity,” an “umbrella organization for all minorities.” This group was led by Cuba-visiting Black Student Union leader Charles Ogletree. In 1991, Harvard Law Professor Ogletree would find fame as Anita  Hill’s lawyer, leading the charge against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Ogletree also claims to have mentored both Michelle Obama and Barack Obama during their respective periods at Harvard. Barack Obama participated in Ogletree’s Saturday School Program, which were designed to “expose minority students, in particular, to critical issues in the study of law.” According to Ogletree, the Obama’s have called on him for advice since that time. In September 2014, President Barack Obama  nominated Maria Echaveste to become the US Ambassador to Mexico, but she withdrew her name from consideration.

• Marcelo Gaete, president of the board of Mi Familia Vota. He serves as Vice President of Public and Government Affairs with Entravision Communications Corporation, manages the company’s community and government relations, works with national organizations and serves as a spokesperson for the organization. Entravision Communications Corporation is the second largest Spanish-language media company in the U.S.
• Kim Geron, writes about “public policy issues including labor and immigration, and racial politics.” His latest book is entitled, The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power. Former member of the Unity Organizing Committee.
• Andrew Gillum, Mayor of Tallahasse Florida. Currently running to secure the Democratic Party nomination in the Florida gubernatorial  race.
• Hans Goff, Director of Member Engagement and Political Strategy at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Former CEO of Voting Works, LLC.
• Maria Gomez, serves on the National Council of La Raza, General Board of Directors.
• Miguel Gonzalez, Spokesperson, National Education Association.
• Gina Hernandez, is Director of Arts, Stanford University. Hernandez is a former Stanford MEChA leader and was active in the League of Revolutionary Struggle’s Peoples Platform. She also served on the student desk of the Unity newspaper. In 1991, Gina Hernandez and fellow PowerPAC+ board member Stacey Leyton, were editors of Unity’s Spring student supplement.
• N’Tanya Lee, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. Closely linked to to another League of Revolutionary Struggle successor group Freedom Road Socialists Organization. She was commissioned by Steve Phillips to do a year-long study which resulted in the formation of a nationwide activist network, LeftRoots
• Stacey Leyton – San Francisco, CA Partner at Altshuler Berzon LLP. Leyton served as a law clerk to Clinton-appointed Associate Justice Stephen Breyer (another Stanford alumnus) of the United States Supreme Court, Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Susan Illston of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In 2011, Leyton was named a “California Lawyer of the Year” by California Lawyer Magazine for her work in a case challenging cutbacks to the California program providing in-home care to Medicaid recipients. She has been selected by the Northern California Super Lawyers 2013-2015 as a Benchmark Plaintiff California Local Litigation Star 2012-2015 and Benchmark Plaintiff Top 150 Women in Litigation in 2013. Stacey Leyton was extremely close to the League of Revolutionary Struggle at Stanford University. She was chairperson of the LRS’ student electoral front, the Peoples Platform. She was also active in Maoist-aligned Stanford Out of South Africa, the Rainbow Agenda and was a co-founder of the California Alliance of Progressive Student Activists. In December 1990, Leyton made a trip to Cuba for a meeting of the Soviet-controlled International Union of Students and the Federation of University Students in Cuba. She was also treated to a three-hour speech by Fidel Castro. In 1992, Stacey Leyton was vice president of the United States Students  Association.

• Ingrid Nava, Associate General Counsel at SEIU Local 32BJ, New York. She previously worked at Northeastern University, SEIU Local 615, Greater Boston. Nava was active in MEChA and the Peoples Platform at Stanford University. Nava was also active in the Unity Organizing Committee.
• Sergio Lopez, Director of Latino Programming, Familia es Familia | Freedom to Marry.
• Jennifer Pae, Director of FairVote California. Pae “continues to travel around the country with Camp Wellstone, New American Leaders Project, and APIA Vote, training hundreds of activists to run effective and strategic campaigns.” Pae was Project Director for PowerPAC+, a founding staff member of 18MillionRising.org and Project Manager for Voter Service at the League of Women Voters of California, where she worked to “engage young people, women, and people of color in the political process.”
• Solomon Rivera, Deputy Chief of Staff to Los Angeles Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass. For many years Bass was an active supporter of another 1980s Maoist group Line of March. She has visited Cuba several times.
• Catalina Ruiz-Healy, Vice President, Rappaport Family Foundation.
• Renee Saucedo, Organizer & Attorney at La Raza Centro Legal, San Francisco. Saucedo has worked as a staff attorney at La Raza Centro Legal, the SF Day Labor Program and as the Executive Director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights. She helped create the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commission and served as its first Chair for four years. Saucedo helped “spearhead almost every immigrant-related legislation or policy in the city, from housing subsidies to non-citizens in Public Housing to having San Francisco be declared an ‘INS Raid-free Zone.'” Saucedo was a panelist at the 2002 Committees of Correspondence National Conference and Convention at San Francisco State University. This organization was formed mainly by former Communist Party USA activists, former Trotsyists and ex-League of Revolutionary Struggle and Line of March Maoists.
• Gloria Totten, President of Progressive Majority, a “national multi-issue organization dedicated to electing progressive champions at the state and local levels.” She also developed what is now the “most comprehensive national progressive candidate recruitment program in the country. Under Gloria’s leadership, Progressive Majority has established permanent state offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. She has also worked to establish the Racial Justice Campaign, a Progressive Majority program to prioritize the election of candidates of color.”
• Lauren Veasey, Program Director of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, an activist traing school, closely linked to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Former Stanford University student activist.
• Rebecca Wasserman, Deputy Director of Government Relations at SEIU. Former Deputy Director of Government Affairs with the anti-Israel organization, J Street.
• Norman Yee, San Francisco Board of Education President.
• Crystal Zermeno, a former Stanford University MEChA leader. Zermeno has served in various capacities with the “let’s turn Texas blue” Texas Organizing Project, developing “campaign strategy, fundraising and, as Director of Electoral Strategy, developing and implementing TOP’s local and statewide electoral program.” Zermeno has also worked as staff on a number of different political campaigns including a successful State Assembly race in Alameda County, California and the SEIU New Mexico effort in Albuquerque and Las Cruces to elect President Obama. Zermeno worked with PowerPAC.org as their Director of Operations, conducting a statewide mapping of California to assess priority geographies for investment in electoral work with the expressed goal of “improving participation of communities of color in the electoral process.”

Steve Phillips’ goal is to use America’s minorities to create a “permanent progressive majority,” in other words, a “one-party state.” Given his own Marxist-Leninist history and the similar backgrounds of most of his team, we can guess what kind of state that might be.

Would a socialist America resemble Norway or Sweden, as some naive conservatives still seem to think? Or will it more closely imitate Venezuela or Cuba?

Steve Phillips didn’t originate his ideas. He modified and updated them to suit the technology and the times. In the next installment, I’ll expose the origins of Steve Phillips’ movement for a “New American Majority.”

Look for Part 5 coming soon: “Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition – Marxist/Maoist Model for Modern Democrats.”

A book entitled “The Rainbow Conspiracy” will be released in October 2018.