The Rainbow Conspiracy Part 12 here.

Electing Ben Jealous would be a disaster for Maryland and for the country. He is a far-left socialist, backed by out-and-out Marxists at every level of his campaign. The Republican Party needs to get serious about exposing Jealous, his stealth socialist financial angel Steve Phillips and the army of grass-roots communists now door-knocking across Maryland for their “progressive” hero.

If all goes to plan, Democratic Party “mover and shaker” and stealth socialist Steve Phillips will elect four state governors this year.

They are Stacey Abrams (Georgia), Andrew Gillum (Florida), David Garcia (Arizona) and Ben Jealous (Maryland).

Of the Steve Phillips quartet, David Garcia and Ben Jealous probably have the greatest chance of success. Jealous is certainly most closely in tune with maestro Phillips.

A little younger than Steve Phillips, Ben Jealous was a creation of the “civil rights” movement. His parents met in Baltimore. His white father, Fred Jealous, helped integrate lunch counters in the South. His black mother, Ann Todd, worked with the communist-saturated “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee” (SNCC).

When the couple married, they had to leave Maryland. Inter-racial marriage was still illegal in 17 US states at the time.

Jealous grew up in Pacific Grove, coastal Northern California, where, like Phillips, he became active in Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition as a 14 year-old voter registrant.

Jealous, whose son is named after Rev. Jackson, watched in 1989 as two African American followers of Jackson — Doug Wilder and Democratic Socialists of America member David Dinkins — won elections in Virginia and New York City.

From Mother Jones:

Candidates tend to shirk historical comparisons, but Jealous’ run is explicitly based on one: Bernie is 1988, and he is 1989.

‘Jackson’s campaign says you can make social movements matter with a campaign; Wilder and Dinkins showed you could make social movements stronger and win,’ he told me. ‘In each case they started out with the ashes of a failed presidential primary bid and would build a coalition that was much larger and much more inclusive—and that’s fundamentally what we’re doing here.

Jealous also spent a semester in Washington, DC, working as a page for Leon Panetta and as an intern for Sam Farr, two far-left Congressional Democrats from California.

By the early 1990s, Ben Jealous was studying at Columbia University in New York.

Once on the Columbia campus, a number of people inspired and mentored Jealous. A political science major, Jealous first talks of Professor Charles V. Hamilton, the WS Sayre Pro­fessor Emeritus of Government, and Carlton Long, his Con­temporary Civilization professor — his first black male teachers.

‘They taught political science, even political theory, in a way that was very relevant to the everyday lives of working families in this country. It was really politics from the bottom up. It was theory applied to the problems of everyday life, and it inspired me,’ Jealous says. He also was impressed by Hamilton’s role as one of the architects of David Dinkins’ New York City mayoral campaign and his co-authorship of Black Power: The Pol­itics of Liberation, a ‘revolutionary work [that] exposed the depths of systemic racism in this country and provided a radical political frame­work for reform.’

As president of Columbia’s radical Black Student Organization, Jealous led a series of campus protests. In December 1992, Jealous and a group of fellow demonstrators climbed through a window of Columbia’s Low Memorial Hall to disrupt a board of trustees meeting. The group, which included Jealous’ friend and comrade Eric Garcetti (now Mayor of Los Angeles), were trying to prevent Columbia, which had recently purchased the Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, from demolishing the building and replacing it with a biomedical-research complex. Columbia suspended Jealous for one semester as punishment. It was two years before he returned to the university.

During this period, Jealous also met another young student activist named Stacey Abrams.

Ben Jealous top right, Stacey Abrams bottom left

25 years ago Stacey Abrams and I met at a training for student organizers. She told me then she would be the first black governor of Georgia.

I told her I believed her.

Years later, Jealous would introduce Abrams to his mentor Steve Phillips, who would go on to fund both their political careers.

Jealous moved to Mississippi to take a student-organizing position with the AFL-CIO. He then joined the African-American newspaper, The Jackson Advocate, first as an investigative reporter and then managing editor.

Jealous returned to Columbia in the mid-1990s to complete his undergraduate degree in political science. Then, as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a Master’s degree in comparative social research from Oxford University in 1999.

From 1999-2002, Jealous served as executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the largest consortium of black community newspapers in the country.

That position was followed by three years as the director of the US human rights program at Amnesty International. This was followed by a stint at the San Francisco based Rosenberg Foundation, a leftist “70-year-old grant-making institution focused on economic inclusion and human rights for Californians.” Jealous still serves on the Rosenberg board, alongside, among others, Bill Lann Lee, former assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in the United States Department of Justice in the Clinton administration.

Jealous’ next career move was to take over leadership of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 2008, at the age of only 35. It was a controversial appointment, made possible with the intervention of another Marxist – longtime Democratic Socialists of America activist and NAACP selection committee member Julian Bond.

Julian Bond introduces new NAACP president Ben Jealous

“Ben’s selection would not have happened but not for Julian Bond,” says Wade Henderson, an NAACP veteran who served on the selection committee.

Jealous modernized the NAACP, placing the group at the fore of high-profile civil rights cases.

Ben Jealous NAACP

When Trayvon Martin was shot, he all but moved to Sanford, Florida, to fight stand-your-ground laws. But his biggest successes again involved unlikely coalitions. He signed on to a gender discrimination lawsuit against Walmart—typically outside the NAACP’s purview—and used that as leverage to convince the nation’s largest private employer to hire ex-convicts. In 2012 and 2013 in Maryland, where the organization was headquartered, the NAACP helped pass marriage equality, a DREAM Act, and the abolition of the death penalty—an intersectional triple play that Jealous rattles off to almost everyone he meets. “Marriage equality was not something that was necessarily easily solved, particularly in an organization where the clergy plays an important role in the leadership,” Henderson says. “Ben used personal capital to make that happen.”

Jealous led the NAACP during its largest and most successful voter registration drive in 2012 when the association registered over 360,000 African Americans, nationwide.

Just prior to the NAACP position, Jealous formed his partnership with Steve Phillips. They had much in common. Both grew up hearing tales of the civil rights era, both worked in Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and both were former student activists. Phillips led the Black Student Union at Stanford, while Jealous led the Black Student Organization at Colombia. The duo would have drinks at the San Francisco Ferry Building on the last Wednesday of every month.

The pairing would prove disastrous for America.

In 2007 and 2008, Steve Phillips and Ben Jealous worked with Phillips’ old student comrade and election genius, Andy Wong, to implement an 18-state initiative called Vote Hope that “increased communities of color participation in state primaries and the federal general election in 2008.” Phillips, Ben Jealous and Andy Wong all served together on the board of Vote Hope sister organization PowerPAC.org.

From PowerPAC.org exective summary 2008

According to Steve Phillips:

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.

Jealous, Phillips and Wong played a major role in getting Obama elected. Then they helped staff his administration with their far-left comrades. Then they ran propaganda campaigns for him.

“Vote Hope” morphed into PAC+, then PowerPAC+, “a political action committee formed in 2012 to build the political power of America’s multiracial majority.”

PowerPAC+’s sister organization PowerPAC.org is committed to Ben Jealous’ gubernatorial campaign. It works by “researching where votes of color can make a difference in races, how demographic trends can affect change in public policy and leadership, and how civic engagement methodologies can change how campaigns are run.”

Our work has spanned the nationwide (support for Barack Obama and civic engagement in 18 states in the 2007-2008 cycle) to the small (unseating 18-year conservative incumbents in city races in San Bernardino, CA). Most recently we worked with grassroots activists in Georgia to encourage African American voters to turn out in the CD-6 race in Georgia and to build support for Stacey Abrams’ race for Governor there. As we move forward, we will deepen our work in California as well as launching a multi-state initiative to support gubernatorial candidates of color in GA (Stacey Abrams), MD (Benjamin Jealous), AZ (David Garcia), CA (John Chiang), and FL (Andrew Gillum).

And by helping with small donor fundraising.

Additionally, we are in the process of building a fundraising engine to drive donations by average citizens in low dollar amounts. We think that there is power in crowd-sourcing the support of our communities of color. The voice of the growing economic power of the communities of color must be heard and their power felt.

Steve Phillips and his mega-rich friends take care of the big money.

Several wealthy leftists, mainly from California, contributed $600,000 to two of four political action committees supporting Ben Jealous in the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial primary.

This, together with nearly $900,000 from labor unions, gave the Jealous campaign a significant financial edge over most of his five main Democratic primary rivals.

According to the Washington Post:

The four PACs, which are barred by law from coordinating with the Jealous campaign, are using the money for television and radio advertising, mailers, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts.

PACs affiliated with Working Families Party, Progressive Maryland and Our Revolution – Maryland say they are spending about $500,000 to boost Jealous.

The fourth entity is a super PAC called Maryland Together We Rise, which is spending more than $1 million. It is getting money from labor groups and five of the wealthy individuals; the sixth person contributed to Progressive Maryland.

Most of the big individual contributors to Maryland Together We Rise are well-known donors from Northern California.

The largest single donor, with contributions totaling $250,000, was Susan Sandler. She and husband, Steve Phillips, founded the Sandler Phillips Center, which “advises donors to progressive politicians on how to maximize the impact of their contributions…”

A PAC disclosure initially reporting that a $100,000 contribution came from Phillips was later amended to say that it came from Sandler.

Sandler contributed to the pro-Jealous PAC because Jealous “has been a national social justice leader and anti-poverty crusader for decades,” said Emi Gusukuma, the center’s executive vice president.

Gusukuma said Sandler also liked Jealous’s work advocating in Maryland and elsewhere on behalf of “the Dream Act, marriage equality and ending the death penalty,” as well as increasing voter participation among racial minorities.

Another big donor to Maryland Together We Rise was Quinn Delaney, founder of the San Fancisco based Akonadi Foundation, which she and her husband launched “as an outgrowth of their commitment to racial justice.”

Another donor, Mitch Kapor, is managing partner of the venture capital firm Kapor Capital, where Jealous is also a partner.

Kapor, founder of the Lotus computer software company, said it’s rare for him to give money to a PAC because, in general, “Politics is broken and the funding is broken.” He made an exception in this case, donating $50,000 to the pro-Jealous PAC, because of his personal familiarity with Jealous and because (Steve) Phillips, a friend, asked him to do so.

Mitch Kapor’s leftist investment firm is a great cover for Ben Jealous’ far-left outlook.

“He’s an incredibly quick study,” said Mitch Kapor, the firm’s founder. “He has the leadership experience, he had the organizational experience, he knows the issues. What he hadn’t done previously is invest in for-profit startups.” His role as an investor for Kapor has also provided Jealous with one of his favorite lines, that Republicans will “call me a socialist, but I’m a venture capitalist.”

In 2011, two young Freedom Road Socialist Organization-linked radicals, Steve Williams and N’Tanya Lee, embarked on a nationwide, 16-month study of the American left. They called it the Ear to the Ground Project. The pair interviewed more than 150 activists, mostly from the orbit of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

The result was a new nationwide socialist grouping, closely allied to Freedom Road, called LeftRoots.

As this phase of the Ear to the Ground comes to a close, we have decided to prioritize one particular area of the work— to create a vehicle for leftists engaged in social movements to come together, to answer the hard questions of the day, while building community with one another. We’re calling this project LeftRoots, and with comrades in the Bay Area and across the country, we hope to contribute to something that we think is absolutely critical— reigniting an engaged and engaging Left.

Financial sponsors of the 16-month socialist odyssey that produced LeftRoots included several of Ben Jealous’ financial backers: including Quinn Delaney, Steve Phillips and Susan Sandler, and Mitch Kapor, through his Mitchell Kapor Foundation.

Just like the early Obama days, much of Ben Jealous’ campaign funding comes from Steve Phillips and his rich leftist.

LeftRoots incidentally is currently working with Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism in the Left Inside/Outside Project, an ambitious and fast unfolding program to take over the Democratic Party.

Martin Randolph serves as the Treasurer of Maryland Together We Rise, the main PAC set up to help Benjamin Jealous win the governorship of Maryland.

Randolph is the former Senior Vice President for Campaigns at the NAACP, Director of Organizing and Politics at the Center for Community Change, Western Regional Political Director of SEIU, Southern California Field Director of the AFL-CIO Labor ’98 Campaign and National Executive Director of Project Vote. He is a longtime friend and supporter of the Midwest Academy, the Democratic Socialists of America led Alinskyite training school based in Chicago.

Randolph is a longtime Jealous associate from the NAACP/Obama campaign days. According to Steve Phillips:

The NAACP’s voter registration and mobilization operation (ably led by stellar organizer Marvin Randolph, one of Ben’s best hires) registered 374,553 people in 2008, with 100,000 of those new registrations coming in Florida. Obama won re-election in Florida by 74,309 votes…

He also serves as Director of community based electoral initiatives at Steve Phillips’ Sandler Phillips Center and as CEO and President of the Southern Elections Fund, under board members Andy Wong, Steve Phillips and Ben Jealous.

The Southern Elections Fund was originally established in 1969 by Jealous’ old mentor Julian Bond to help elect local and state level candidates for office in the south.

In the early 1970’s, the SEF contributed campaign funds and technical advice to hundreds of candidates, many of whom were elected to office as part of a grassroots process that changed the nature and color of Southern politics.

In 2014, shortly before his death, Bond and Ben Jealous resurrected the organization in order to “combat voter suppression and accelerate the electoral impact of the south’s rapidly changing demographics.”

The modern-day Southern Elections Fund will work in the South to expand the electorate, develop new leaders of color, and ensure that enhanced electoral power brings progressive change.

That’s where the money comes from. Most of the on the ground work for Ben Jealous’ Maryland campaign comes out of the Bernie Sanders movement/Democratic Socialists of America.

Our Revolution

Ben Jealous serves as a bridge between the Phillips and Sanders wings of the Democratic Party. Fully committed to the Phillips agenda, Jealous served, until recently, on the board of the nationwide 100,000-strong Our Revolution.

Democratic Socialists of America controls Our Revolution all over the country. Some DSA branches simply double as the local Our Revolution branch.

David Duhalde is the “Senior Electoral Manager” at Our Revolution national office. He was previously Deputy Director of Democratic Socialists of America.

Ben Jealous addressed the very first meeting of Our Revolution – Maryland April 23, 2017, at the Tommy Douglas Conference Center, Silver Spring. Speaking alongside him were fellow Our Revolution board members Larry Cohen (DSA supporter) and Nina Turner (former PowerPAC+ endorsee), former Nevada State Assembly member and PowerPAC+ endorsee Lucy Flores and Massachusetts State Representative and DSA member Mike Connolly.

Cohen, Turner, Connolly, Flores, Jealous

Our Revolution – Maryland endorsed Ben Jealous and poured everything they could into Jealous’ primary campaign. All six branches mobilized – led by DSA comrades and supporters such as Paul Baicich, Randy Barber, Cliff Walker Green, Jared Schablein, Harry Baker and Ben Ross.

Our Revolution – Maryland Chairman Bob Muehlenkamp (married to AFL-CIO political director and former Communist Party youth activist Karen Ackerman) boasted:

“This election cycle, Our Revolution – Maryland’s 8,000 members endorsed 160 deeply progressive, passionate citizens running for every office in the state on the issues that matter to working families…For months, they have worked day and night talking to their neighbors about the importance of embracing progressive policies and changing the political landscape in Maryland. We knew we’d be successful on primary night, and Ben Jealous’ primary win provided confirmation that we are on the right path.”

Ben Jealous was also endorsed by another leftist powerhouse in the Old Line State, Progressive Maryland – yet another Democratic Socialists of America front group.

The Washington Socialist July 2018, carried a piece by Progressive Maryland Executive Director and Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America member Larry Stafford, Jr.:

[Tuesday] night, a Progressive earthquake shook Maryland’s establishment politics to their core. Ben Jealous’s primary victory puts Maryland within striking distance of the progressive governor we deserve and need. His victory marks the ascendance of a movement that’s grounded in progressive values, led by women and people of color, to shape a new direction for politics that breathes new life into the electoral system, in our state and beyond.

At Progressive Maryland, we’ve been on board with Ben from the start – and he with us. Back in December, he let us know where he stands on key issues: the $15 minimum wage, workers’ right to organize, women’s rights and Medicare for All. ..Ben’s primary victory represents a shift in the balance of power in Maryland politics and within the Democratic Party away from the old, corporate consensus that the only kind of change that’s possible is incremental. He is bold, and so are we.

It also shows that the path forward for progressive values and working people’s values is through organizing and creating meaningful alliances between populist progressive, white constituency groups and progressive people of color, who want to vote for people who knows the issues of our communities and who will put forward bold solutions that meet the needs of our constituency…

We’re clearly witnessing a changing of the guard, especially in the Maryland General Assembly, where the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Senate Finance Chair, Senate Pro-Tem and Senate Health and chair of the Environmental Affairs Committee were all unseated by progressive challengers…

Ben has a bold vision, one that’s right for Maryland. Onwards to victory, Ben. You demonstrate when you really tap into our state’s progressive electorate, you can win with progressive ideas: go bold.

Jealous’ plan is to run as an overt progressive, to generate enough enthusiasm from the Democratic base to overcome first his Democratic opponents and then the Republican incumbent Larry Hogan.

“We turn out the unlikely voters, we will wallop Hogan…I’m in this to wallop Hogan,” says Jealous. So far he’s halfway there.

Maryland has a 45 percent white voting age population, 45 percent African-American voting age population and 10 percent other races. Ben Jealous “believes his background and civil rights record could attract a following similar to the Rainbow Coalition that was amassed during the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign…

“We’re modeling our campaign after Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition—and also on Obama’s 2008 campaign,” Jealous says.

Barack Obama, Ben Jealous circa 2008

Electing Ben Jealous would be a disaster for Maryland and for the country. He is a far-left socialist, backed at every level of his campaign by out-and-out Marxists. The Republican Party needs to get serious about exposing Jealous, his stealth socialist financial angel Steve Phillips and the army of grass-roots crypto-communists now door-knocking across Maryland for their “progressive” hero.

Look for Part 14 coming soon: Stealth Socialist Steve Phillips Targets Arizona