WASHINGTON — It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump, but now the resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.
The jockeying between groups, donors, and operatives for cash and turf is occurring mostly behind the scenes.
But it has grown acrimonious at times, with upstarts complaining that they are being boxed out by a liberal establishment that they accuse of enabling the sort of Democratic timidity that paved the way for the Trump presidency.
The tug of war — more than the lingering squabbles between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — foreshadows a once-in-a-generation reorganization of the American left that could dictate the tactics and ideology of the Democratic Party for years to come.
If the newcomers prevail, they could pull the party further to the left, leading it to embrace policy positions like those advocated by Sanders, including single-payer health care and free tuition at public colleges.
The upending of the left comes amid a broader realignment in American politics, with the Republican Party establishment also contending with a rising rebellion, driven by pro-Trump populists.
Just as the new forces on the right are threatening primary challenges to establishment Republicans, some groups on the left have begun talking about targeting Democratic incumbents in the 2018 elections.
Entrenched Democratic groups are facing growing questions about the return on the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent over the years.
Groups affiliated with Clinton “spent so much money based on a bad strategy in this last cycle that they should step aside and let others lead in this moment,’’ said Quentin James, founder of a political committee called the Collective PAC that supports African-American candidates.
James’s committee is among more than three dozen outfits that have either started or reconfigured themselves since the election to try to harness the surge in anti-Trump activism.
In addition to political committees, grass-roots mobilization nonprofits and legal watchdog groups, there are for-profit companies providing technological help to the new groups — essentially forming a new liberal ecosystem outside the confines of the Democratic Party.
While the new groups gained early traction mostly on the strength of grass-roots volunteers and small donations — and with relatively meager overall budgets — they are beginning to attract attention from the left’s most generous benefactors.
“We’re in a disruptive period, and when we get through it, the progressive infrastructure landscape may look different,’’ said Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberals who donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups.
“There may be groups that have been around that don’t rise to the challenge, and there may be some new groups that do rise to the challenge, while others fade away,’’ LaMarche said.
The Democracy Alliance has helped shape the institutional left, steering more than $600 million since its inception in 2005 to a portfolio of carefully selected groups, including pillars of the Clinton-aligned establishment like the think tank Center for American Progress, the media watchdog Media Matters and the centrist policy group Third Way.
But this year, the Democracy Alliance hired Archana Sahgal, a former Obama White House official, to help the new anti-Trump groups, and it suspended its intensive vetting and approval process to recommend donations to a host of groups created since last fall’s election.
The Democracy Alliance distributed a “resistance map’’ to donors in July, including new groups focused on turning anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left, and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible.
Perhaps no group epitomizes the differences between the legacy left and the grass-roots resistance like Indivisible.
Started as a Google document detailing techniques for opposing the Republican agenda under Trump, the group now has a mostly Washington-based staff of about 40 people, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country.
The national Indivisible hub, which consists of a pair of nonprofit groups, has raised nearly $6 million since its start, primarily through small-dollar donations made through its website.
Yet Indivisible has also received funding from tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.
And an advocacy group funded by billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, a founder of the Democracy Alliance and one of the most influential donors on the left, is considering a donation in the low six figures to Indivisible.
Soros has already donated to a host of nonprofit groups playing key roles in the anti-Trump movement, including the Center for Community Change, Color of Change, and Local Progress.
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