Donations from Soros and Hoffman accounted for 70% of Wikler’s funds in DNC chair race
Ben Wikler’s campaign to lead the Democratic National Committee has been largely funded by Democratic megadonors Reid Hoffman and George Soros, according to campaign finance filings Wikler filed hours before Democrats will cast their votes for the next DNC chairman.
Hoffman, a former associate of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, contributed $250,000 to Wikler’s political action committee, Forward PAC, on Dec. 4, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Soros’s Democracy PAC gave $250,000 to Wikler’s committee on Dec. 2, records show.
Those contributions account for nearly 70 percent of the campaign funds to Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic party.
The disclosure comes just hours before 448 Democratic National Committee members cast their votes at a meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, to elect the next party leader. Wikler, 43, is considered a frontrunner in the race alongside Ken Martin, the head of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Wikler’s ties to Democratic party megadonors have already proved a liability, though it was not clear until now just how heavily he relied on them for his campaign. Jeff Weaver, the former campaign manager for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, has publicly opposed Wikler because of his affiliation with Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. Martin, the Minnesota Democratic Party leader, has called out Wikler during several DNC events over his relationship with Hoffman.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, another DNC candidate, called on Wikler and others to disclose their campaign donors last week, though all declined to do so, Politico reported.
Liberal Democrats’ beef with Hoffman has little to do with the billionaire’s well-established ties to Jeffrey Epstein or his funding for deceptive campaign tactics in the 2017 Alabama senate race. Instead, they object to Hoffman’s efforts last year to pressure Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to fire Lina Khan, the former head of the Federal Trade Commission. Hoffman asserted last July that Khan was “waging a war on American business” through anti-merger actions and said he hoped that Harris would “replace her.”
Wikler and Martin have both landed notable endorsements in the DNC race. Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) have endorsed Wikler. But Martin boasts more public endorsements from DNC members and is considered the progressive wing’s preferred choice.
Both have embraced controversial positions that could prove liabilities should they take over the DNC. As head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, he oversaw a vote in which party members voted against a resolution to condemn Hamas for its terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. As chairman, the Wisconsin Democrats approved a platform that called itself the “party of DEI.”
Martin has called for President Donald Trump to be put on trial for treason, a charge that calls for the death penalty, based on a debunked news report that Trump ignored intelligence briefings that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to attack American troops in Afghanistan.
