Quote:Participants in a Johns Hopkins University initiative wanted to “retake the local party apparatus.”

The phrase appears in a September 2024 report describing private meetings organized by the university’s SNF Agora Institute and the R Street Institute. Attendees in Kansas and Kentucky had already begun developing longer-term plans to rebuild local parties.

One adviser to that initiative was Mark de la Iglesia, a former grantmaker at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Freedom House confirms that he advised the specific Johns Hopkins effort supporting conservative leaders on election trust.

By 2026, the organizers were reporting Signal networks involving statewide election officials and staff, alongside contacts with Republican leadership in Congress and the White House. Their newest report describes the challenge this way:

“The challenge is to take effective action while not drawing unwanted attention.”

The context was participants’ fear that publicly confronting the administration would damage their credibility or cost them seats. Their proposed answer was quieter action backed by relationships with other officials.

The meetings followed a deliberate format. Organizers worked with a local official to assemble invitees, began with a dinner, then held a full-day, off-the-record session. State-specific Gallup polling informed discussions of action plans. Participants’ contributions were protected from attribution under Chatham House Rules.

The report attributes the party-rebuilding ambition to participants. Organizers say local leaders drove discussions, the group included Trump voters, and the effort was not an anti-Trump campaign.

The project had prominent Republican partners. A November 2023 Johns Hopkins announcement identified Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson as its architects. It also acknowledged earlier off-the-record meetings in Washington, Utah, Indiana and Texas.

Its public platform urged conservative leaders to affirm election integrity, reassure voters through transparency and outreach, and pursue policy changes that would increase confidence in elections. A national convening at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg Center was expected to draw more than 80 leaders involved in the project.

The initiative’s existence was public. The private discussions behind it were protected from individual attribution, leaving readers unable to identify which participants advocated particular party strategies.

De la Iglesia’s background supplies a concrete connection to Democratic politics and progressive philanthropy. His National Endowment for Democracy biography identifies him as a grantmaking officer in Open Society’s Fiscal Governance Program, with a portfolio covering public-finance transparency and political finance.

Before that, he worked at the National Democratic Institute. He also served in the Obama administration and as legislative director and foreign-policy adviser to Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington. His experience spanned congressional operations, government and philanthropic grantmaking.

The project’s origins also ran through a predominantly progressive gathering. In an August 2024 interview with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, Warren recalled organizing a private democracy-reform discussion of roughly 40 people. About 90 percent, he said, were on the left. Feedback prompted the organizers to build a separate conversation for conservatives.

That became a broader organizing effort. Warren explained that election trust was its immediate focus, with ambitions extending beyond it. Germer described recruiting local elected officials, state lawmakers, business leaders, faith leaders and others through people already familiar with the project.

The organizers also adjusted their language. Warren said they had moved toward describing the work in terms of trust in elections because democracy had become a partisan term. Germer emphasized that participants included committed Trump supporters and even people still doubtful about the 2020 result. Respectful participation, he said, was the entry requirement.

Major foundations have since committed money to expanding this work. Carnegie’s grant database records a $500,000 award dated June 4, 2026, covering 24 months, to support SNF Agora’s Conservative Agenda for Democracy program.

The grant description says the initiative will research conservatives’ understanding of democratic principles, expand its network of center-right leaders and convene election administrators and officials ahead of elections. Carnegie describes its objective as building lasting organizational support for conservative leaders committed to democratic governance.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s grant records list another $1.85 million specifically for the Civic Right project, awarded through Independence Initiative: $350,000 in October 2025 and $1.5 million in November 2025. Hewlett describes Civic Right as a project cultivating a network of leaders and nonprofits working on elections, governance and civic life.

Hewlett separately awarded R Street $1.25 million in March 2024 and another $1.25 million in March 2026 for general operating support.

The 2026 report’s account of results includes secretaries of state coordinating messages in conservative publications and state officials discussing the SAVE Act and executive orders with Republican congressional leaders and the White House. It does not name the participants in those conversations or specify their positions.

Its proposed next steps include state-specific strategies, better local political data, and recruiting and preparing future candidates and public officials. The organizing ambitions extend to who enters government and who succeeds today’s officeholders.

Warren described the longer-term question in a post-2024-election interview on Democracy Works: what “a different kind of conservatism or Republicanism” might look like. He acknowledged that some people working with the initiative might leave the party. Others, he anticipated, would remain and press locally for institutions they believed the GOP should defend.

Those conservatives, Warren said, would push “from the inside out.” His argument was that dismissing Trump’s voters as people who did not care about democracy would be ineffective. The strategy depended on finding people already within Republican politics who wanted to change its direction.

The unresolved questions concern the resulting plans: who drafted them, which officials endorsed them, what donors required, and what was ultimately carried out. Complete meeting rosters and the Kansas and Kentucky plans would make that work accountable to the Republican voters whose local organizations were being discussed.

Link

(10-21-2026 08:32 AM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

Quote:Participants in a Johns Hopkins University initiative wanted to “retake the local party apparatus.”

The phrase appears in a September 2024 report describing private meetings organized by the university’s SNF Agora Institute and the R Street Institute. Attendees in Kansas and Kentucky had already begun developing longer-term plans to rebuild local parties.

One adviser to that initiative was Mark de la Iglesia, a former grantmaker at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Freedom House confirms that he advised the specific Johns Hopkins effort supporting conservative leaders on election trust.

By 2026, the organizers were reporting Signal networks involving statewide election officials and staff, alongside contacts with Republican leadership in Congress and the White House. Their newest report describes the challenge this way:

“The challenge is to take effective action while not drawing unwanted attention.”

The context was participants’ fear that publicly confronting the administration would damage their credibility or cost them seats. Their proposed answer was quieter action backed by relationships with other officials.

The meetings followed a deliberate format. Organizers worked with a local official to assemble invitees, began with a dinner, then held a full-day, off-the-record session. State-specific Gallup polling informed discussions of action plans. Participants’ contributions were protected from attribution under Chatham House Rules.

The report attributes the party-rebuilding ambition to participants. Organizers say local leaders drove discussions, the group included Trump voters, and the effort was not an anti-Trump campaign.

The project had prominent Republican partners. A November 2023 Johns Hopkins announcement identified Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson as its architects. It also acknowledged earlier off-the-record meetings in Washington, Utah, Indiana and Texas.

Its public platform urged conservative leaders to affirm election integrity, reassure voters through transparency and outreach, and pursue policy changes that would increase confidence in elections. A national convening at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg Center was expected to draw more than 80 leaders involved in the project.

The initiative’s existence was public. The private discussions behind it were protected from individual attribution, leaving readers unable to identify which participants advocated particular party strategies.

De la Iglesia’s background supplies a concrete connection to Democratic politics and progressive philanthropy. His National Endowment for Democracy biography identifies him as a grantmaking officer in Open Society’s Fiscal Governance Program, with a portfolio covering public-finance transparency and political finance.

Before that, he worked at the National Democratic Institute. He also served in the Obama administration and as legislative director and foreign-policy adviser to Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington. His experience spanned congressional operations, government and philanthropic grantmaking.

The project’s origins also ran through a predominantly progressive gathering. In an August 2024 interview with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, Warren recalled organizing a private democracy-reform discussion of roughly 40 people. About 90 percent, he said, were on the left. Feedback prompted the organizers to build a separate conversation for conservatives.

That became a broader organizing effort. Warren explained that election trust was its immediate focus, with ambitions extending beyond it. Germer described recruiting local elected officials, state lawmakers, business leaders, faith leaders and others through people already familiar with the project.

The organizers also adjusted their language. Warren said they had moved toward describing the work in terms of trust in elections because democracy had become a partisan term. Germer emphasized that participants included committed Trump supporters and even people still doubtful about the 2020 result. Respectful participation, he said, was the entry requirement.

Major foundations have since committed money to expanding this work. Carnegie’s grant database records a $500,000 award dated June 4, 2026, covering 24 months, to support SNF Agora’s Conservative Agenda for Democracy program.

The grant description says the initiative will research conservatives’ understanding of democratic principles, expand its network of center-right leaders and convene election administrators and officials ahead of elections. Carnegie describes its objective as building lasting organizational support for conservative leaders committed to democratic governance.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s grant records list another $1.85 million specifically for the Civic Right project, awarded through Independence Initiative: $350,000 in October 2025 and $1.5 million in November 2025. Hewlett describes Civic Right as a project cultivating a network of leaders and nonprofits working on elections, governance and civic life.

Hewlett separately awarded R Street $1.25 million in March 2024 and another $1.25 million in March 2026 for general operating support.

The 2026 report’s account of results includes secretaries of state coordinating messages in conservative publications and state officials discussing the SAVE Act and executive orders with Republican congressional leaders and the White House. It does not name the participants in those conversations or specify their positions.

Its proposed next steps include state-specific strategies, better local political data, and recruiting and preparing future candidates and public officials. The organizing ambitions extend to who enters government and who succeeds today’s officeholders.

Warren described the longer-term question in a post-2024-election interview on Democracy Works: what “a different kind of conservatism or Republicanism” might look like. He acknowledged that some people working with the initiative might leave the party. Others, he anticipated, would remain and press locally for institutions they believed the GOP should defend.

Those conservatives, Warren said, would push “from the inside out.” His argument was that dismissing Trump’s voters as people who did not care about democracy would be ineffective. The strategy depended on finding people already within Republican politics who wanted to change its direction.

The unresolved questions concern the resulting plans: who drafted them, which officials endorsed them, what donors required, and what was ultimately carried out. Complete meeting rosters and the Kansas and Kentucky plans would make that work accountable to the Republican voters whose local organizations were being discussed.

Link

Raffensberger is not a conservative and doesn't care at all about election integrity. He's responsible for the 2020 Georgia disaster. He caved to all the Democratic demands to remove steps for election integrity. Gov. Kemp and the courts had to step in and fix things.

Georgia isn't like Texas. In Texas most of the Republicans are home grown. In Georgia, they were mostly Democrats until about 20 years ago. Democrats completely controlled Georgia government until 2003. They controlled the House until 2005.

A known democrat with ties to Soros—how interesting that he should suddenly become engaged with a behind-the-scenes reform movement aimed at realigning the GOP. Nothing fishy there...much.

It feels more like an infiltration op.