Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren One of the most important operatives in the progressive advocacy universe supporting the Biden administration’s policy objectives is leaving his perch. TOM PERRIELLO, the executive director of Open Society Foundation-U.S., will be departing from the role in mid-July. Taking over that post at the GEORGE SOROS-founded entity will be LALEH ISPAHANI, who has been serving as co-director alongside Perriello. Perriello claims to have never held a job for longer than a couple of years, making his near five-year stint at OSF the longest of his professional life. But his departure still marks a capstone to the brief but productive period of Democratic governance and a reimagining of advocacy on the progressive side of the ledger. Under his stewardship, OSF made a strategic decision to change funding priorities. While the group doubled its budget, it also eliminated roughly 47 issues “silos” — groups or projects with narrow scope. The result was larger grants with longer horizons and the type of political support that Perriello credited with helping pass President JOE BIDEN’s domestic agenda. “This wasn’t rocket science,” he explained to West Wing Playbook. “The center of gravity in American politics has shifted towards needing fundamental transformation of the system more than fixing around the edges.” Among the victories that OSF can take a portion of credit for are the climate initiatives that were part of the president’s Inflation Reduction Act, legislative action and executive orders around the care economy (including one issued Tuesday by Biden that put significant investments into long-term aging and disability care, child care, and family caregivers), and election infrastructure. Ispahani noted that through the entity Power the Polls, which OSF “stood up,” the group “recruited, very quickly, 700,000 poll workers.” “Five years ago, we looked at the scale of not just the threats but opportunities for open, inclusive democracy in the United States, and decided to double our investments and hire Tom Perriello to transform the way we worked,” said ALEX SOROS, OFS’ chair. “We believe that this has allowed us to make major contributions to protecting the democratic process, building support for far reaching reforms on climate and equity, and expanding fundamental rights for underserved communities.” But progress isn’t linear. Over the past half year, OSF found itself on the defense on key fronts — from global health to abortion access. It’s also been weathering a perennial line of attacks about the influence of its founder, who most recently has been targeted by Republicans for his support of reform-minded prosecutors, including Manhattan’s D.A. (and current DONALD TRUMP bête noire) ALVIN BRAGG. “Yes and no,” Perriello said, when asked if he’s been surprised at the centrality of Soros’ role as a boogeyman for the right. “He doesn’t care…. When you are at the front edge of supporting freedom and inclusive democracy there are going to be those who want to attack you for it.” For Perriello, there is a coming-full-circle element to his departure from OFS. More than a decade ago, he was an unabashedly progressive member of Congress hailing from a swing district in Virginia. His vote for a doomed cap-and-trade bill effectively cost him any chance of reelection — thereby continuing his pattern of leaving jobs after only a few years in them. At OSF, he helped build a modern environmental advocacy community and worked with the White House (his visits became a brief focus of conservative media) that allowed for another bite at the apple. The result, as documented by our own ELI STOKOLS, was the historic environmental policy achievements of the IRA. Perriello called it “a real sense of closure.” It also, in his mind, proved the theory of the case: that movement building was a more effective method of advocacy than narrower support for issue specific groups. As for what comes next, he would not get too specific, save to outline something that seemed, well, rather massive in scope. “It’s fair to say that I'm going to be looking into how we respond to the intersection of artificial intelligence and human purpose,” said Perriello. We’ll see how long he stays on that. MESSAGE US — Are you GEORGE SOROS? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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