The DNC Attack Machine Beefs Up to Battle Kennedy, Other Independent Candidates, and Voter Choice
Liam Sturgess | March 21, 2024
On March 14, NBC News reported that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had assembled a team, made up of career Democrat strategists, “to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates.” DNC spokesperson Matt Corridoni claims they will be “holding third party candidates accountable.”
But Corridoni’s statement doesn’t ring true. Accountability suggests equal treatment under the law and fair play in the court of public opinion, and the DNC has positioned its new team to ensure the opposite. It’s clear these strategists have been hired as attack dogs, and to do whatever it takes to discredit their political target.
New York Magazine’s March 20 article by Gabriel Debenedetti announced “Democrats Are Starting to Take the RFK Jr. Threat Seriously,” confirming in no uncertain terms that Kennedy is the prime DNC target.
Concerns with Biden’s age and growing criticism within his own party of some of his policies – combined with the legacy media’s burgeoning recognition of Kennedy as a viable alternative to Biden and Trump – have motivated the DNC to sink many millions into a team of opposition strategists who fear one candidate: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Institutionally Anti-Democratic
Examining the careers of all four team members, we find the same corporate donors and private interests continue to appear, consistently directing the Democratic apparatus towards limiting voter choice in favor of the Democratic Party.
Rather than reinforce the nation’s electoral system, the DNC has once again, in a fashion only they could design, demonstrated the absolute need for independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to march forward against strong institutional opposition.
As previously reported by The Kennedy Beacon, the DNC’s largest donor is the Biden Victory Fund, rendering the organization effectively a front for the president’s 2024 campaign.
According to NBC, the team’s work will involve “aggressive communications,” “opposition research and legal challenges,” and the use of a national coalition of loosely-connected Democratic political organizations to bolster their collective efforts. The seemingly bottomless well of resources available to this large network will certainly loom large over anyone outside of the duopoly who is brave enough to charge up that hill.
With the DNC entering a new phase of political damage control, The Kennedy Beacon sought to uncover who makes up their new “anti-independent” team. Who has the institution tapped to protect its man in the White House?
Mary Beth Cahill
Co-leading the group is Mary Beth Cahill, described by NBC as a “veteran DNC insider.” According to The Washington Post, Cahill will serve as the team’s senior advisor.
As summarized in a now-wiped OpenSecrets profile, Cahill worked from 1994 to 1999 as executive director for EMILY’s List, a pro-abortion rights political action committee (PAC). She then became President Bill Clinton’s Director of Public Liaison until 2001, and served as John Kerry’s campaign manager during his 2004 presidential run.
Following Kerry’s loss to George W. Bush, Cahill co-founded the consulting firm The Atlas Project. Its client list includes the DNC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Governors Association, along with major Democrat-aligned PACs.
In 2012, Cahill began consulting for Priorities USA Action, the country’s largest Democratic Party super PAC. Founded to support Obama’s reelection campaign, the PAC then shifted support to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 race. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden endorsed Priorities USA Action as his PAC of choice. According to OpenSecrets, the PAC’s largest donors since 2016 have included Democrat megafunder George Soros, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Nishad Singh, a former executive at disgraced cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.
In February 2018, Cahill was named interim CEO of the DNC.
Ramsey Reid
Leading the day-to-day activities of the group is Ramsey Reid, the DNC’s director of states, who wasted no time going on the attack against RFK Jr.
Reid began his political career working for Obama’s 2012 campaign in Ohio. He then served as campaigns director for Battleground Texas’ Blue Star Project, an unsuccessful attempt to turn the Republican-heavy Texas into a purple state. Battleground Texas, a PAC, was later fined $6,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission for violating campaign finance law.
In January 2015, Reid became campaign manager for P. G. Sittenfeld, a Cincinnati city councilman running for the US Senate. His team also included 270 Strategies, whose work includes influencing elections in Ghana and an unnamed country in Southeast Asia.
The month after Reid joined Sittenfeld’s campaign, 270 Strategies was accused in the Jerusalem Post of leading “a major attack” on Israel’s electoral system on Obama’s behalf, with Politico reporting that State Department funds were used in the operation. The firm was also hired by Third Way following the 2020 election to conduct a “post-mortem,” and OpenSecrets reveals that the DNC itself has also been a client.
Lis Smith
Leading communications, opposition research, and legal efforts is Lis Smith, who served as senior advisor to Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Smith previously worked as communications director for the Democratic Governors Association (2011–2012), then became director of rapid response for Obama’s reelection campaign. She then worked as campaign and transition chief spokesperson for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Smith achieved near infamy status, however, amid her tireless efforts to smear the names of women who accused New York governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual assault. According to a November 2021 report by The City, Smith played a role in “rushing to the then-governor’s defense – and on attack against women who went public,” developing talking points for Cuomo to recite during interviews.
Matt Corridoni
Matt Corridoni, whom NBC describes as “Smith’s former deputy on the Buttigieg campaign,” is the DNC team’s spokesperson – his Twitter/X profile, boasts of “holding third party candidates accountable for @TheDemocrats.”
According to his LinkedIn, Corridoni’s political career began with a series of internships, first at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, then on to the DCCC, which is the campaign arm of Democrats in the House of Representatives. According to an April 2018 In These Times article, the DCCC has a “long, ugly history of sabotaging progressives,” putting “corporate, big-money interests first.” Published data from the Federal Election Commission reveals donors that include George Soros and his son Alexander, and Tony Podesta, a big pharma lobbyist and brother of John Podesta, Biden’s “top climate diplomat.”
Corridoni then completed back-to-back internships in the US Senate and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a “progressive” think tank funded by the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the CIA-linked Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Dustin Moskovitz’s Good Ventures Foundation and Open Philanthropy, and the World Bank.
In April 2020, he became press secretary for the Senate Majority PAC, another high-powered Democratic political organization whose major backers include the Soros family, pharma lobbying groups Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Tony and Heather Podesta, Dustin Moskovitz, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Google co-founder Eric Schmidt, and the increasingly controversial aircraft manufacturer, Boeing.
Corridoni returned to the DCCC in 2022 where he remained until being tapped by the DNC this month.
While these four people make up the first-string players for the team announced by the DNC thus far, there remains a larger network yet to be explored, starting with the Democratic nonprofit organizations that stretch from coast to coast, alluded to in the NBC News article.
In the months ahead, The Kennedy Beacon will continue its investigation into the DNC’s 2024 campaign to keep Biden’s challengers off the ballot.
Liam Sturgess is an investigative reporter for The Kennedy Beacon. He is also a writer for the Canadian Covid Care Alliance and founder of White Rose Intelligence. He was the founding co-host and producer of the Rounding the Earth podcast, and publishes a Substack series called Microjourneys.
