New Democrat Network
Encyclopedia
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
that promotes progressive
Progressivism in the United States
Progressivism in the United States is a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature. It arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large...
Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
candidates, especially those in a more centrist
Centrism
In politics, centrism is the ideal or the practice of promoting policies that lie different from the standard political left and political right. Most commonly, this is visualized as part of the one-dimensional political spectrum of left-right politics, with centrism landing in the middle between...
vein, although this focus has waxed and waned. NDN is a 501(c)(4) membership organization that functions in conjunction with its two subsidiary organizations, the NDN Political Fund, a non-federal political organization (527), and NDN PAC, a federal political action committee
Political action committee
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...
. As a whole, the organization works to advance the 21st Century
21st century
The 21st century is the current century of the Anno Domini era or the Common Era in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. The century began on January 1, 2001 and will end on December 31, 2100. The years from 2001 to 2010 are historical; the years from 2011 to 2100 are subject to futurology and...
American progressive movement, with particular focus on advocacy, strategy and investment in emerging leaders and projects.
Founding
NDN is led and was founded by Simon RosenbergSimon Rosenberg
Simon Rosenberg is the founder of the New Democrat Network, an organization formerly allied with the Democratic Leadership Council, and was a candidate for the Democratic National Committee Chair in 2005.-Early life:...
in 1996 after his split with the Democratic Leadership Council
Democratic Leadership Council
The Democratic Leadership Council was a non-profit 501 corporation that, upon its formation, argued the United States Democratic Party should shift away from the leftward turn it took in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s...
, for which he worked. Before founding NDN, Rosenberg worked as a television news writer and producer and a political strategist for the Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
and Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
presidential campaigns and the Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...
. NDN has offices in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, San Francisco, and Miami.
Involvement in the 2004 presidential election
NDN claims that it uses a more technologically modern and grassrootsGrassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
participatory approach to its activities than the DLC. The NDN, while not supporting or embracing 2004 Democratic presidential primary candidate Howard Dean
Howard Dean
Howard Brush Dean III is an American politician and physician from Vermont. He served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont and ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Although his U.S...
, has pointed to his online network of small donors, volunteers, and blogger
Blogger
Blogger may refer to:* A person who writes a blog, or weblog* Blogger , a web service for publishing blogs...
s as the model to emulate for the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
. The NDN is now challenging the DLC and is becoming an increasingly influential player in the party's politics.
In the 2004 presidential race
United States presidential election, 2004
The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator...
, NDN led an effort to turn out Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
voters for John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
.
In 2004, Rosenberg announced his candidacy for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...
, but eventually withdrew from the race after it became clear that he would lose to eventual Chairman Howard Dean. Rosenberg then supported Dean's campaign.
Current efforts
NDN is currently in the midst of launching two of its premier initiatives for the coming election years: the New Politics Institute (NPI) and the Hispanic Project.Working like a conventional policy-oriented think tank, NPI seeks to assemble what it sees to be many of the finest minds in progressive politics, the non-profit world and the private sector
Private sector
In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...
in order to study, master, incubate and promote new strategies, technologies and techniques for the rapidly changing politics of the new century.
In 2003 and 2004, the Hispanic Project produced more than twenty commercials on Spanish-language television, radio and Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
that sought to speak directly to America's growing Latino community and highlight the values and ideals that they see as the bond between Hispanic voters and progressive causes, and has recently stepped up its ad campaigns and project initiatives in hopes of reclaiming lost ground among those voters as evidenced by the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.
External links
- Official website
- New Politics Institute website
- NDN's Hispanic Strategy Center website
- Opensecrets.org summary of NDN's PAC contributions in the 2004 cycle
- publicintegrity.org Report on NDN's spending by the Center for Public IntegrityCenter for Public IntegrityThe Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...