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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34953-2004Feb12.html

Washington Post, February 12, 2004

Shaping Conservative Agenda 
'Monday Meeting' in New York Draws Influential Crowd 
By Ben White


NEW YORK -- Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) threw himself on the group's mercy. A 
conservative New York City congressman showed up and was asked about his 
interest in challenging Republican Michael Bloomberg in next year's mayoral 
primary. New York's State Senate president stopped by to explain his reasons 
for approving tax increases. 
 
Dozens of other officeholders and candidates from across the country have made 
the pilgrimage as well. The waiting list for a chance to speak is long and 
getting longer. Many are turned away. 

Everyone, it seems, wants to come to the "Monday Meeting," an off-the-record 
monthly session in Manhattan that has quietly become one of the most 
influential conservative gatherings in the nation. 

What began as a small get-together in a banker's office on the East Side in 
February 2002 has grown into a phenomenon in which as many as 200 people pack 
into a nondescript conference room at the Grand Hyatt hotel the second Monday 
of every month. 

There are no cocktails, no canapes, only a few pitchers of ice water and a 
chance for politicians to tap into a deep pool of fundraising and ideological 
support. 

In many ways, the meeting represents a resurrection of the Political Club for 
Growth, a small group of wealthy conservatives that once met in financier 
Richard Gilder's office in midtown Manhattan. 

Gilder's meeting died in 2000 after politicians began demanding larger bundles 
of checks than the group could provide. The Political Club for Growth morphed 
into the Club for Growth, a Washington-based political action committee that 
supports fiscally conservative Republican candidates. 

The new meeting follows a format similar to the one used by the Political Club 
for Growth -- politicians face tough questions and receive fundraising support 
based on their answers. But the scale is much larger and the audience more 
diverse, a powerful constellation of think tank academics, conservative media 
luminaries and deep-pocketed executives from Wall Street and corporate America. 

Media regulars at the Monday Meeting include Robert A. George, an editorial 
writer for the New York Post, and Wall Street Journal online columnist John 
Fund. Conservative pundit Anne Coulter used the meeting as a promotional event 
for her recent book "Treason." 

"If nothing else, the meeting shows that there actually are conservative 
politics and conservative activists in New York City and New York State," 
George said. "And it's a convenient one-stop shop for Republicans coming 
through the city." 

More than Gilder's meeting, the monthly gathering is modeled on anti-tax 
activist Grover Norquist's well-connected weekly sessions in Washington. 
Norquist, in fact, urged bankers Mallory Factor and James Higgins to begin the 
Monday Meeting and has since watched it grow in size and influence. 

"It has become a very powerful meeting," Norquist said. "New York is a central 
place for corporations, writers, thinkers and financial contributors, so the 
meeting there has more of a national focus. . . . When New York starts moving 
in a direction, it can affect the entire culture and the way the world works." 
Norquist said the meeting has become among the most successful of 37 similar 
gatherings being held across the country, most of them in state capitals. 

Meetings begin with brief presentations by guests followed by 
question-and-answer sessions that often get heated. At a meeting last year, 
Joseph L. Bruno, the New York Senate president, fended off blistering 
complaints about his decision to sign off on tax increases. 

Specter, who faces a stiff primary challenge on the right from conservative 
Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), got knocked around for his failure to support former 
federal judge Robert H. Bork's Supreme Court nomination, as well as for his 
record on taxes.

Specter fired back that he supported many tax cuts and played a crucial role in 
the nomination fight over Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "I talked 
about my questioning of Anita Hill and the fact that I saved Clarence Thomas 
for them," Specter said, adding that he believed he had cut off much of the 
conservative financial support for Toomey. 

The meetings are run by Factor, an ebullient banker from Bridgeport, Conn., who 
was the first in his family to finish college, and by Higgins, a Wall Street 
executive and, like White House senior adviser Karl Rove, a former president of 
the College Republicans. 

The founders often meet over breakfast at a diner to discuss upcoming meetings. 

"We do not endorse candidates. We support issues. We support free markets and 
keeping the burden government places on people's lives under control," Factor 
said. "We also look to change [politicians'] behavior. Sometimes we have to be 
the conservative eye for the liberal guy." 

The meetings themselves generally focus on economic issues at the local, state 
and federal levels but also range over other topics, including immigration, 
foreign policy and education. They tend to avoid social issues such as 
abortion. "This is New York after all, so I'd say 50 percent of the people at 
the meetings are pro-choice," Factor said. 

Speakers include politicians, representative of think tanks such as the 
Manhattan Institute and officials from trade groups. Higgins said the point of 
the meeting is to gather powerful people who might not otherwise talk to one 
another and come up with concrete ways to affect public debate. 

"It's not a lecture series, it's interactive," he said. No fundraising takes 
place at the meetings, but valuable connections are often made. "Can and will 
candidates ask people to put together fundraising events for them in New York? 
Absolutely," Higgins said. 

In fact, Specter's opponent Toomey, who had addressed the meeting before the 
Pennsylvania senator made his appearance, said people associated with the 
Monday Meeting helped him raise $500,000 after Specter's appearance 

Higgins and Factor said a great deal of valuable networking takes place in the 
15 minutes before and 30 minutes after each meeting. 

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher who is a top target 
of Democrats in 2004, can attest to the networking. He attended a meeting last 
summer, then came back to New York for an event in November that raised 
$200,000, his biggest out-of-state haul. 

"I'd never been to anything like it," said Jon Deuser, Bunning's chief of 
staff. "There is a great dynamic. It's freewheeling. You have people interested 
in politics, in policy and in fundraising." 

Norquist said the meetings are not intended to eliminate moderate Republicans. 
"When we disagree with people we ask how we can work together in the future," 
he said. 

Nevertheless, candidates who impress the crowd and raise the most money tend to 
come from the more conservative wing of the party, at least on economic issues. 

Republican Rep. Jim DeMint, for instance, is locked in a crowded Senate primary 
battle in South Carolina and has staked out a strong free-trade stance in a 
state where protectionism is popular in both parties. 

DeMint was a hit at the Monday Meeting and has now out-raised all his GOP 
opponents, with 12 percent of his $1.4 million in contributions coming from 
outside South Carolina. DeMint has raised $168,000 from business-related 
political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 
  
"To find that kind of a philosophical base that has contacts all over the 
country is very, very important in a Senate race," DeMint said of the Monday 
Meeting. "I've been back up several times for fundraisers hosted by people I 
met there." 

While the meetings have a distinctly national flavor, the organizers also focus 
on improving Republican fortunes in heavily Democratic New York City while 
pushing an anti-tax agenda in Albany, the state capital. 

The meeting demonstrated its growing clout when State Senate President Bruno, 
who along with Gov. George E. Pataki (R) and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon 
Silver (D) essentially controls New York state government, spoke to the group 
last year about why he supported tax increases to help balance the state 
budget. 

Bruno said he wanted to open a dialogue with Monday Meeting participants to 
discuss future budget negotiations. In fact, a spokesman for Bruno said staff 
members for the senator were in New York City on Friday to follow up on the 
meeting and talk about the next budget cycle. 

Rep. Vito Fossella, the lone Republican in New York's congressional delegation, 
also attended a meeting recently and received an enthusiastic response. Several 
people expressed an interest in seeing Fossella challenge Mayor Bloomberg, 
whose property tax hike angered some Republicans, in next year's GOP primary. 

"Some folks did ask about it," Fossella said. "But I told them I have no 
plans." Fossella also said, however, that he had not ruled out a Bloomberg 
challenge. 

Mostly, Fossella said, he was impressed that Factor and Higgins could turn out 
such a big crowd. "I give folks who come out on Monday night and engage in 
lively debate, even though they might rather go home, a lot of applause. It's 
an impressive group." 



- - - - -
John Lacny

People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!


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