Wall Street's largest banks have quietly been building a new dark money operation that's already funneled nearly $6 million into Democratic super PACs backing the party's most business-friendly candidates and incumbents, according to new Federal Election Commission records.
The effort is being led by the Financial Services Forum (FSF), a trade group whose members include JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, BNY Mellon, and State Street, under the direction of Amanda Eversole, who took over as FSF president and CEO last September. Eversole previously worked as executive vice president and chief advocacy officer for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's main lobbying group. In December, the group launched a 501(c)4 advocacy group called the American Growth Alliance (AGA) to publicly promote the banking industry. Four months later, AGA formed a second entity—the Opportunity Forward Alliance (OFA), another 501(c)4—specifically to finance super PACs and back candidates aligned with the banking industry's agenda. Eversole took to the D.C. press to suggest that she planned to go on offense for the banking lobby. "We're loud and proud of who we are and what we stand for," she told Axios shortly after launching AGA. "We're going to be much more affirmative in saying, 'We have a lot of positive benefits to the economy.’”
All of the money funneled through OFA so far has gone exclusively to moderate and business-friendly Democratic super PACs. None has gone to any Republican-aligned organizations.
The top recipient of OFA funding so far is New Democrat Majority, the super PAC arm of the New Democrat Coalition of pro-business House Democrats, which has received more than $3 million from the group across three contributions. The New Democrat Coalition was formed in 1997, following in the footsteps of the Democratic Leadership Council and President Bill Clinton's "third way" politics intended to make the Democrats and their policy platform more business-friendly. The New Democrats have advanced Wall Street’s favored policies from the beginning. In 1999, the group’s members played a key role in passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed banking regulations passed after the Great Depression and paved the way for banks to become "too big to fail." Many also voted the next year for the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which deregulated financial derivatives, enabling Wall Street to massively expand trading and insurance of risky mortgage-backed securities.
