One of WA’s top money-raisers bets big on political no man’s land

In recent years there’s been a political sign in my neighborhood that backs no specific cause or candidate. Instead it just says: “Any Functioning Adult.”

That’s pretty much the answer David Nierenberg gave me when I asked why he just endorsed the Democrat in the presidential race, Kamala Harris.

“I would take any reasonable person at this point,” he said.

Nierenberg is an investment manager in Camas, in Southwest Washington, and one of the state’s top political donors. He’s in the group of 230 former associates to GOP politicians Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush who made news Monday by crossing party lines to back the Democrat, Harris.

“We have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. [Tim] Walz,” their joint letter reads. “That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”

Nierenberg served as a national finance co-chair for both of Romney’s 2008 and 2012 runs for president. That means he raised boatloads of campaign cash all around the country, for and from Republicans.

He’s given to Democrats over the years as well, but his list includes a who’s who of top Washington GOPers: former state Sen. Dino Rossi, former Attorney General Rob McKenna, former U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler.

He also donated to defeat a state income tax and told me he moved here from California in part because we don’t have such a tax.

“You’re calling to ask, why did I do this crazy thing?” he said when I got him on the phone.

Yes, I’m interested in endorsements that cross party lines — especially as politics have become increasingly polarized. Donald Trump just nabbed a couple when two former Democrats, Robert F. Kennedy and ex-Congress member Tulsi Gabbard, joined him. Back in 2016, those two endorsed Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders for president — talk about a journey!

Nierenberg said his calculation is simple. A Harris presidency may raise his taxes. But a second Trump presidency will raise the entire world’s blood pressure to heart attack levels.

“His ego and his fascination with dictators make him a major threat to democracy,” Nierenberg said. “And the Republican Party — it doesn’t stand for anything at this point other than Donald Trump.”

Nierenberg also made news two years ago as part of a group of local Republicans who defected to endorse the Southwest Washington Democratic candidate, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She was running for Congress, and won, against MAGA Republican Joe Kent.

Nierenberg is now going all-in on that strategy. That is, stop trying to reform the GOP from within or to back quixotic third parties. Try instead to tilt the Democrats to the center by electing as many moderates in red-leaning districts as possible.

He’s trying to bring back normal.

“I’m $1.1 million invested in this election already, and I’m not a billionaire,” Nierenberg told me.

That figure puts him up there with the other top Washington donors to federal races this year, such as Bellevue wealth manager Phil Scott, who gave Trump $1 million in May.

Much of Nierenberg’s money has gone to a political committee called Welcome PAC. It seeks to help nontraditional Democrats “win the middle” in overlooked, red-leaning districts that have extremist GOP candidates.

It does this by getting cross-party endorsers to influence voters to “party-switch” — in other words, to not vote a one-party straight ticket. It’s funded by “depolarizers,” people like Nierenberg who hope to tamp down tribalization and “purity tests” in politics.

For example, this year he has maxed out to Perez, who is running for reelection in the 3rd Congressional District, and to Herrera Beutler, the top Republican in the state lands commissioner race — who repped the 3rd before Gluesenkamp Perez. Not many people go for both parties like this (though Herrera Beutler was all but booted out of the GOP after she voted to impeach Trump in 2021).

Does this cross-party endorsement stuff work anymore? Or do you have to just pick a side and go scorched earth?

Nierenberg said the 2022 election of Gluesenkamp Perez proves it can work. She was mostly written off by national Democrats but picked up support from alienated Republicans. In the end, she got nearly 13,000 more votes in the 3rd District than U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the ballot.

That’s 13,000 who voted for the Republican for Senate, and then crossed over. They made up only 4% of the total vote. But Perez won by less than 1%. So she owes her seat to this endangered species in the middle.

“That’s where the presidential election will be won or lost, too,” Nierenberg says.

A Trump spokesperson on Monday derided the cross-party endorsement effort as “hilarious because nobody knows who these people are.” In 2022, Joe Kent dubbed Nierenberg “one of these Romney blowhards.”

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Who will get the last laugh this time?

“We’re in a political crisis,” Nierenberg said. “People have always stepped up at times of crisis to keep our democracy on track.”

Yes, but were they so wracked with doubt about it all that they were putting up “Any Functioning Adult” signs?

Our democracy’s definitely about to get a stress test. With the emphasis on “stress.”