Billionaire Democratic donor George Soros has contributed to seven local district attorney campaigns in half a dozen states over the past year, laying out over $3 million, according to Politico.
Soros has backed progressive candidates whose platforms champion issues such as racial inequality in sentencing and rehabilitation over prison for drug offenders.
"The prosecutor exercises the greatest discretion and power in the system. It is so important," Andrea Dew Steele, president of Emerge America, an organization that trains Democratic women to run for office, told Politico. "There's been a confluence of events in the past couple years and all of the sudden, the progressive community is waking up to this."
By using state-level super PACs and a national "527" nonprofit organization, Soros has supported candidates in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois, New Mexico and Texas. Some of those state organizations also received help from other progressive nonprofit groups like the Civic Participation Action Fund, which donated to Soros' Illinois Safety and Justice group, but each was funded mainly by Soros.
According to The Washington Times, Soros gave $33 million in the past year to various groups, many of which supported grassroots activists in Ferguson, Mo., who protested the police-involved killing of Michael Brown.
Some, including opponents of candidates Soros has backed, have objected to the billionaire's involvement in local elections.
"As a candidate and citizen of Caddo Parish, if an outsider was that interested in the race, I wanted to know exactly what he had in mind for the criminal justice system if he were to win," Dhu Thompson, a Louisiana lawyer who lost a district attorney race to James Stewart.
Soros gave a group supporting Stewart more than $930,000.
"I know some of his troubling opinions on social issues, especially the criminal justice system," Thompson continued. "I've never known him as an individual who was very strong on some of our crime and punishment issues. I felt it was very detrimental to the safety of Caddo Parish, and that's why I took such a strong stand against him."
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