Op-Ed: Chris Horner: Personnel is policy, a lesson even red state politicians can’t seem to learn

The influence of George Soros and Swiss Billionaire Hansjörg Wyss isn't only limited to blue states, Chris Horner warns.

As President Donald Trump begins his second term, his team must keep in mind that regardless how lawmakers write a policy instruction manual, those in power will deploy authority in pursuit of their own agenda. After all, public servants — let’s call them bureaucrats — are people, too. It recalls the adage “personnel is policy.”

Public employees have agendas like everyone else. Worse, the constituencies they prioritize often become the issue-advocates who surround them, whether pressure groups or even the industries they govern, the media, etc. Even big political donors.

The transparency-in-government group Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO), which I represent on federal and state open records matters, examines relationships between private operatives and public offices, such as who is advising or influencing agencies across the issue spectrum, including even attorneys general and, where statute allows, the courts.

This work occasionally yields information about a related problem, the lucrative “revolving door.” By this well-known practice, former government officials become government-contractor or influencer, parlaying their time inside government and their connections therein to shape and/or benefit from policy long after they’ve left their roles in public service.

John Podesta, the on-again-off-again senior White House aide for Presidents Obama and Biden — doling out billions of taxpayer dollars when not lobbying or guiding progressive donor-groups — is one of the more high-flying examples. But even the least sexy agency decisions offer opportunities for wealth and influence.

Public records obtained by GAO often reveal important detail about how former officials and even donor-provided “staff” influenced government in the Biden administration.

Consider the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and its former senior official Cindy Mann. Mann was a top advisor to Obama Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during the calamitous implementation of Obamacare and more recently made the news over claims that a controversial COVID assessment she co-authored for New Jersey served to provide “cover” for the state’s “disaster” in handling COVID in nursing homes.

She appears in numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) productions assisting CMS on behalf of Manatt Health, one of several consulting arms of the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. The politically active firm was co-founded by former Chair of the Democratic National Committee Charles Manatt. It has received nearly $2 million in grants from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, a social justice organization whose goal is “to change policies.”

Mann’s lobbying registrations also suggest a strong partisan bent, showing she lobbied for the New Venture Fund, one of the “managed nonprofits” of “the ‘mothership’ behind a network of Democratic dark money nonprofit groups.” That’s the “Democratic Dark Money Juggernaut” Arabella Advisors. Bankrolled by the likes of George Soros and Swiss Billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella underwrites causes such as “defunding and dismantling the police”.

Consultants have to come from somewhere. But the “somewhere” supplying this army of outside advisors to government is a universe largely made up of businesses and donors advocating big, activist government. And their clients aren’t limited to progressive electorates.

Both Nevada under Republican Governor Joe Lombardo and North Carolina (a red state with a Democratic governor, formerly Roy Cooper and now Josh Stein) have delighted in the benefits of Mann’s advice. In fact, North Carolina offers a case study, emblematic of the broader problem of unprecedented outside influence on, and even participation in, the use of public institutions.

In 2023, GAO exposed Gov. Cooper as a leading recipient of funds from the United Nations Foundation — a “strategic partner” of the UN — to pay for extra staff in departments throughout his administration. In tax filings the UNF describes many of these positions it is financing in state governments as being for “UN Strengthening.”

The practice is increasingly promiscuous. Several years ago I helped expose a Michael Bloomberg campaign spending millions to stock progressive attorney general offices with privately-paid activists. Now, at least one Republican attorney general, Arkansas’s Tim Griffin, has joined forces in the Bloomberg group’s campaigning. After this was exposed in 2018, Bloomberg’s Foundation took a year off, then returned with $20 million in 2020 “to support public service fellows,” and another $5 million in 2021.

Further, Bloomberg’s staffing service has now spread to state utility regulatory commissions responsible for approving (or blocking) pipeline, electricity transmission, and energy production. Their first placement was in the Louisiana Public Service Commission.

Radical outside influence on government has surely never been higher, or more extreme. At least in Wisconsin, voters stepped up to block Mark Zuckerberg from financing state election administration. So why is it acceptable in, say, law enforcement or making decisions on energy supply?

The sums involved suggest great enthusiasm for this strategy of turning to outside activists to support expansion of the state, at least among the state and private donors if not for the public nominally being served. This influence of outside mercenaries and ideologues on government deserves much closer scrutiny.

Chris Horner is an attorney in Washington, D.C.