The rented center.
A “moderate” think tank goes to war with the Democratic left. The coverage treats it as a neutral voice of reason. The tax filings show who is paying for the war — and what they sell.
Third Way bills itself as a centrist Democratic think tank. In August 2026 it announced a $15 million campaign to fight the party’s left wing, singling out Medicare-for-All advocates. What its coverage rarely mentions: among the donors on its filings is an insurance-industry front group, and its health agenda runs directly with the interests of the insurers and drug companies that fund the wider effort. Every figure here is anchored to tax filings (via Sludge), Third Way’s own announcements, and mainstream reporting. We document the money and the aligned activity — and we stop short of claiming the donationbought the message, because that is an inference, not a receipt.
What this page is about
Third Way is a Washington think tank that presents itself as the voice of Democratic moderation. In early August 2026, after Medicare-for-All advocate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Third Way announced a $15 million campaign to fight the party’s left wing; its president, Jonathan Cowan, said the group was “preparing for war.” The figure and the framing were reported by The New York Times on August 6, 2026.
A Sludge review of tax filings shows part of who is behind the curtain. Better Solutions for Healthcare (BSFH) — a coalition that includes the insurers’ trade group AHIP and Blue Cross Blue Shield entities, run out of the offices of the Republican firm Targeted Victory — gave $50,000 to Third Way’s advocacy arm in 2024. Third Way’s health agenda — opposing Medicare for All and single-payer, backing site-neutral payment expansion — runs with the interests of the insurers and drug makers behind that effort. This page documents the money and the aligned activity, and grades the “you’re paying for the message” inference honestly.
Books that go deeper on this story. Links are Amazon affiliate searches — buying through them supports the work at no cost to you.
The record, in order
Every dated event on this page, assembled chronologically. The page may cover events in a different order for the narrative; this is the straight timeline.
- 2024An insurance-industry front group gave $50,000 to Third Way’s advocacy arm in 2024.
- Jul 2024Third Way’s health agenda runs with the interests of the insurers and drug makers behind its funders.
- 2026The money bought the message: a neutral-sounding ‘moderate’ front doing the industry’s political work.
- Jul 23, 2026Third Way is building a standing ‘Anti-Extremism’ project against the Democratic left.
- Aug 2026The framing drops the ‘violent’ qualifier, applying ‘extremism’ to beliefs — echoing the administration’s language.
- Aug 6, 2026Third Way announced a $15 million campaign against the Democratic left, targeting Medicare-for-All advocates.
The money and the message, claim by claim
The entries below are anchored to tax filings (reported by Sludge), Third Way’s own public announcements, and New York Timesreporting. The documented money and activity are graded FACT; the “return on investment” reading is posed as PROBABLY TRUE.
An insurance-industry front group gave $50,000 to Third Way’s advocacy arm in 2024.
FACTPer tax filings reviewed by Sludge, Better Solutions for Healthcare (BSFH) donated $50,000 to Third Way’s advocacy arm in 2024 — its only disclosed donation to the group that year. BSFH is a health-insurance-industry coalition that includes the trade group AHIP and Blue Cross Blue Shield entities, and it operates out of the offices of Targeted Victory, a Republican digital and strategy firm to which BSFH has paid millions for advertising. Its principals come from the industry and the GOP: Alexander Schriver, who formed BSFH, was Targeted Victory’s head of public affairs and later a senior vice president at PhRMA; Connie Partoyan, who leads BSFH, is Targeted Victory’s president and a former Republican staffer.
Third Way announced a $15 million campaign against the Democratic left, targeting Medicare-for-All advocates.
FACTAfter Dr. Abdul El-Sayed — a Medicare-for-All advocate — won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Third Way announced a $15 million effort to combat the party’s democratic-socialist wing, with president Jonathan Cowan saying the group was “preparing for war” and singling out El-Sayed. The $15 million figure and the campaign were reported by The New York Times on August 6, 2026.
“Preparing for war. — Jonathan Cowan, Third Way president (as reported)”
Third Way’s health agenda runs with the interests of the insurers and drug makers behind its funders.
FACTThird Way opposes Medicare for All and single-payer health care — the policy the insurance and pharmaceutical industries most fear — and has worked to push Democratic candidates away from single-payer. In July 2024 it led a coalition letter supporting the expansion of “site-neutral” payment legislation. Its policy positions align with the interests of the insurers (via BSFH/AHIP/Blue Cross) and drug makers (PhRMA, where a BSFH founder became a senior executive) connected to its funding.
The money bought the message: a neutral-sounding ‘moderate’ front doing the industry’s political work.
PROBABLY TRUEThis is the synthesis, and we grade it conservatively because it is an inference, not a documented transaction. It rests on the convergence of documented facts: an insurance-industry front group funds Third Way; Third Way spends heavily to defeat the left and the single-payer policy those insurers most oppose; and the group is presented publicly as a neutral moderate voice rather than an industry-aligned one. We grade the “return on investment” reading PROBABLY TRUE — the alignment is real and documented — while stopping short of asserting a proven quid pro quo, which the filings do not show.
The newest front: a Third Way “Anti-Extremism” project
In August 2026, journalist Ken Klippenstein published a leaked internal Third Way staff email showing that the $15 million campaign has a name and an apparatus: an “Anti-Extremism” project aimed at the Democratic left. Third Way corroborated the leak itself by posting a job listing for a “Director of Anti-Extremism.”
Third Way is building a standing ‘Anti-Extremism’ project against the Democratic left.
FACTA July 23, 2026 internal staff email from Third Way senior vice president Lanae Erickson, leaked to Ken Klippenstein, announced 'a strategy to drive awareness of these threats to the party, including adding to our team by hiring a Director of Anti-Extremism,' with the goal of creating 'a counterweight to the forces pushing more Democrats to embrace extreme and illiberal ideas.' This is not a stray email: Third Way independently corroborated it by posting the Director of Anti-Extremism job listing, and spokesperson Kate DeGruyter confirmed to Klippenstein that the effort 'is aimed at the DSA itself, not at liberal Democrats.' The email named Zohran Mamdani and likened the Democratic Socialists of America to Cuba.
“[E]xtreme far-left voices gaining purchase over the past year ... represent a sharp break from a traditional left wing in American politics. — Third Way internal email (as leaked)”
The framing drops the ‘violent’ qualifier, applying ‘extremism’ to beliefs — echoing the administration’s language.
SOME SMOKEThis is Klippenstein's analysis, carried as attributed argument. He notes that federal usage under Obama, Trump, and Biden paired 'extremism' with 'violent' (countering violent extremism, domestic violent extremism, the FBI's 'violent extremism' categories), keeping physical harm as the nominal threshold. Third Way's project drops the qualifier, so holding disfavored beliefs, 'politically toxic ideas and offensive rhetoric' in the email's phrase, is enough. Klippenstein places this beside a State Department report alleging Cuban influence on the American left and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's 'political terrorism' summit and its coined term 'Far-Left Terrorism.' In fairness, DeGruyter says the effort targets the DSA specifically, 'not liberal Democrats,' though Third Way did not say where that line falls. The parallel is the point: a group that presents itself as the anti-Trump center adopting the administration's domestic-extremism vocabulary.
The board behind the “center”
The clearest evidence for who Third Way represents is its own board of trustees. It is not a cross-section of America; it is a roster of Wall Street. Roughly three dozen trustees, overwhelmingly private-equity partners, hedge-fund principals, and senior bankers — disproportionately from firms with Goldman or Morgan in the name — with the balance made up of corporate lawyers and lobbyists. The enumeration below was compiled by Matt Stoller and checked against Third Way’s own published trustee biographies.
Third Way’s board of trustees is overwhelmingly Wall Street finance.
FACTThird Way's own trustee biographies describe a board dominated by private equity, hedge funds, and the largest investment banks. This is not an outside characterization applied to the group; it is the group's self-published roster. And Third Way's own senior vice president, Matt Bennett, has conceded to The Nation that 'the majority' of the group's financial support comes from its board of trustees, 'most of whom are from the finance sector.' The finance concentration, and the near-absence of labor, consumer, or public-interest voices, is the material fact.
- Third Way — David Heller (Vice Chair; former Global Head of Equity Trading, Goldman Sachs)
- Third Way — David A. Coulter (Warburg Pincus; ex-J.P. Morgan Office of the Chairman)
- The Nation — Third Way SVP Matt Bennett: 'the majority' of support comes from the board, 'most of whom are from finance'
- Sludge: the board of trustees as Third Way's primary donor base
- Jonathan Vogelstein (Chairman) — New Providence Asset Mgmt; sr. advisor, Warburg Pincus
- David A. Coulter — Warburg Pincus; ex-vice chair, JPMorgan Chase
- Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein — former Warburg Pincus & Apax
- Marc Spilker — ex-President, Apollo; ex-co-head, Goldman Investment Mgmt
- Andrew Feldstein — CEO/Co-CIO, BlueMountain Capital; ex-JPMorgan Chase
- William Reeves — co-founder, BlueCrest Capital; ex-JPMorgan Chase
- Derek Kaufman — former Head of Global Fixed Income, Citadel
- Peter A. Joseph — co-founder, Joseph Littlejohn & Levy and Palladium Equity Partners
- Graves Tompkins — General Atlantic
- Steve Galbraith — Kindred Capital (ex-Morgan Stanley)
- John Dyson — Millbrook Capital Management
- David Horvitz — SouthOcean Capital Partners
- Joseph Zimlich — CEO, the Bohemian Group (family office)
- Michael Edwards — deputy CIO, Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors
- Brian Frank — Declaration Partners (financier; worked for Michael Dell)
- David Heller (Vice Chair) — former Global Head of Equity Trading, Goldman Sachs
- Derek Kirkland — Co-Head, Global Financial Institutions Group, Morgan Stanley
- William Daley — vice chairman, BNY Mellon; ex-vice chairman, JPMorgan Chase
- Doug Lawrence — ex-Managing Director, JPMorgan Chase
- Bernard Schwartz (Chair Emeritus) — BLS Investments
- Christine A. Varney — Cravath (former Obama antitrust chief)
- David Greenwald — chairman, Fried Frank; ex-deputy GC, Goldman Sachs
- Thurgood Marshall, Jr. — corporate lobbyist
- Susan McCue — corporate lobbyist
- Raj Date — fintech/crypto investor (former CFPB head)
- Strauss Zelnick — CEO, Take-Two Interactive
Third Way’s honorary co-chairs have included former U.S. Senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) — the two senators most identified with blocking their party’s tax and climate agenda, chairing the board of the group that funds the fight.
Representative, not exhaustive. Affiliations are drawn from Third Way’s own trustee biographies and the compilations by Matt Stoller and Robert Reich; roles are prior or current as those sources state. Third Way is a 501(c)(4) and is not required to disclose all donors, so the public roster is a floor, not a full accounting.
The board’s shared interest is the protection of capital: lower capital-gains taxes, lax antitrust, lighter financial regulation.
PROBABLY TRUEThis is the reading Matt Stoller draws from the roster, and we grade it as a well-supported inference rather than a documented mandate. The trustees are not a random assortment of moderates; they are, in the main, people whose businesses benefit from mergers and consolidation, low taxes on investment income, and light-touch regulation. Read against Third Way's policy output, opposing single-payer, resisting the party's antitrust and pro-labor turn, the composition explains the posture better than 'temperament' does. We attribute the interpretation and stop short of asserting each trustee directs each position.
“They aren't 'moderate,' per se, they are just protecting the interests of capital. — Matt Stoller (as posted)”
- Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller), X thread on the Third Way board, Aug 6, 2026
- Third Way — Board of Trustees biographies (primary, for each trustee's affiliations)
The revolving door in one trustee: Christine Varney, from the government’s top antitrust job to defending the mergers.
FACTVarney is, by Third Way's own bio, the only person to have served as both a Federal Trade Commissioner (Clinton) and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust (Obama, 2009-2011) - the government's two most powerful antitrust posts. She now chairs the antitrust practice at the corporate law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she represents companies seeking to clear mergers past the agencies she used to run. The documented fact is the revolving door itself: the enforcer became the defense. Critics including Matt Stoller argue her enforcement record fell well short of her stated posture; we carry that as attributed criticism, while the career path is simply on the record.
What the filings show, and what they don’t
- The donation is documented. BSFH’s $50,000 gift and its insurer membership come from tax filings, not inference. So does its home inside a Republican strategy firm and its industry-and-GOP leadership.
- The activity is documented. The $15 million anti-left campaign, the El-Sayed targeting, the opposition to single-payer, the 2024 site-neutral letter — all on the record, in Third Way’s own words and in mainstream reporting.
- The purchase is not documented. We do not have, and do not claim, a receipt showing the check bought a talking point. Sincere centrists exist; corporate donors also give to people who already agree with them. We grade the “bought” reading PROBABLY TRUE on the strength of the alignment, not as proof.
- The disclosure gap is the narrower, provable point. When Third Way is quoted as a neutral moderate voice — as in theTimes’s August 6 report on its campaign — its industry funding is rarely mentioned alongside. Whether that omission extends across the outlets that platform it is a question worth pressing, not a claim we assert about each one here.
“Moderate” is a funding model, not just a temperament
The label “moderate” carries an unearned presumption of neutrality — the sensible middle, above the fray. This is the first entry in a thread that tests that presumption against the money. When a group that fights the Democratic left is funded in part by the insurers whose business the left threatens, “moderate” describes who pays as much as what is believed. It belongs in the Return on Investment ledger for the plainest reason: money went in, and policy work the funders wanted came out. The open task — for this thread and for the outlets that quote these groups — is simple and rarely done: name the donors before you print the “moderate” label.
Questions worth taking seriously
Isn't it normal for think tanks to take corporate money?
Yes, and that’s the point. Corporate funding of think tanks is routine and legal. The issue is disclosure and framing: when a group is quoted as a neutral “moderate” arbiter, its readers deserve to know it is funded in part by the industries whose policy fights it joins. Normal doesn’t mean neutral.
Are you saying the $50,000 bought Third Way's positions?
No. We document the donation and the aligned activity and grade the “return on investment” reading PROBABLY TRUE — the alignment is real — while stopping short of asserting a quid pro quo the filings don’t show. Note also that $50,000 is one disclosed gift; the larger story Sludge tells is the broader ecosystem of insurer and pharma money moving through the same firms.
Did the outlets that quoted Third Way disclose its funding?
The documented instance is the New York Times’ August 6, 2026 report on Third Way’s campaign, which presented the group’s plans without foregrounding its industry funding. Whether that non-disclosure holds across every outlet that platforms Third Way is a question we raise rather than a claim we assert about each one — it’s a standing challenge to the coverage.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.