Democrats commonly denounce the influence of ‘millionaires and billionaires’ on American elections.
Except, of course, when they are funding Democrats.
For decades, George Soros has used his billions to boost progressive causes, winning cheers from the left.
In 2020, the Democratic presidential primary featured not one but two billionaires — former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and green energy activist Tom Steyer. They’ve donated tens of millions to Democratic candidates across the country.
And now, as Virginia’s off-year elections approach, another big-dollar donor is stepping up to fund Democrats in the Old Dominion.
Michael Bills, a former top executive with Goldman Sachs and the founder of the hedge fund Bluestem Asset Management.
The hedge fund is worth an estimated $1.5 billion. Bills has used his share to bankroll Democrats via his advocacy group “Clean Virginia.”
Bills has funneled over $23 million either in personal donations or through Clean Virginia in-state campaigns, according to election finance reports. Among the Democrats who’ve won Bills’ backing is Susanna Gibson, a 2023 candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates.
Clean Virginia was one of Gibson’s top donors, giving her $234,000 — despite the fact she was already collecting plenty of cash performing sex acts on a live porn streaming channel at the time. (She lost to her porn-free GOP opponent.)
But it’s Bills’ focus on energy policy that has created the most pushback, in part because like so many uber-rich liberals, a significant share of his wealth came from the same fossil-fuel energy he now denounces.
Bills is using his donations to push Democratic candidates to join his fight against Dominion Energy, Virginia’s electric monopoly. Bills resents the treatment he received while trying to set up his own power station to supply his 140-acre property with energy derived from renewable sources.
When he first started Clean Virginia in the 2019 campaign cycle, it was to funnel money to candidates who pledged not to accept donations from or hold stock in Dominion Energy. After concerns were raised about a potential quid pro quo, Clean Energy dropped its demand that candidates agree to that pledge, but continues pushing a platform of renewable energy and campaign finance reform.
The personal vendetta has critics labeling Bills just another rich Democrat using money to undermine the political process.
“Michael Bills offers an outsized influence on state and local politics,” said Peter Flaherty, chairman and CEO of the National Legal and Policy Center. “This big money is totally debasing our democratic system. Bills will always be able to pay his electric and gas bills, whereas ordinary people in Virginia are going to be paying much higher energy rates, facing shortages, and having a reduced standard of living.”
In 2019, the state’s Democratic Party voted to stop accepting donations from Dominion Energy, after which Bills donated $200,000 to it, according to campaign finance and media reports. By September 2023, Bills and Clean Virginia had spent at least $4 million in that cycle, with 95 percent of the funds going to Democrats or left-leaning political organizations, according to finance records.
Ironically, Bills’ wealth has some roots in fossil-fuel profits.
A former top executive with Goldman Sachs and Tiger Management, Bills founded the hedge fund Bluestem Asset Management, LLC. He has served on numerous boards and overseen countless investments, including the board of Intergraph Corporation, which supported petroleum exploration, and for Lone Pine Capital and HighVista Strategies, both of which have had major energy investments, including stakes in Constellation Energy, Talen Energy, and Cheniere Energy – all companies with deep fossil fuel interests.
The fight against Dominion Energy takes Bills into the political territory of utility deregulation, which Clean Virginia supports, and several firms tied to Bills, such as Lone Pine, have investments that could benefit from that.
“Michael Bills is using Dominion Energy, ‘the big bad utility,’ as a strawman to push a radical Green New Deal agenda that the voters roundly rejected last fall when they elected President Trump and his energy dominance policies,” said Craig Richardson, president of the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute.
As more and more data centers come online, the demand for reliable and abundant energy will only increase. Northern Virginia is a hub for these facilities and has become known as “Data Center Alley.” Throughout the state, there are nearly 600 data centers, which contribute approximately 74,000 jobs and $9.1 billion per year to the state’s GDP.
Providing that power as more and more states and power grid operators look at their available resources and plan for the future will be a race.
Meta – Facebook’s parent company – recently announced that it inked a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy to power its AI and data center operations using the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois.
In February, Dominion Energy announced on its 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call that it had nearly doubled its data center power capacity under contract. Dominion Energy also operates two nuclear power plants in the state.
Bills sits on the Board of Trustees for the Environmental Defense Fund, which opposes nuclear energy.
“It seems to be these lefties who do well in the markets and get bored with it and then decide they want to win at politics,” said Tom Jones of the American Accountability Foundation.