This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
THE ARCHITECT
Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it.
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/Podhorzer, eh?
Podhorzer has worked in progressive politics since 1976. He was associate director for Citizen Action and worked at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
Podhorzer came to the AFL–CIO in 1997.[5] He served as deputy director of the political department from 2005, and on 28 June 2011, AFL–CIO President Richard Trumka announced that Podhorzer would be the Federation's new political director.
While at the AFL, Podhorzer helped establish Working America, the community partner of the AFL–CIO which has grown to 3 million members nationwide. Podhorzer serves as the executive director to Workers’ Voice, a "super PAC". As political director, Podhorzer leads the AFL–CIO's strategy of counteracting the influx of spending by Republican-allied super PACs by stepping up its ground game for the 2012 elections,[6] as well as helping lead the Federation's voter protection efforts and mobilization strategy.[7][8] The AFL–CIO said they will have more than 400,000 activists to work on the fall 2012 election. And on Election Day, the Federation will deploy 5,000 to 6,000 poll monitors to watch voting booths.[9]
Podhorzer's influence on using data-driven strategies in electoral campaigns is discussed in Sasha Issenberg's 2013 book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.[10][11]
A 4 February 2021 article by Molly Ball in TIME credited Podhorzer as "the architect" of a "shadow campaign that saved the 2020 Election."[12]