Bronx-born Ludovic Blain once helped lead the democracy program at Demos, working on campaigns for Election Day registration and felon voting rights. And for nearly a decade, he’s been the executive director at California Donor Table, a statewide community of political and philanthropic donors who pool their funds to make investments in communities of color to elect candidates and hold them accountable. Last we connected, he spoke about his long-running work with his mentor Steve Phillips, who was married to the late progressive philanthropist Susan Sandler, herself the daughter of groundbreaking progressive funders Herb and Marion Sandler of San Francisco.
Blain also moves in circles with another wealthy Bay Area family, real estate mogul Wayne Jordan and his wife Quinn Delaney, founders of the Akonadi Foundation, as well as founding donors of California Donor Table along with Phillips and Sandler. A political science major at CUNY, Blain has helped rack up a range of local and statewide wins through his work with CDT, including turning ardently red regions outside of San Diego and Los Angeles blue. And Blain has been bullish on using a variety of 501c3 and 501c4 tools to achieve these victories. He’s also hammered home that there’s a difference between backing candidates, even candidates of color, who toe the party line and those who are truly progressive.
“We need to be creating a pipeline of good folks who can be running for higher and higher office. And our work through the donor table is amplifying this message to donors,” he told me in 2021. “Our goal isn’t to beat Republicans. It’s to elect progressives.”
But a lot can change in a few years, so I thought it would be a good time to catch up with the master organizer. In our conversation, I found out more about what CDT is doing to step up right now, Blain’s take on what progressive power-building can look like locally and nationally, and why progressive donors need to embrace multiple forms of philanthropy and political giving.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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