The 19th Amendment and the Lincoln Project

This Sunday is the anniversary of a demonstration that led directly to women’s suffrage—the right to vote. And 99 years later it led to the creation of the 19^th News, a center-left nonprofit news site profiled in InfluenceWatch.

On August 28, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson (D) was picketed by women suffragists.  During the 1912 presidential election, Wilson and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt (running against Wilson as a third-party candidate in the 1912 election) disagreed on whether women should have the right to vote. Roosevelt was supportive, and Wilson opposed.

According to the History Channel:

Many of the women were arrested and thrown in jail. Some of the jailed suffragists went on a hunger strike and were force-fed by their captors. Wilson, appalled by the hunger strikes and worried about negative publicity for his administration, finally agreed to a suffrage amendment in January 1918.

The 19^th Amendment was ratified in August 1920. The 19^th News was founded in 2019.

Here’s how the InfluenceWatch profile describes the founding:

19th News was founded in 2019 by press veterans Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora. Ramshaw was frustrated by how traditional media outlets were dominated by “male and pale” individuals who covered female politicians in an allegedly sexist manner that focused on their “electability” and “likability.” Despite having no fundraising experience, Ramshaw pitched the idea of a female-led and focused (particularly on women of color) media outlet to her extended social network, which included Kathryn Murdoch and Craig Newmark. In six months, Ramshaw raised $2 million to support the venture.

After last November’s presidential election, 19^th News added lefty commentator Sonny Hostin of The View to its board of directors. Eight days earlier on the ABC chat show, Hostin had blamed “uneducated white women” for Donald Trump’s election victory

“The 19th Amendment remains unfinished business,” claims the 19^th News. This is obviously true, as they apparently can’t even convince their board members that it was a good idea.

But the erstwhile Republican consultants at the anti-Trump Lincoln Project know that the 19^th News does break real news. The InfluenceWatch profile for the Lincoln Project includes several examples:

In February 2021, [Steve] Schmidt, along with Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, had resigned from the organization’s board. According to 19th News, it was reportedly due to controversy over sexual misconduct allegations against John Weaver and co-founder Jennifer Horn’s claims that leadership had ignored said allegations. Another controversy mentioned were several anonymous accounts of former and current employees detailing a “toxic workplace” within the organization and the usage of inappropriate language within the office space and in political ads.

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It was also reported by 19th News that the Lincoln Project had not negotiated to determine whom or which group would hold the ownership of donor data collected by political ads that were released onto social media. Due to this, according to the article, the data’s market value only grew as more donors gave to the organization. According to several anonymous interviews from former and current employees, Schmidt frequently stated that the Lincoln Project was his, “vehicle to achieve “generational wealth.””

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News nonprofit 19th News interviewed several anonymous current and former employees that made claims of inappropriate language being frequently used within both the workplace and in the Super PAC’s political ads. Many instances of language regarding gender and sexuality were used which, “made many of them uncomfortable, the dozens of interviews revealed.” One example used by 19th News was Ben Howe, a video editor for the Super PAC whom was once described in a July 2020 interview with Vanity Fair as, “the creative mind, video editor, and…sometimes narrating voice on many of the group’s ads.”  Howe had been let go from the organization in July 2020 following several explicit tweets he had posted in which he used “offensive slang for female anatomy” directed against “political rivals.”

Here are additional Capital Research Center reports regarding the Lincoln Project:

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