articipants in a Johns Hopkins University initiative wanted to “retake the local party apparatus.”
The phrase appears in a September 2024 report describing private meetings organized by the university’s SNF Agora Institute and the R Street Institute. Attendees in Kansas and Kentucky had already begun developing longer-term plans to rebuild local parties.
One adviser to that initiative was Mark de la Iglesia, a former grantmaker at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Freedom House confirms that he advised the specific Johns Hopkins effort supporting conservative leaders on election trust.
By 2026, the organizers were reporting Signal networks involving statewide election officials and staff, alongside contacts with Republican leadership in Congress and the White House. Their newest report describes the challenge this way:
“The challenge is to take effective action while not drawing unwanted attention.”
The context was participants’ fear that publicly confronting the administration would damage their credibility or cost them seats. Their proposed answer was quieter action backed by relationships with other officials.
The meetings followed a deliberate format. Organizers worked with a local official to assemble invitees, began with a dinner, then held a full-day, off-the-record session. State-specific Gallup polling informed discussions of action plans. Participants’ contributions were protected from attribution under Chatham House Rules.
The report attributes the party-rebuilding ambition to participants. Organizers say local leaders drove discussions, the group included Trump voters, and the effort was not an anti-Trump campaign.
The project had prominent Republican partners. A November 2023 Johns Hopkins announcement identified Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson as its architects. It also acknowledged earlier off-the-record meetings in Washington, Utah, Indiana and Texas.
Its public platform urged conservative leaders to affirm election integrity, reassure voters through transparency and outreach, and pursue policy changes that would increase confidence in elections. A national convening at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg Center was expected to draw more than 80 leaders involved in the project.
The initiative’s existence was public. The private discussions behind it were protected from individual attribution, leaving readers unable to identify which participants advocated particular party strategies.
De la Iglesia’s background supplies a concrete connection to Democratic politics and progressive philanthropy. His National Endowment for Democracy biography identifies him as a grantmaking officer in Open Society’s Fiscal Governance Program, with a portfolio covering public-finance transparency and political finance.
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https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/inside-the-neocons-secret-plan-to?r=p112e&utm_medium=ios
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