Voters’ Right to Know is a coalition of individuals and organizations with expertise in research, policy, and advocacy surrounding the transparency of political spending.
Steering Committee
Jim Greer is an entrepreneur and angel investor who founded Kongregate, a web and mobile platform that distributes over 80,000 games. Kongregate reaches over 18 million monthly visitors, and was acquired by GameStop in 2010. Jim has worked in the game industry since 1991 and holds a Computer Science degree from Princeton. He also works actively on the issue of political reform, founding CounterPAC in 2014, and serving on the boards of Represent.Us and Mayday PAC.
Lenny Mendonca is a director emeritus from McKinsey & Company where he founded the firm’s U.S. state and local public-sector practice and led the McKinsey Global Institute. He is a senior fellow at the Presidio Institute, Chair of Children Now, co-Chair of California Forward, and co-founder and Chair of Fusecorps. He is the Chair Emeritus of the Bay Area Council and the Economic Institute of the Bay Area and serves on the boards of Fidelity Charitable, New America, Western Governors University, The Committee for Economic Development, Common Cause, The College Futures Foundation, California Competes. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and on the Advisory Boards of QB3 and The Public Policy Institute of California. Lenny and his wife founded and own the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company and the Mavericks Beer Company.
Daniel G. Newman is the Co-Founder and President of MapLight, an organization whose ground-breaking database connects data on campaign contributions, politicians, legislative votes, industries, companies, and more to show patterns of influence never before possible to see. Dan has led MapLight from a 2005 startup to an established national resource for citizens and journalists. His innovative use of technology to reveal influence in government earned him a position on Fast Company’s list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2010 and recognition as a World Affairs Council Civic Innovator in 2014. Dan is a national expert on money and politics issues and is frequently cited on NPR, PBS, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and FOX Business News.
John Pudner is executive director of Take Back Our Republic. He managed political campaigns for almost three decades, including jump-starting the campaign of Dave Brat, who would ultimately unseat US majority leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 primary, and helping defeat a 32-year incumbent state senator in Alabama’s general election that same year. Pudner won three out of four races in which he was involved, focusing on outsmarting rather than outspending. His political work stretched throughout his career as founder of Concentric Direct LLC, director of external affairs for ALFA, and vice president of national grassroots affairs for McGuire Woods Consulting.
Ann M. Ravel served the Federal Election Commission under President Barack Obama from 2013-2017, serving as Chair of the Commission in 2015 and Vice Chair in 2014. Previously, Ms. Ravel served as Chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), appointed by Governor Brown, Jr. At the FPPC, Ms. Ravel oversaw the regulation of campaign finance, lobbyist registration and reporting, and ethics and conflicts of interest related to officeholders and public employees. During her tenure at the FPPC, Ms. Ravel was instrumental in the creation of the States’ Unified Network (SUN) Center, a web-based center for sharing information on campaign finance. Before joining the FPPC, Ms. Ravel served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Torts and Consumer Litigation in the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice and Santa Clara County Counsel from 1998 until 2009. Ms. Ravel has served as an elected Governor on the Board of Governors of the State Bar of California, a member of the Judicial Council of the State of California, and Chair of the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation. Ms. Ravel is the daughter of a Latin American immigrant mother and an American father. She was raised in Latin America before her family settled in the San Francisco Bay area, which she considers home.
Leadership
Jim Heerwagen, Chair, guides and supports national and state initiatives aimed at improving government’s responsiveness to the people. He initiated the 2016 Voters Right to Know ballot initiative in California. Jim has more than 25 years of experience in executive, investor, and advisor roles for early-stage technology companies. He was co-founder and CEO of IQVine, President and CEO of Sunvolt Nanosystems, Inc., President and CEO of NtechRA, Inc., and founder of Bridge Partners. He is on the Boards of Directors of California Forward, MapLight, the HealthTrust of Silicon Valley, and the Board of Visitors of the Duke University School of Engineering.
Jay Costa, Director, has a deep background working for transparency of political money, including roles as executive director at CounterPAC, a nonpartisan political committee devoted to fighting dark money in elections; program director at MapLight, a nonpartisan campaign finance research organization; advisor to the 2016 Berkeley Fair Elections Committee, which led a successful ballot campaign to create a citywide public financing system; national coordinator at Rootstrikers, a grassroots organization advocating for government reform; and as a mayoral appointee on Berkeley’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission and San Francisco’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. Jay holds an A.B. from Harvard College.
Darrin Lim, Treasurer, is a partner and co-founder of Politicom Law LLP. Prior to co-founding Politicom Law, Darrin Lim was a partner at Nielsen Merksamer. Mr. Lim serves on the Steering Committee of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (“COGEL”), a trade association for ethics agencies and regulators throughout North America. He graduated with distinction from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law and is a member of the California State Bar.
Funders
As an organization committed to the transparency of political spending, the Voters’ Right to Know Project voluntarily discloses all sources of funding above $250.
Voters’ Right to Know is funded by:
Larry Birenbaum
Ann & John Doerr
Jim Greer
Jim Heerwagen
Laura & Gary Lauder
Lenny Mendonca
Simone Otus Coxe
Dan Schryer
Partners
- Analyst Institute: a research institute that collaborates with political and social justice campaigns around the US to measure and increase the impact of their programs. Analyst Institute leads VRTK research into the efficacy of disclosure.
- California Clean Money Campaign: a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that has been dedicated to educating the public about the need to lessen the unfair money influence on election campaigns since 2001. CCM volunteers gathered over 30,000 signatures for the 2016 VRTK project and serves as our grassroots field operation.
- California Forward: a nonprofit organization driven to make the promise of the California Dream attainable for all. Their mission is to inspire better decision making by governments to grow middle class jobs, promote cost-effective public services, and create accountability for results. CA FWD provides strategic advice and fiscal sponsorship for our 501(c)3 project.
- Campaign Legal Center: a nonpartisan organization focused on election law and democracy issues, supports strong enforcement of U.S. campaign finance laws, advocates for ethics reform, and fights partisan gerrymandering. CLC develops VRTK model law, based on VRTK research evidence.
- Carnegie Mellon Dietrich College of Humanities & Decision Sciences: Professor of Psychology Daniel Oppenheimer is a national authority on behavioral economics. He wrote Democracy Despite Itself: Why A System That Shouldn’t Work at All Works So Well. He drives VRTK research on the cognitive process behind disclosure’s impact on voter, campaign, and funder perceptions and behavior.
- Common Cause: a nonpartisan grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy, Common Cause advises on development of model law and its implementation in specific states.
- End Citizens United: End Citizens United is a grassroots Political Action Committee dedicated to reforming our campaign finance system and standing against Citizens United.
- MapLight: a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that reveals and tracks the influence of money in politics in the United States. MapLight manages VRTK’s project on political disclosure in the digital age.
- Represent Us: Represent.Us is a fiercely non-partisan movement to pass tough anti-corruption laws in cities and states across America, and end the legalized corruption that has come to define modern politics.
- YouGov: an international internet-based market research firm. YouGov develops and fields VRTK research instruments.
