A cadre of left-wing strategists and Hollywood insiders with experience bringing celebrities and influencers to back Democrats quietly launched a new organization, Stage Left, dedicated to “content creation and issue amplification,” corporate filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. The group’s founding directors include Kamala Harris’s “celebrity whisperer,” Greg Propper, the man who led the Harris campaign’s controversial strategy to shell out millions on celebrity appearances. His involvement indicates that Stage Left may serve as an entity through which Democrats can pay celebrities and influencers for political advocacy.
Stage Left was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in Washington, D.C., on June 22, records show. Founded by a handful of ex-Obama aides, entertainment industry figures, and left-wing media strategists who specialize in the celebrity “influencer” sphere, the group describes itself in the filings as a “Non-profit organization engaged in content creation and issue amplification.”
One of Stage Left’s directors, Democratic public relations guru Propper, was dubbed Harris’s “celebrity whisperer,” helped arrange for celebrities to appear at her campaign events and for them to endorse her failed 2024 presidential bid, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Harris’s campaign paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to production companies and managers of celebrities who joined her on the campaign trail, from Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen to rappers Fat Joe and 2 Chainz.
The expenditures, revealed in federal campaign finance disclosures, prompted scrutiny from Democrats who argued that Harris’s celebrity-studded campaign stops cost exorbitant sums but did little to generate support. Enter Stage Left.
The firm’s launch comes as Democratic candidates increasingly attempt to boost their fan bases by funneling money to left-wing firms that, in turn, pay online influencers to boost their campaigns. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, for example, has paid more than $36,000 to a firm that specializes in “creator-led campaigns” and has a “network of powerful online messengers” on its payroll, the Free Beacon reported. Because the money goes to the firm and not directly to the influencer or an entity owned by the influencer, it is harder to trace than the Harris campaign’s payments. Stage Left could, in theory, provide a similar model for Hollywood celebrities.
The Elias Law Group, the law firm of Democratic fixer Marc Elias, did not respond to a request for comment. The firm is listed as Stage Left’s “contact” on its corporate filing.
In addition to Propper, the Harris “celebrity whisperer,” Stage Left’s other corporate directors include former Obama aide Paulette Aniskoff; Bruce Cohen, the film producer behind Silver Linings Playbook and the former co-chair of President Joe Biden’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities alongside Lady Gaga; Ashley Allison, an ex-Obama adviser and communications strategist who creates “content featuring Black and Brown influencers”; and Jason Berkenfeld, a former corporate adviser who told the New York Times last year that he was raising money through an entity called Project Bullhorn to fund what he described as a left-wing “echo chamber.” The project, he said, included “a fund backing left-leaning creators on YouTube” as well as “a ‘matchmaking service’ to book these creators on YouTube shows and podcasts.”
Filings show that Stage Left was incorporated by Graham Wilson, a partner at Elias Law Group, which describes itself as the “nation’s largest law firm focused on representing the Democratic Party, Democratic campaigns, nonprofit organizations, and individuals committed to securing a progressive future.” Stage Left shares an address with Bully Pulpit International, a “cultural lobbying” firm where Propper and Allison serve as partners.
Bully Pulpit, which has helped craft communications strategies for the Hillary Clinton, Biden, and Harris presidential campaigns, claims it has created a “new model of influence for brands” called “cultural lobbying.” The firm said it works with “digital influencers” to build “public acceptance, will and pressure” for left-wing policy changes.
“Just as policy lobbyists build relationships with lawmakers and staffers over time — educating them, understanding their motivations, showing up consistently — cultural lobbyists build strategic, long-term relationships with the artists, creators, digital influencers, and storytellers who shape the emotional, social, and moral climate that enables policy change to happen in the first place by building public acceptance, will and pressure,” Propper wrote in a promotional post on the Bully Pulpit website.
Propper became a partner at Bully Pulpit in 2025, after the firm bought Propper Daley, the Los Angeles-based agency he founded to influence public opinion through the entertainment industry. Propper, whose celebrity clients include John Legend and Kerry Washington, was “tapped by the Harris campaign to manage Hollywood support” in 2024.
Propper has been outspoken about the importance of culture in creating shifts in public opinion. The entertainment industry “is where so many people are getting information,” he told Forbes, “and it’s where people have these really special parasocial relationships with either television characters or digital creators who they feel like they know.”
Berkenfeld, another corporate director for Stage Left who served as an adviser to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt during his tumultuous post-Google career, has also advocated for using influencers to win public support for left-wing policies.
“We will need to create self-sustaining businesses if we want to build an echo chamber with sufficient scale and reach,” he told the Times regarding Project Bullhorn.
Democratic politicians have increasingly sought to enlist influencers in their campaigns. Last year, the New York Times reported that billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who was running for governor of California, paid $100,000 to TikTok star Carlos Eduardo Espina, who endorsed Steyer in a video post.
While the Federal Election Commission tightly regulates traditional TV and radio political advertisements—and requires campaigns to disclose their ad spending—social media faces fewer restrictions. Online influencers have become a “magnet for campaigns and groups that want to push political priorities without disclosing where their money is going or revealing that some of their supporters are being paid,” the Times reported.
Read the full article here
