Blair W. Effron

Blair W. Effron

Blair W. Effron is a partner at and co-founder of Centerview.

Bio

Effron was Group Vice Chairman of UBS AG and a member of the Board of UBS Investment Bank, where he also sat on several management committees.

Effron currently sits on the Executive Committees of the Boards of Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Museum, and is on the Board of the Northside Child Development Center of Greater NY, and New Visions for Public Schools. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institute. He holds a BA from Princeton University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

He is married to Cheryl Cohen Effron. Between July 1, 2008–June 30, 2009, the two contributed between $100,000–$249,999 to the Brookings Institution.

Major Financial Backer for Joe Biden

From the Wall Street Journal Nov 10, 2020:

Wall Street overwhelmingly put its money behind Mr. Biden in this election, and donations have always bought some level of access to the Oval Office. Hedge-fund investors Donald Sussman and James Simons and investment bankers Blair Effron and Roger Altman were among the biggest financial backers of the president-elect.

'Big Donors Form New Alliance to Seize House From Republicans'

An article published at the New York Times by Shane Goldmacher dated May 9, 2018 titled "Big Donors Form New Alliance to Seize House From Republicans" explains the plot of the House Victory Project by "major Democratic donors" including Blair W. Effron "to raise roughly $10 million that would be injected into as many as two dozen key House battlegrounds in an effort to wrest control of Congress from Republicans."

Major Democratic donors in New York have discreetly formed a new political alliance to raise roughly $10 million that would be injected into as many as two dozen key House battlegrounds in an effort to wrest control of Congress from Republicans.

Admission to be an official partner in what’s being called the House Victory Project comes with a $108,000 price tag. More than 80 people have each committed that sum, according to a half-dozen donors familiar with the group, whose existence has not previously been reported.

The $108,000 pledge allows each donor to effectively give the maximum $5,400 contribution to 20 different House candidates. With nearly $9 million in commitments amassed so far, each Democratic recipient could see a windfall of as much as $432,000 — an amount that, for many House candidates, equals months of fund-raising in one fell swoop.

Jane D. Hartley, a former ambassador to France under President Barack Obama, said that the donors were a “very diverse” group that included philanthropists who have previously not engaged in political giving.

“Many have not been involved in politics in the past, but they’ve said they can’t sit out this election,” she said.

Ms. Hartley, who hosted an event in recent months to pitch donors on the idea, is one of five organizers of the project, donors said. The others include Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton; Roger Altman, the former deputy treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; and two investment bankers who are major Democratic fund-raisers, Deven J. Parekh and Blair W. Effron.

Ms. Hartley, the only of the five to return calls for comment, declined to discuss how candidates would be chosen, but others briefed on the group’s plans said they plan to stay mostly away from contested Democratic primaries and the ideological battles that are roiling the party across the country.

Instead, the group is focusing on bolstering Democratic candidates in general election battleground races, with the goal of flipping 24 Republican seats to take the House in November.

Donors who got pitches to contribute said the group was focused on quantitative criteria that included the results in the past election, such as if President Trump or Hillary Clinton carried a district, as well as the ratings of the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato, a race prognosticator. Candidates have not been brought in for interviews.

“The idea is to win 24 highly curated races,” said Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist and Democratic donor, who said that many of the contributors involved have worked together for decades.

Mr. Patricof said the goal was finding candidates with a “high probability of prevailing” in November.

Paperwork to form the House Victory Project was filed last month with the Federal Election Commission and it listed 10 initial Democratic House candidates: Tom Malinowski and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey; Jason Crow of Colorado; Susie Lee of Nevada; Brad Ashford of Nebraska; Angie Craig of Minnesota; Debbie Mucarsel-Powell of Florida; Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; Elaine Luria of Virginia; and Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona.

One donor, who was approached about joining but declined and requested anonymity to speak candidly about the effort, said the group was raising the political profiles in Washington of its leaders by bundling donations from others.

“This is taking the Wall Street theory of ‘other people’s money’ and applying it to politics,” the donor said. “They want to be the ones to deliver the check, to be the players.”

Campaign bundlers — those who collect contributions from friends and associates — have risen to national prominence. One prominent bundler, Paul Singer, the Republican hedge fund manager, can raise six-figure sums for House candidates, and donates millions of dollars to national G.O.P. causes and candidates.

For House candidates, large-scale direct campaign contributions are a hard commodity to come by.

Federal election rules limit direct donations to candidates to $2,700 per donor for both the primary and general election, but joint committees, such as the House Victory Project, can bundle those contributions into one larger check.

For three of the candidates — Mr. Crow, Mr. Ashford and Ms. Luria — the full $432,000 from 80 donors would represent more than they raised altogether in the first quarter of 2018. (During the primary, they would be eligible for the first half: $216,000.)

The House Victory Project is continuing to look for more donors, which the group calls “partners,” but its leaders are already happy with the pledge rate.

“The response we’ve been getting is just much more than we thought,” Ms. Hartley said.

The group continues to solicit new partners to grow those sums even more, but has consciously tried to keep a low profile, aware that the idea of New York donors pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into races in Arizona, Nebraska and Michigan may not play well locally.

The House Victory Project will not have to disclose its donors until July.

Support Democrat Stimulus Bill

Blair W. Effron signed a letter along with "more than 150 CEOs" from the Partnership for New York City to "urge immediate and large-scale federal legislation to address the health and economic crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic". The letter said in part that a $1.9 trillion "stimulus" Bill under Joe Biden "provides a framework for coordinated public-private efforts to overcome COVID-19 and to move forward with a new era of inclusive growth. The country’s business community is prepared to work with you to achieve these critical objectives."

External links

• Brookings Institution website