The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is calling on Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA) to drop her affiliation with the think tank Third Way.
Schwartz, who is currently running for governor, serves as an honorary co-chair of the think tank. The call, made by PCCC co-founder Adam Green in an email to supporters on Wednesday, is the latest shot in a recently in an escalating feud between Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Third Way.
“Can you call Allyson Schwartz today and tell her to drop her affiliation with Third Way immediately?” Green writes in the email to supporters.
The PCCC call came in response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed a few days by Third Way President Jon Cowan and Third Way Senior Vice President for Policy Jim Kessler wrote attacking the “economic populism” of Warren and New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio (D). Green specifically highlighted that op-ed in the email calling for Schwartz to resign.
“Third Way — a Wall Street-funded group that poses as a “progressive” think tank — blasted Warren and her bold economic agenda yesterday in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal,” Green wrote. “They wrote that Warren’s “economic populism [is] disastrous for Democrats,” including the growing consensus that we must expand —not cut- Social Security benefits.”
Gubernatorial candidate John Hanger (D), former secretary of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, also called for Schwartz to step down from the Third Way post.
“Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz can undermine Third Way’s unacceptable attack on good Democrats and important ideas by resigning as Third Way’s Honorary Co-chair,” Hanger said in a statement.
Schwartz spokesman Mark Bergman said the congresswoman “strongly” disagreed with the Journal op-ed but would not step down from from her post at the think tank.
“Allyson thought Third Way’s Op/Ed on Social Security was outrageous and strongly disagrees with it. In 2005, Allyson was an outspoken leader in fighting against President Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security and last year, she fought against Paul Ryan’s attempt to end Medicare as we know it,” Bergman said in an email to TPM. “She has repeatedly been endorsed by the National Committee to Preserve Medicare and Social Security for her leadership in protecting and preserving Social Security and Medicare for current seniors and future retirees.”
This post was updated.
