BILLIONAIRE PLEDGES $12.5 MILLION TO DEFEAT BUSH

WASHINGTON - If there's one man Republican campaign strategists are worried
about as the presidential campaign gets under way - aside from Democratic
contender John Kerry - it is George Soros.

A 73-year-old Hungarian-born billionaire, Soros is more financial wizard
and self-styled philosopher than political tactician. He made a fortune as
a financial speculator and has given much of it away on initiatives
designed to cultivate democratic institutions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

But this year, Soros has a new project: defeating President George W. Bush.

He has pledged to spend $12.5 million, and possibly more, to bring his goal
of ousting Bush to fruition. That eye-popping pledge had made him one of
the biggest donors ever to the Democratic political cause and a lightning
rod for Republican critics.

"George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party for his own political
agenda," David James, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee,
said after pulling out a file Republicans have compiled on Soros and firing
off several unflattering e-mails about the New York billionaire.

Other critics say Soros is using independent political groups to get around
new campaign-finance restrictions.

For his part, Soros says he's motivated by concerns about America's
standing in the world. He has portrayed Bush as nothing less than a threat
to American democracy.

"Bush is taking us in a very dangerous direction," Soros said in a
telephone interview from his home outside New York City earlier this month.

"Extremists have gained control (of the administration) after Sept. 11,"
Soros said, his soft-spoken tone contrasting with the sharpness of his
remarks. The administration, he said, has imposed simplistic "might is
right" policies that threaten to create more violence against the United
States.

Soros spelled out this view earlier this year in a book criticizing Bush's
foreign policy, "The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of
American Power."

But he didn't leave it at that. "I also put my money where my mouth is,"
Soros said.

Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax
advocacy group, said Soros has become "the most feared liberal in the
country because he's got these incredibly deep pockets" and is willing to
open them to "Bush-hating" groups.

Moore said his group has been able to raise several million dollars with a
simple but powerful message to GOP donors: "We can't let George Soros buy
the presidency."

Since last fall, Soros has contributed $9.5 million - with a pledge for an
additional $500,000 - to one of these new groups, America Coming Together,
and an affiliated group, the Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which are both
deeply involved in efforts to oust Bush. He has also contributed $2.5
million to Moveon.org Voter Fund, another group that is working to defeat Bush.

Soros said he is open to giving more, but added: "I hope that it won't be
necessary."

He decided to fund the groups, known as "527s," last summer after he
invited a group of Democratic strategists to his house on Long Island,
N.Y., to discuss the presidential election.

By the end of the day, he had told two veteran Democratic operatives, Steve
Rosenthal and Ellen Malcolm, that he would give $10 million to their new
organization, America Coming Together.

"He said 'I think Democratic donors are despondent. If I come to the table
.. I think we can create some excitement about this,'" recalled Rosenthal,
chief executive officer of the group. "And he was exactly right. He helped
to create a center of gravity on our side."

DOMESTIC POLITICS

The decision to immerse himself in domestic politics is a new turn for
Soros, who as the world's 54th richest man is worth an estimated $7
billion, according to Forbes Magazine.

An intense, impulsive man who has been described as both shy and
aggressive, Soros was born in Budapest in 1930 and as a child lived through
the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Hungary. He fled to England when he was
17 and, after his studies there, came to the United States in 1956, where
he made his fortune.

Over the next several decades, Soros became one of the world's most
successful financial speculators, making millions of dollars for himself
and other investors with his bets in the stock and currency markets.

Business associates have attributed Soros' success to an innate ability to
spot broad economic trends long before others do. In 1992, for instance,
Soros became known as "the man who broke the Bank of England," when he made
$1 billion by betting against the British pound.

But it is another trait that truly separates him from other financial
wizards. Stanley Druckenmiller, who ran Soros' flagship Quantum fund for 12
years, described it this way to Soros biographer Michael Kaufman: "You
know, the ugly way to describe it would be 'balls.'"

"It's really about a sort of courage ... to be willing at the right moment
in time to put it all on the line," Druckenmiller says in the book "Soros:
The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire."

Others say Soros has demonstrated that same trait in his philanthropic
work, often acting on impulse when he doles out money for untested
initiatives and sticking with his bets even if they generate controversy.

"I think he's got an instinctive capacity to grasp complex issues and
synthesize them. He is also quite fearless when it comes to taking on
sacred cows, whether it's in the body politic or popular culture," said
Ethan Nadelmann, who with Soros' backing runs a drug policy center that
advocates treating drug addiction as a health, rather than a criminal, problem.

Nadelmann was specifically referring to Soros' support of initiatives in
Arizona and California legalizing the medical use of marijuana, a stance
that sparked much controversy.

One drug policy expert, Joseph Califano, labeled Soros the "Daddy Warbucks
of drug legalization." Soros countered that he was for a "saner drug
policy," arguing that the war on drugs was unwinnable.

Soros has directed most of his philanthropic energies abroad, pouring
nearly $5 billion into a diverse array of projects through his Open Society
Institute and a network of other foundations. He began that work two
decades ago, with the goal of helping former Eastern Bloc communist
countries flourish into democracies.

He has given money to the Solidarity movement in Poland, helped pay for a
water filtration system in Serbia, and established the Central European
University in Budapest. He spent about $1 billion in Russia alone over the
last 15 years, giving grants to struggling Russian scientists and helping
rural universities connect to the Internet, among other initiatives.

CONCERNED ABOUT U.S.

Now Soros says he is concerned about the climate in the United States,
arguing that the Bush administration's policies threaten to undermine our
own "open society."

"Some of the language of President Bush himself - when he said those who
are against us are for the terrorists - does remind me of Nazi propaganda
and the Communists," Soros said, repeating a criticism laid out in his
book. "It's a kind of extremism in my view and a very dangerous one because
it stifles the critical process. Criticism is unpatriotic."

To his admirers, Soros is driven by "this incredible intensity around
protecting democracy," as Rosenthal put it. "I believe he was feeling as
though he had supported projects around the world to expand and restore
democracy and we were losing ground here at home."

But his critics see Soros' motivations in a very different light.

"Soros and the people that he funds are the threat to an open society,"
said Moore of the Club for Growth. "An open society means a society that
has a light hand of government and doesn't regulate and overtax and
protects freedom. ... He wants a government that's going to come in and
raise taxes, increase regulation of industry, and that retreats from the
war on terror. I think all of those things are extraordinarily dangerous to
an open society."

Even some campaign reform groups that have previously gotten funding from
Soros seem uneasy about his role in the upcoming elections.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign finance reform group
that challenged 527s such as America Coming Together, declined to comment
specifically on Soros' activities.

But, he said, "as a philosophical matter, my own view is that one doesn't
want an individual, a group, a candidate dominating elections because of
extraordinary amounts of money" they have access to. The ban on large
unregulated contributions, he said, is "essential to protect the integrity
of our democracy and to protect against the corruption of our democracy."

Soros defends his contributions as within the new campaign finance law,
which did not mention 527 groups. "While I'm troubled with the role of
money (in politics)," he said, "I feel that I am also within the spirit of
the law because the law was directed at denying access to special interests."

"... Here, I gain no access and I don't represent special interests," he added.

But, he conceded, he is at least hoping to get a wider audience for his
views about foreign policy and the war on terrorism.

"My taking this stance will probably also give me a platform for advocating
the policies I stand for and I intend to do so," he said. "I don't expect
Kerry necessarily to adopt the things that I would like to see adopted. But
I hope that I'll have a better hearing for it."