Who is… David B. Kendall?

Authored over 210 Third Way memos supplying moderate Democrats with push-polling against Medicare for All after previously advising Republicans at a Ripon Society panel to use Democrats as "political cover" to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70.

Commuted from Montana to D.C. while chairing Missoula's county party, sparking formal state complaints and a Montana Supreme Court battle from a Bernie Sanders delegate over locking local progressives out of party operations.

Worked at the Democratic Leadership Council's flagship think tank promoting the Breaux-Thomas plan to convert traditional Medicare into privatized "premium support" vouchers, work later cited by The Heritage Foundation to defend Paul Ryan's Medicare privatization budget.

Served conservative Ways and Means Democrat Rep. Michael Andrews and worked on the 1993 Clinton Health Care Task Force drafting market-based "managed competition" bills to block single-payer.

Serves as lead health-policy author for Third Way's $15M campaign mobilizing against democratic socialists and Medicare for All candidates in 2026 and 2028 primaries.

Writes memos opposing single-payer and curbing hospital 340B drug discounts while Third Way takes corporate funding from CVS Health, Johnson & Johnson, and coalitions representing UnitedHealth, Cigna, Elevance, and Centene CEOs.

Backed at Third Way's 501c4 advocacy arm by a $50K grant from Better Solutions for Healthcare, a Blue Cross-affiliated dark-money group run out of GOP digital firm Targeted Victory and founded by a future PhRMA executive.

Paid roughly $135K+ annually at a Wall Street-governed 501c4 think tank while co-authoring Medicare privatization papers with scholars from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and Koch-funded Mercatus Center.