David Brock has made a healthy living sliding across the political spectrum.
Once a conservative "journalist" who wrote hit pieces on President Bill Clinton and Anita Hill, Brock is, for some, now something of a liberal luminary.
He heads Media Matters for America, a group that seeks to clarify and correct "conservative misinformation" that makes it into the public fold.
And back in 2002, he wrote the bestseller confessional, "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative."
So, it was in this new incarnation — liberal, media critic — that Brock came to Tucson on Saturday as a guest speaker for the fourth anniversary celebration of Arizona List, a grass-roots political group designed to help the campaigns of progressive female candidates.
It was interesting timing for Brock to swing through the Grand Canyon State. He recently took the lead on a planned $40 million, four-month media campaign that will focus on U.S. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
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Brock recently wrote a book called "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media."
"There is a media love affair that has been going on for years," he said during a question-and-answer session Saturday with guests.
"They accept his phony brand as a straight talker, a maverick, a moderate. That needs to be broken through."
But getting Brock to speak in an interview about the planned media campaign against McCain proved as challenging as bridging the gap between conservatives and liberals.
"I am not going to talk about that today," he said. "That wasn't my subject today."
He then walked away.
Another, earlier attempt to speak with Brock was cut off when a woman approached him about her foundation possibly donating money to Media Matters.
"I love foundations," Brock said, rocking back on his heels, before also walking away.
Brock's group, Media Matters, received about $5 million in donations in 2006, according to tax documents. He received about $237,000 in compensation, and the group spent about $2.76 million on salaries.
To bring the anti-McCain media campaign together, Brock has met with financier George Soros, a major Democratic donor and fundraiser, according to The Politico, a Washington, D.C.-based news organization that focuses on politics.
Soros has played a heavy hand in recent elections, donating more than $23 million to various political committees in 2004, according to the campaign finance Web site www. opensecrets.org. Soros was one of the top individual contributors in the 2006 election cycle, donating more than $3.5 million.
He once contributed $1,000 to McCain in 1999.
Much of Brock's selling point, so to speak, to such liberal audiences as Arizona List is his narrative from conservative to liberal partisan. It's a story that has been hailed by some, and blasted by others, who question Brock's sincerity. At the luncheon, he got a loud ovation.
Brock told the group he was "recruited" into the world of conservative media while he was a student at the University of California at Berkeley.
From there, he went on "to engage in journalism inside a political group that valued nothing more than their ideology," he said.
Brock wrote for such conservative publications as The Washington Times and The American Spectator. He wrote "The Real Anita Hill," a book that attacked Hill, the woman who testified against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation.
That book also became the seed for his transition, Brock said. When he was later asked to write a similar-styled attack book about Hillary Clinton, Brock said he could not. And ultimately, the book, titled "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham," was not what his publishers expected.
"I spent two years researching that book," he said. "I approached the Hillary Clinton book much more as a journalist than an ideologue."
