About Us
Our History
Our president, Mike Lux, founded American Family Voices in 2000 with a mission to take on projects that needed doing, but that more traditional DC groups weren’t able or willing to take on. He wanted AFV to be a center of innovation in political strategy, with the ability to move with lightning speed and without bureaucracy to make a big impact on the political world.
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We were the first group to realize that unmarried women were becoming a key part of the progressive base, and to experiment with targeting and turning them out to vote, something that the entire Democratic party and progressive movement now routinely focuses on. We launched the Daily Enron, one of the very first political/policy blogs in history, way back in 2002 before anyone had ever heard of the term blog, and helped start OpenLeft in 2006; we made the first online political video that hit over a million views (it had 8,000,000+); and in 2014, we sponsored the journalism that broke several hours of audio from the Koch brothers’ secret meetings featuring Mitch McConnell and other Republican politicians. That audio became a major embarrassment to both the Kochs and their political friends: it helped generate literally hundreds of negative media stories, and became a major part of Jane Mayer’s highly publicized book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.
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Our theory of change has been 3-fold:
Utilizing an inside/outside strategy. We are one of the few groups with close ties both to Democratic elected officials and to the activists and Netroots groups in the progressive movement. Speakers at our events over the years have included Hillary Clinton, Dick Gephardt, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, and Elizabeth Warren, because these leaders recognize the important work we have done on progressive policy initiatives with labor, socially conscious businesses, MoveOn, DailyKos, Americans for Financial Reform, Public Citizen, and many other groups. We always seek ways to bridge these two worlds, to keep people in communication and working together on key issues and campaigns.
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Creating content that drives conversations. Despite being relatively small, OpenLeft was one of the five most linked-to political blogs and AFV Chair Mike Lux won an award as the most influential blogger in the country, before the site was merged with DailyKos. In addition to writing, we produce online video on issues and policy, and sponsor the grassroots news program The Undercurrent. AFV and Undercurrent videos have appeared in major online publications like Huffington Post, The Nation, and Salon, and on broadcast and cable news. Our videos consistently are watched by Democratic Party and progressive movement opinion leaders. For a progressive group of our size, no one has been able to generate the kind of media hits and video views that we have.
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Launching strategic initiatives that build the progressive movement. Last year, we hosted the first major summit that brought together socially conscious business executives with leaders of the progressive movement to find ways to achieve shared policy priorities. We are working with the National Conference of Democratic Mayors to bring their members into these exciting new policy discussions in the coming year.
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Our Mission
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Under perpetual attack from corporate and conservative interests with more money and power, the progressive movement needs groups willing and able to think outside the box. American Family Voices is intentionally lean and mean because we want to avoid the bureaucracy and institutional defensiveness that keep organizations from innovating and risk-taking. Because of this, we have been at the forefront of developing new message ideas and strategic initiatives for the progressive cause.
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American Family Voices serves as an umbrella group that helps foster a broad network of organizations – including civil rights, environmental, women’s rights, consumer advocacy and health care organizations, and multi-issue think tanks – and build their infrastructure, both in the field and in communications.
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We also fill gaps in the progressive movement by conducting research and providing strategic messaging and public relations work that nobody is doing, which helps to drive new media stories.
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In all of these cases, we have fed our findings and research to reporters and bloggers, delivered daily internet feeds to activists, progressive groups and the general public, and in some cases we have run quick-hitting ads to get more attention to the story. We have also run a robust phone calling program in an effort to educate voters on important issues and to help fuel grassroots organizing and lobbying at all levels of government.
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"AFV has a long history fighting in the trenches with progressives for progressive values – ranging from its efforts to attack corporate corruption in the wake of the Enron scandal to fighting for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The organization’s president, Mike Lux, has been my friend and ally for many years. Mike has a history of marshaling progressive forces around the country to advocate some incredibly important policy reforms."
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-Senator Elizabeth Warren-
Mike Lux
Mike Lux is a co-founder of Democracy Partners, an innovative, full-service national consulting firm launched in 2011; and has been the CEO of his own consulting firm, Mike Lux Media, since 1999. Clients have included many of the most important institutions in the progressive community, including the League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, Moveon.org, the NAACP Voter Fund, Center for Community Change, DailyKos, and Democracy Alliance. He has also been featured on various news outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, and the Thom Hartmann show; as well as being a frequent front-page contributor to The Huffington Post and for DailyKos and Crooks & Liars.
Mike served as a senior staffer or advisor on six different presidential campaigns. He was the national constituency director for the 1992 Clinton campaign and the special assistant to the president for public liaison in the Clinton White House from 1993-1995. During his time in the Clinton Administration, Mike worked closely with a wide range of constituency groups, as well as on health care and budget issues. He served in the 1992 campaign war room, the 1993 budget war room, and the 1994 health care war room, being one of only two people to serve in all three. In the late 1990s, Mike was the senior vice-president for political action at People For the American Way and the PFAW Foundation. A member of the Obama-Biden transition team in 2008-2009, Mike was its liaison to the progressive community.
Mike currently serves on the boards of several important organizations, including the Arca Foundation and Netroots Nation, and is also a co-founder of the Center for Progressive Leadership, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Progressive Majority, and Women’s Voices/Women Vote. He was until recently the chair of the board of Progressive Congress Action Fund. Mike founded American Family Voices in 2000 and remains the chair of the board. He is also the author of the widely praised book The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. His latest book, How to Democrat in the Age of Trump, was published in June of 2018.
Mike Lux is a proud native of Lincoln, Nebraska, where most of his family still lives. He has had the joy of being married to Barbara Laur since 1983.
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You can follow him on Twitter @ProgressiveLux.
Lauren Windsor
Lauren Windsor is the executive director of American Family Voices, and a partner in Democracy Partners and Mike Lux Media. She was the deputy communications director for the Tom Steyer 2020 presidential campaign.
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Lauren Windsor is the creator of The Undercurrent, a field reporting web show that has broken major news, most recently with the bombshell recordings of Justice Samuel Alito and his wife Martha-Ann. Past scoops range from exposing the Koch brothers’ donor retreats to the efforts
to overturn the 2020 presidential election to Cleta Mitchell's voter suppression tactics and other ongoing rightwing threats to democracy. Her investigation of the 2014 Koch brothers’ summer donor retreat broke several hours of audio from key Senate candidates and GOP operatives. It was one of the biggest political stories of that cycle, leading to hundreds of press hits in online and print publications, and local, national, and cable news television, and was featured prominently in Jane Mayer’s best-selling book on the Koch brothers, Dark Money. You can view press highlights here.
In 2020, Lauren spent six weeks in Georgia covering the Senate special elections, breaking major scoops on Rudy Giuliani, then-Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville, and
then-Senator David Perdue. The Undercurrent was the first outlet to disclose that any U.S. senators would be joining Republican House Members in challenging the Electoral
College results. Trump himself tweeted The Undercurrent’s Tuberville and Perdue scoops, sending them viral. All told, The Undercurrent’s Georgia videos garnered more than six million views on Twitter alone. They were featured on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, as well as local and national broadcast and digital news outlets including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, and others. You can view press highlights here.
Lauren also created the acclaimed investigative website Project Veritas Exposed that unmasks the identities of the undercover operatives of infamous rightwing political hitman
James O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Housing more than 170 profiles of his operatives and associates, PVE serves as a comprehensive research hub for journalists, victims, and
progressive movement activists, organizations, and campaigns. PVE’s research has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Intercept, and other outlets.
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In addition to her reporting, Lauren has produced pop culture political videos, with a particular affection for music video parodies. The first music video parody she produced for AFV, "Ted Cruz: Wrecking Ball," was featured in the "Sideshow" segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews.
Lauren has appeared on ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and NewsNation. Her work has been featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and many other digital and print outlets.
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You can follow her on Twitter @lawindsor.