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Neal protected Blackstones profits by killing a bill that would have saved patients money, a narrator says in the 30-second spot. Now Blackstone is Richie Neals top contributor and one of Donald Trumps, too.

Fresh off a string of victories in New York last month, progressives are beginning to zero in on Neal, who faces Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse in his Sept. 1 primary.

Operatives running the group chose Neal as part of the initial campaign because of his clear ties to Blackstone. Neal received $48,600 from Blackstone executives and others tied to the company this cycle, making him their top 2020 donor, the group noted in a release.

They kill these efforts to reform surprise medical billing because they assume that there wont be any accountability over them, said Faiz Shakir, a top liberal consultant working with Fight Corporate Monopolies. They think that they can just receive campaign funds, continue status-quo politics and that there will never be a moment that voters hold them accountable.

Fight Corporate Monopolies is an affiliate of the American Economic Liberties Project, an organization aimed at lobbying government to take on corporate greed. Sarah Miller, a former Treasury Department official and antitrust advocate, leads both groups.

Shakir, Sanders' 2020 campaign manager and Miller's husband, will consult for the group. And Morgan Harper, a former Ohio congressional candidate, has signed on as a senior adviser. Harper ran an unsuccessful primary challenge against Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) earlier this year, accusing her of being in the pocket of corporations.

The group, which will play in state and federal races, takes a sharp focus: exposing politicians, primarily incumbents, who give the appearance of colluding with big business interests.

At the end of the day, Miller said in an interview, it is policy makers, it is anti-trust enforcers, it is the public sector that is responsible for keeping the private sector from growing so powerful that they can extort and abuse everyone that they have economic relationships with.

Each campaign, Miller said, will tell a really clear story around how a specific powerful corporation or a specific monopoly is actually transacting with a certain politician to get an outcome that that politician wants and then basically rewarding them for that.

Architects behind the anti-Neal effort hope their early foray into race eight weeks before the primary will help chip away at Neals incumbency advantage and entice other outside groups into the race.

Morse, youngest and first openly gay mayor in the history of Holyoke, is endorsed by the Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement, both of which worked to help middle-school principal Jamaal Bowman oust Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in a primary last month. (Bowman leads in the preliminary vote count, though The Associated Press has not officially declared a winner.)

If we can get involved more than six-to-eight weeks out, potentially you can make what are very difficult races potentially more competitive and thats what were going to see here, Shakir said, predicting Morse could win the race with 45,000 votes. Thats not a large universe. This is going to be a significant ad buy.

Still, Neal will be hard to dislodge. He had over $4.5 million in the bank as of late March and has already begun airing TV ads to boost his image name ID. Morse had just $140,000 at the end of the first quarter.

But Morse has been able to tap into the some of the progressives' excitement around the New York primaries. Bowman endorsed him and urged his supporters to back Morse in a tweet that helped him raise $110,000 in a single week.

The district, which spans much of Western Massachusetts, leans heavily Democratic. Hillary Clinton carried it by 20 points in 2016.

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New progressive group will hit Neal in Massachusetts - POLITICO