Mr. Soros goes at Washington

One of the first jobs he found when he arrived in London from Budapest in 1947, practically penniless and speaking little English, was as a traveling salesman. The young George Soros would try to sell little knickknacks to tobacconists - unsuccessfully, as he now recalls. Often, he couldn't even find parking. His girlfriend left him because he seemed to have no future. He missed his parents. It rained incessantly.

Then America beckoned. It was a kind of place, he thought, where he might feel at home. "It wasn't necessarily the beacon of freedom as such," he says in a telephone interview from his summer home on Long Island, New York, "... but it was more open. It appeared to be the land of opportunity." Basically, he says, with characteristic bluntness, "I came to make money."

And make money he did. Soros reached the United States in 1956, self-assured and hungry for success. In time, mainly through currency speculation, he amassed a personal fortune worth $7 billion, making him the 28th richest person in the US, according to Forbes magazine. In 1992, believing the British pound was overvalued, he famously bet against it, making $1 billion in one day. Last year Soros was the most successful hedge-fund investor in the US, earning $750 million.

That kind of capital translates, of course, into significant social sway. And billionaires have long used the weight of their money to effect change, through philanthropy and, yes, politics. But perhaps none has set so overt a political agenda as Soros has this year.

The man who in 2000 reportedly gave $122,000 to political candidates - mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats - has become consumed with getting President Bush and his administration voted out of office. To do so, he has traversed the country over the past year, standing up at small town-hall meetings, rallies, and benefits to voice his concerns and implore other Americans to join his fight.

And he is putting his millions where his mouth is - pouring $12.6 million to date into a handful of so-called 527 organizations (the number refers to the provision of the relevant tax code) advancing the case against Mr. Bush.

What Soros has accomplished in terms of influencing the electorate may not yet be quantifiable, says Kelly Patterson, director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University. But the timing of his gambit - along with the current presidential-campaign slugfest over the role of 527s in negative ads - opens a window on the role of wealthy political donors.

The redirecting of the large, unregulated contributions known as "soft money" into the 527s in the wake of the campaign-finance reforms hammered out since the last presidential election has had some significant, probably unintended, effects, says Mr. Patterson. Donors are becoming arguably less accountable than ever before and, at the same time, more influential, says Patterson, who has been studying the influence of outside money on presidential and congressional campaigns since 1998.

Soros's old friend Mark Malloch Brown, now director of the United Nations Development Program, says he's hard-pressed to think of a nongovernmental figure in the US today - "except maybe Oprah," he jokes - who has as much power or influence overseas as does Soros. Still, with his bushy gray hair, his slow, Hungarian-accented speech, his camera-shy wife and five kids, and his lack of interest in a flashy lifestyle, Soros is no Donald Trump. Rather, he is the kind of billionaire who always stays just outside the spotlight's glare. He was, at least, until his newest project got off the ground.

Soros supported Howard Dean in the early days, and now endorses John Kerry - albeit tepidly: "I am advocating a certain role for the US in the world, not necessarily the one Senator Kerry takes," he says.

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