Count the Monday Meeting, for years an essential stop for conservative leaders looking for support and cash from New York City's deep-pocketed conservative elite, among the conservative institutions riven this winter.
One of the meeting's two organizers, Mallory Factor, a commercial banker who now lives in Charleston, S.C., this Tuesday sent out an invitation to "The New York Meeting," an apparently identical gathering staged at the same midtown hotel at the same time as the traditional Monday meeting, and advertising the same sort of guest: Senator Mike Lee; Breitbart.com editor Ben Shapiro; right-to-work leader Mike Mix.
"This new forum is a one-hour conversation with seasoned politicians and new thinkers followed by questions from a rotating panel," the invitation said.
But Factor's invitation, sent with O'Brien Murray, who managed Bob Turner's successful congressional race, was followed Thursday morning by another meeting from James Higgins, an investment adviser and well-connected conservative is the meetings other founder.
It says:
We don't like to send a lot of e-mail between Monday Meetings. But we've gotten a number of inquiries so want to clarify:
There is no Monday Meeting next Monday. The next Monday Meeting will be Monday February 11. We were surprised to learn through a number of you yesterday that Mallory Factor had sent an email to you announcing another similar sounding meeting in the same venue. As you may know, Mallory departed (to our chagrin!) from the Monday Meeting last fall to do other things.
The next Monday Meeting will be February 11 at the Grand Hyatt, as scheduled. Program to follow the week in advance of The Monday Meeting. We hope you will come and be as supportive as you always have been, something for which we are extremely grateful; we should have a great lineup.
A meeting regular said Factor had announced his departure from the meeting last fall; the meeting has continued to draw more than 200 people to each of the 3 events since he left.
The Monday Meeting is one of the most important in a group of conservative gatherings founded on the model of Grover Norquist's weekly conservative gatherings, staged in Washington on Wednesdays. The underpinnings of the split weren't immediately clear.
UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Senator Lee, Emily Bennion, emails: "Mallory asked Senator Lee to address the group, and he agreed. He's not part of any potential feud that might be going on."