moveon in the 2012 election

PEOPLE POWER TRUMPED SUPER PAC CASH

MOVEON ANDTHE 2012 ELECTION

PEOPLE-POWERED POLITICS 2012 POST-ELECTION REPORT

CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Putting the “Air” Back in “Air War”: Exposing the Truth About Romney and the Stakes in the Election . . . . . . . . . . 3

Turning Out the Progressive Vote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Combating Efforts to Roll Back Voting Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Electing Progressive Champions Down Ballot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

MoveOn.org Political Action is a federally registered political committee and is subject to the Federal Election Campaign Act. MoveOn.org Civic Action is organized as a nonprofit organization of under section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Code. All express advocacy and bundling projects were undertaken by MoveOn.org Political Action. Although each organization undertook its own programs, for the sake of simplicity the report describes the work of both organizations as having been carried out by “MoveOn.”

The MoveOn TeamAaron, Aaron, Adam, Alejandro, Amy, Angela, Angie, Anna, Bobby, Brandon, Brett, Cari, Carrie, Daniel, Danny, Daron, David, David, Eddie, Elena, Eliza, Emily, Eric, Garlin, Holly, Ilya, Jason, Jayne, Jeff, Jen, Jessica, Joan, Julia, Justin, Kevin, Laura, Lenore, Levana, Linda, Luis, Manny, Mariana, Marika, Mark, Mark, Matt, Michael, Milan, Nate, Nick, Nick, PaKou, Patrick, Pedro, Perrin, Randall, Reshad, Robin, Ryan, Sahar, Sam, Sarah, Simon, Stefanie, Stephanie, Stephen, Steven, Susan, Susannah, Tanya, Tate, Tim, Tim, Trevor, Vicki, Wes

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The first presidential election in the Citizens United era pitted grassroots people power against a flood of cor-porate and 1% cash. MoveOn.org’s more than 7 million members played a pivotal role in reelecting President Obama, sending a new generation of progressive champions to the Senate and House, and ensuring our democracy wasn’t sold to the highest bidder.

MoveOn members volunteered, created powerful ads and videos that competed against the flood of Super PAC misinformation, turned our social media net-works into a powerful political communications tool, and contributed a combined more than $60 million to candidates for federal office. Our work countered the influence of the outside groups, funded by mul-timillion-dollar contributions, that injected more than $400 million into the presidential and other federal races. These groups sought to elect Republicans who pledged to extend tax cuts for the wealthy while cut-ting economic investment and programs like Social Security and Medicare.

We also fought back when Republicans attempted to implement a range of state-level laws and regu-lations making it harder for many Americans to vote. These voter suppression efforts — which the Republican leader of the Pennsyl-vania House admitted were intended to help Mitt Romney win — threatened to deprive many Americans of their voting rights.

MoveOn had a three-pronged strategy: First, use innovative communications tactics like 99airlines airplane banners and our social media Share Machine, as well as hard-hitting ads, to cut through the misinformation coming from the Romney campaign and the Super PACs. Second, energize, mobilize, and turn out the progressive base to vote via a groundbreaking new turnout technique — the Vote Score — as well as through our Voters Rising voter contact effort. Third, call out and fight back

against Republicans’ widespread efforts to turn back the clock on voting rights, including supporting mem-ber-led organizing via our SignOn.org petition site.

This report tells the story of how this strategy played out — how MoveOn’s more than 7 million members and more than 175 local volunteer-led Councils worked together to ensure people power prevailed in the election. This is how we created a mandate for Congress and the president to reject the extreme Tea Party ideology that’s predominated in Washington for the past two years, and how we contributed to the election of candidates who pledged to end tax cuts for the wealthy, protect the social safety net, and in-vest in job creation to build a stronger economy.

INTRODUCTION

USE INNOVATIVE COMMUNICATIONS

TACTICS

CALL OUT AND FIGHT BACK AGAINST

REPUBLICANS’ ATTACKS ON

VOTING RIGHTS

ENERGIZE, MOBILIZE, AND TURN OUT THE PROGRESSIVE BASE

TO VOTE

MOVEON’S THREE-PRONGED STRATEGY

PEOPLE-POWERED POLITICS 2012 POST-ELECTION REPORT2

BACKGROUND

For over a decade, MoveOn.org has combined grass-roots activism with online organizing expertise to em-power millions of Americans from all walks of life to make a difference in American politics. What started in 1998 with an online petition seeking to prevent the impeachment of President Clinton has grown into a progressive powerhouse that now numbers more than 7 million members nationwide — more than twice as many as we were going into the 2008 election.

MoveOn is known as a pioneer in innovating tech-nology and tactics that give real people a voice in a political process that’s all too often dominated by cor-porate and 1% interests. In a political arena rife with lobbyist influence and billionaires’ Super PAC contri-butions, MoveOn is a true grassroots, people-pow-ered organization. More than 99 percent of donations to MoveOn are smaller than $100.

MoveOn members have played an influential role in previous elections and national debates. We mar-shaled opposition to the Iraq War in the years after its inception, forging an anti-war consensus in the Demo-cratic Party. In 2006, MoveOn’s “Caught Red Hand-ed” campaign was crucial in expanding the electoral map, helping Democrats to take back the House. In 2008, MoveOn endorsed then-Senator Obama at a key point in the primary campaign, providing him a powerful boost of progressive support in the run up to Super Tuesday. And in 2009, MoveOn members’ grassroots activism helped ensure the passage of health care reform.

In 2006, MoveOn’s “Caught Red Handed” campaign was crucial in expanding the electoral map, and helped Democrats take back the House.

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October 5, 2012: Following Mitt Romney’s pledge to cut funding for PBS during a presidential debate, 99airlines flew a banner that read “Mitt Lies, Big Bird Dies” at his campaign stop in Abingdon, VA.

July 18, 2012: When an explosive report indicated Mitt Romney might have lied in his financial disclosures about his role at Bain Capital, 99airlines flew a banner that read “TRICKY MITT: WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?” at his campaign stops in Ohio.

October 1, 2012: After Mitt Romney accused 47% of Americans of being irresponsible freeloaders, 99airlines flew a banner that read “HEY MITT! WORRIED ABOUT US NOW? — THE 47%” at his campaign stop in Denver, CO.

July 8, 2012: To call attention to how Mitt Romney’s policies would benefit billionaires like the Koch brothers, 99 airlines flew a banner over Romney’s fundraiser at oil tycoon David Koch’s shorefront estate in the Hamptons.

August 24, 2012: When Mitt Romney refused to answer a reporter’s questions regarding Rep. Todd Akin’s misogynistic comments about “legitimate rape”, 99airlines flew a banner that read “SIGN OF A WIMP: DODGING AKIN QUESTIONS” at his campaign stop in Commerce, MI.

June 21, 2012: To call out Mitt Romney’s failure to condemn Governor Rick Scott’s racist voter purge, 99airlines flew a banner that read “LATINO VOTER PURGE = RACISM FOR ROMNEY” at his campaign stop in Orlando, FL.

Corporations and the wealthiest 1% flooded the 2012 election with cash, much of which was spent on dis-honest attack ads.

We knew we couldn’t match the Super PAC cash dollar-for-dollar in a TV ad war, so we got creative and took advantage of our people power to ensure voters knew the truth about where the candidates stood and what was at stake in the election. MoveOn played an important role in a progressive echo chamber that helped to expose Romney as the candidate of and for the wealthiest 1%, and as someone who was hopelessly out of touch with the needs of the poor and middle class, as well as the challenges faced by constituencies including women and Latinos.

99AIRLINES AIRPLANE BANNERS AND OUR BOOTS ON THE GROUNDTo break through the noise, we employed an advertis-ing tactic that hadn’t been used much in the political arena, and matched it with our members’ creativity. 99airlines, our airplane banner program, was born. MoveOn members submitted and voted on ideas for airplane banner slogans, and then chipped in so we could fly a total of 31 banners over Romney events.

99airlines was there when Mitt Romney attended a fundraiser at David Koch’s beachside estate in the Hamptons. Thanks to a suggestion from MoveOn member Gary S. from California, our airplane banner (and a matching banner held by MoveOn members on the beach below) read, “Romney has a Koch prob-lem,” and helped generate widespread media cov-erage that called attention to how Romney’s policies would benefit billionaires like the Koch brothers at the expense of the poor and middle class.

As Evan McMorris-Santoro wrote of our program in Talking Points Memo, “The right may be winning the so-called ‘air war’ — the battle on TV airwaves — but progressives, it seems, have superiority in the actual air.” Our timely and pointed 99airlines banners gener-ated a tremendous amount of media coverage — hun-

PUTTING THE “AIR” BACK IN “AIR WAR”: EXPOSING THE TRUTH ABOUT ROMNEY AND THE STAKES IN THE ELECTION


dreds of stories in outlets ranging from the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post, to ABC, MSNBC and CNN. Our banners served as a unique part of the progressive echo chamber, reaching and informing millions of voters about where Mitt Romney stood, and whose side he was on.

Often when we had planes in the air we also had peo-ple on the ground to amplify our message. Whether it was the “Romneymobile” Cadillac decked out with NASCAR style corporate sponsorship decals and a fake dog strapped to the roof, or MoveOn members in Hawaiian shirts calling attention to Romney’s offshore accounts in the Caymans, our messages came across loud and clear. Thanks to tried and true grassroots muscle and creativity on the ground combined with air support from 99airlines, our “every millionaire counts” tour generated widespread swing-state news coverage, as well as national attention on shows like MSNBC’s “Hardball.”

TURNING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO A PROGRESSIVE MESSAGE MACHINEHundreds of thousands of MoveOn members also cir-cumvented the TV ad wars by using their social media networks to ensure important information about the campaign reached voters.

Volunteers for MoveOn’s Share Machine program scoured the internet to find sharable progressive con-tent related to the election, a team of MoveOn staff tested that content to see which images, videos, and information had the most potential to go viral, and the best content was then delivered to more than 400,000

MoveOn fans on Facebook as well as to more than 250,000 subscribers to “The Daily Share,” a daily email promoting sharable content.

The result was that MoveOn members and their friends turned themselves into a vast message machine, sharing progressive content more than 4 million times, and generating more than 50 million views of progres-sive media. The most viral piece of content — shared more than 100,000 times thanks to Share Machine — was a video produced by MoveOn’s creative team titled “Revealed,” in which two MoveOn members used a blackboard to walk viewers through the GOP’s strategy to buy and steal the election. The video then told progressives what they could do to prevent that from happening.

Other videos for which the Share Machine team gar-nered tens of thousands of shares and hundreds of thousands of views included “Disclosure,” in which five men in swimsuits parodied a boy band song to ask what Mitt Romney was hiding in his tax returns; “Why Obama Now?” in which a Simpsons animator riffed on an Obama speech; “The Man from Bloomfield Hills,” a spoof mini-documentary about Mitt Romney’s up-bringing and life that was produced by the MoveOn

Infographic that shows top progressive content that was shared and pushed out by MoveOn’s Share Machine.

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creative team; and a profane but hilarious Sarah Sil-verman video titled “Let My People Vote” that called the GOP out for its efforts to roll back voting rights.

ADS THAT CUT THROUGH THE NOISEIn addition to banners in the air, sharable content on social networks, and boots on the ground, Mo-veOn continued its tradition of carrying a message via hard-hitting, member-funded TV ads that drove important points home at crucial junctures. We produced 97 ads and videos that garnered nearly 8 million unique views on YouTube and reached tens of millions of people via TV.

The MoveOn ad that garnered the most attention was produced by Michele and Rob Reiner. The ad — re-leased just before the second presidential debate — starred Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria, and Kerry Washington, who spoke directly into the camera about Romney’s positions on women’s issues. The ad was mentioned in hundreds of news stories including more than a dozen national TV news pieces. The New York Times called the ad a “powerful message” — one of the four “most striking” in the election. CNN anchor Piers Morgan even used the ad to confront Mitt Romney’s sons about their father’s stance on women’s issues.

Back in 2011, MoveOn was the first organization to air an ad defining Mitt Romney as Mr. 1%. MoveOn was also the first progressive organization to feature work-ers laid off by Bain Capital in a TV ad, an approach later adopted by Priorities USA and the Obama cam-paign itself.

After Romney was caught on camera describing 47% of Americans as “dependent” and “victims” Move-On members shot their own “Voters, Not Victims” response ads and posted them to YouTube. We then pitched in to air one of those ads, in which MoveOn member Donna StClair spoke about her husband with Alzheimer’s, who is “not a victim, he’s my hero,” in the closely contested swing state of Virginia.

Top to Bottom: MoveOn’s “Rafalca Romney” 30-second TV ad; New York Times quote about the MoveOn and Michele and Rob Reiner ad featuring Hollywood actresses Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria, and Kerry Washington; MoveOn’s “Voters, Not Victims” campaign.


TURNING OUT THE PROGRESSIVE VOTE

We knew that a close election would likely come down to voter turnout, and that with more than 7 million members, MoveOn had a key role to play in mobilizing the progressive base to vote. We also knew that if the Rising American Electorate — single wom-en, people of color, and young people — turned out to vote at a rate close to that of 2008, we were likely to win. So we made energizing and turning out the pro-gressive base our post-convention priority. We relied on and improved traditional organizing methods like phone calls and door knocking. And we innovated, introducing a powerful new voter turnout technique — the Vote Score — with which we reached more than twelve million potential voters.

OUR SECRET WEAPON FOR TURNOUT — THE VOTE SCOREIn the homestretch, with just a week left until the election, MoveOn announced that its members had invested more than a million dollars in a powerful new voter turnout technique — the Vote Score — which we’d found to be seven times more effective, dollar for dollar, than the best methods in use by campaigns, and which had the potential to bring hundreds of thousands of additional progressives to the polls.

The key to the technique was deceptively simple — calculate a potential voter’s Vote Score (a grade based on voting history) and then provide it to the voter, along with how that individual score compared to the neighborhood average. The concept of the

Vote Score was inspired by something far outside the political box. We looked to efforts to persuade energy customers to consume less. Psychologist Robert Cial-dini found that appeals to patriotism or pocketbooks simply didn’t work. But telling people how much elec-tricity their neighbors used proved incredibly effective.

So MoveOn adapted the technique. First, we tested it in Delaware during the state’s September primary. Then, after we were surprised — and delighted — to find that it appeared to be the most cost-effective means of turning out voters available, MoveOn members chipped in so we cold go big for the general election.

As MoveOn’s Justin Ruben told Mother Jones, “We’ve taken a social dynamic that gets people to turn out the lights, and we’re using it to turn out the vote.”

We sent Vote Scores to 12 million progressive poten-tial voters via direct mail that landed in mailboxes the week before Election Day. We also called attention to the Vote Score concept with a provocative online ad campaign that was viewed tens of millions of times by progressives in presidential swing states.

THE VOTERS RISING VOTER CONTACT PROGRAMImmediately after the party conventions, MoveOn launched its grassroots voter turn-out program, Voters Rising, which included a new partnership with AFL-CIO Super PAC Workers’ Voice as the centerpiece. MoveOn and Workers’ Voice joined together to run the largest independent voter contact program in the coun-try this year. As part of the program, MoveOn members hosted 2,183 call parties and made more than 1.5 mil-lion phone calls into swing states to recruit volunteers

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to take part in door-to-door Workers’ Voice canvasses.

This grassroots partnership joined the people power of the AFL-CIO’s more than 12 mil-lion members and MoveOn’s grassroots strength, and took advantage of both organiza-tions’ cutting-edge technology, commitment to learning from data, and proven organizing

experience. The strategy was simple: contact millions of people across America to inform them about the crucial choices facing them, persuade likely voters to vote for President Obama and progressive candidates, and turn out supporters who might not otherwise vote. And thanks to new real-time targeting techniques that ensured we were knocking on the doors where we had the greatest potential to make a difference, each can-vasser was able to accomplish the work of five. Voters Rising also mobilized volunteers to bolster the turnout operations of organizations ranging from Planned Parenthood to Obama for America. MoveOn members living outside of presidential swing states signed up MoveOn members within swing states to knock on doors and have hundreds of thousands of essential face-to-face contacts with key swing state voters. MoveOn’s network of more than 175 volun-teer-led Councils played a leading role in mobilizing our membership to ensure this program was a success.

MoveOn members at various Voters Rising call parties across the country.

2,183CALL PARTIES

MORE THAN1.5mPHONE CALLS


COMBATING EFFORTS TO ROLL BACK VOTING RIGHTS

2012 saw a host of state-level measures aimed at limiting the size of the electorate by making it harder to register and to vote. MoveOn recognized these measures were a part of a combined GOP strategy to try to steal the election, because the restrictive voting laws would disproportionately affect largely Demo-cratic constituencies, including poor people, single women, and people of color. (Pennsylvania House Re-publican Leader Mike Turzai admitted as much when he said the state’s Photo ID law “is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”) We vowed to expose and build opposition to these efforts to roll back voting rights, as well as to redou-ble our efforts to turn out the progressive vote via the strategies described earlier in this report.

PENNSYLVANIA PHOTO ID LAWAfter a new law in Pennsylvania requiring govern-ment-issued photo ID to vote threatened to make it harder for as many as 11 percent of the state’s regis-tered voters (the percentage without photo ID) to cast ballots, MoveOn members sprung into action. Steven Singer, a teacher in the Pittsburgh area concerned about the impact that the law could have on the fam-ilies of his students, started a petition on MoveOn’s petition site, SignOn.org. The petition garnered more than 4,000 signatures and national media attention, with Steven appearing on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” which helped to elevate the Pennsylvania law to the status of a national issue. Other MoveOn members across the state created similar petitions urging local governments to do all they could to limit the harm the new law would do. In October, a judge intervened, putting the law on hold and ensuring that photo ID would not be required this year.

FLORIDA’S VOTER PURGEFlorida Governor Rick Scott and his administration attempted to strike a large number of registered voters from the Florida voting rolls, but it soon became clear that many of the people they were trying to purge — purportedly because they were ineligible to vote —

were in fact citizens who were eligible to vote, and that Latinos were being disproportionately affected. In response, MoveOn organized a petition calling for the purge to be halted, flew 99airlines banners call-ing on Mitt Romney to denounce the purge, and ran TV ads in Spanish to inform Latino voters of this threat to their voting rights and to engage them in fighting back. Ultimately only a small percentage of the voters iden-tified by the Scott administration for potential purging actually had their registrations challenged.

OTHER SWING STATESIn Ohio, when an anonymous entity put up billboards in the Cleveland area that seemed designed to scare people of color away from the ballot box, MoveOn campaigned to get the billboards taken down, and then paid to replace them with billboards that provid-ed viewers with information about when polling places were open and encouraged people to vote.

In Virginia, when the nonprofit Voter Participation Center came under attack by right-wing media for its efforts to register members of the Rising American Electorate (single women, young people, people of color) to vote, MoveOn leapt to their defense. Dozens of MoveOn members turned out for a hearing of the state Board of Elections in Richmond, helping to head off an improper investigation into the Voter Participa-tion Center’s good work.

MoveOn’s Spanish ad “Romney y la Purga” ran on Spanish language television stations in Florida and fought back against Republican voter suppression efforts.

We bought digital billboards in Ohio to inform voters about early voting opportunities in order to counter to voter suppression efforts there.

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While most of MoveOn’s efforts were “independent,” meaning we carried them out without discussing them with the candidates or their campaigns, a few MoveOn staff were “coordinated” with the cam-paigns throughout the election, which meant that they could work with campaigns directly. MoveOn’s coordinated team worked with some of the most progressive candidates in the country to help them tap into the grassroots energy they needed to win. Throughout the spring and summer, MoveOn mem-bers helped progressive fighters — including Julia Brownley and Matt Cartwright in the House, and Chris Murphy and Mazie Hirono in the Senate — win primaries against more conservative opponents. And this fall, MoveOn used its fundraising, field and mes-saging muscle to help progressives win competitive races across the country.

Through bundling of contributions, MoveOn’s coor-dinated team directed more than $1 million to Eliza-beth Warren, more than $460,000 to Tammy Baldwin, more than $340,000 to Chris Murphy, and more than $160,000 to Sherrod Brown.

In addition to providing financial support, MoveOn’s independent and coordinated teams helped recruit volunteers for more than 40 federal candidates in key races across the country. For example, over the last three days of the election, more than 550 Connecticut members mobilized by MoveOn volunteered directly with the Chris Murphy campaign at 37 locations across the state, while more than 750 Massachusetts MoveOn members volunteered directly for Elizabeth Warren.

MoveOn also played a pivotal role in several crucial state house races during primary season. We support-ed victorious progressive challengers in primaries in Oregon and Nevada, ousting conservative Democratic incumbents who had often been the sole Democrat-ic vote giving Republicans effective control of those state houses.

MoveOn also ventured much further into local poli-tics than ever before in our history — by launching a crowd-sourced “progressive ballot guide,” featuring office-by-office recommendations down to the county level by local progressives.

ELECTING PROGRESSIVE CHAMPIONS DOWN BALLOT

MORE THAN $1 million TO ELIZABETH WARRENMOVEON BUNDLED CONTRIBUTIONS FOR PROGRESSIVE CHAMPIONS

MORE THAN $460,000 TO TAMMY BALDWINMORE THAN $340,000 TO CHRIS MURPHYMORE THAN $160,000 TO SHERROD BROWN


The Supreme Court hung a “For Sale” sign on the 2012 election when it decided the infamous Citizens United case and opened the door to unlimited corpo-rate spending on elections. Wealthy individuals and big businesses spent hundreds of millions of dollars flooding airwaves and filling mailboxes to elect Mitt Romney and push an agenda that would benefit the most well off at the expense of everyone else.

There is no way that MoveOn members could have hoped to match the money spent by likes of the Koch brothers. But we had something they didn’t: true grassroots people power. More than 7 million Move-On members shaped the political narrative about Mitt Romney by carrying important messages to voters about what was at stake in the election. We then mo-bilized and innovated to turn out hundreds of thou-sands of progressives to vote. We fought back against efforts to roll back the right to vote. And we won.

MoveOn members made a tremendous contribution to the outcome of the 2012 elections because we want a fairer America — one in which the wealthy and big cor-porations finally do their fair share, where we protect programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and in which everyone’s rights are respected.

The choice in the election was clear, and voters under-stood well President Obama’s pledge to finally end the Bush tax cuts for Americans making over $250,000 a year. After Paul Ryan joined the GOP ticket, it became clear that voters also faced an important choice about the future of our social safety net for seniors — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Voters also had a clear choice between an economic philosophy that supported job-creating investments, and the trickle down theory that would bring job-killing cuts.

The voters have spoken, providing a clear mandate to our elected leaders to level the playing field, protect the social safety net, and invest in the middle class. As the “fiscal showdown” — when the Bush tax cuts are set to expire and a spending cut sequester is scheduled to kick in — approaches, it will be import-ant for elected officials to remember what voters told them in this election. That’s especially true for officials who relied on substantial progressive support to win. Our leaders must focus on job creation, must end the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000, must defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from any benefit cuts, and must protect the social safety net for our nation’s most vulnerable families. In short, they must do what they were elected to do. MoveOn’s 7 million members will hold them to it.

CONCLUSION

MoveOn members in Sarasota, FL. protesting Mitt Romney’s offensive and out-of-touch 47% comment.

MoveOn member at a Powell, NC. campaign event asking Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan keep their hands off her Medicare.

moveon in the 2012 election

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