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Join NowMoveOn Announces Plans for $15M ‘Resist and Win’ 2018 Election Mobilization to End GOP Control of U.S. House
Organization’s millions of members will also support emerging progressive leaders at the state and local level and mobilize in key Senate races
Group pledges accountability for congressional votes on health care, taxes, and Dream Act, and for rubber-stamping Trump’s agenda
With recent election results in Alabama, Virginia, and elsewhere indicating that progressives are energized, prepared to show up at the ballot box to resist the Trump-Republican agenda, and able to win elections anywhere in the country, MoveOn is announcing that it will launch a “Resist and Win” campaign in 2018 that makes ending Republican control of the House of Representatives its top priority.
The organization’s millions of members will also invest substantial energy into supporting a slate of inclusive, populist, progressive candidates for state and local office—candidates who look like the communities they seek to represent and who have the potential to emerge as future leaders in the national progressive movement and help chart the future of the Democratic Party. And MoveOn members will mobilize in key Senate races where progressive champions are being challenged or where Democrats have pickup opportunities.
Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, had this to say about the campaign:
“MoveOn members are fired up to march to the ballot box in 2018, not just to resist Trumpism, but to lay the groundwork to build a more just country—one where there’s a place of honor and dignity for everyone.
“Congressional Republicans and Donald Trump have consistently served the interests of corporations and billionaires while viciously attacking policies and programs that serve the rest of us. By fighting for mass deportation of Dreamers and other immigrants, imposing a Muslim Ban, attempting to cut health care from tens of millions, and working to transfer wealth from those with the least to those with the most, the GOP is creating a nation that is less just and doesn’t work for most people.
“Trump’s first year in the White House has demonstrated that he is the same man now that he was during his campaign: a delusional, impulsive bigot and misogynist who cares only about his own ego. In fighting for health care repeal, tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and a white nationalist agenda, congressional Republicans have revealed that their only principle is power.
“MoveOn members are committed to building a bulwark of resistance to the Trump-Republican agenda by ending Republican control of Congress in 2018.
“But our election mobilization isn’t just about resistance—it’s about creating a better future and advancing a positive vision for what we can achieve together when we win power. That’s one reason why MoveOn members will also commit substantial capacity to supporting progressive champions in state and local races down ballot. We are excited to elect the kinds of leaders who will take our country forward in the years to come.
“2018 will be a crucial year for our democracy. If we take back Congress in November, we’ll be able to halt the worst impulses of the Trump administration—perhaps ending it through impeachment. By electing progressive candidates up and down the ballot, we will also secure a better foundation from which to advance an inclusive, populist governing agenda that serves all Americans. Progressives are fired up about our prospects in 2018. We will mobilize, and we will win.”
MoveOn will formally launch the campaign in the first quarter of 2018. The Resist and Win campaign will include:
- A massive mobilization of MoveOn’s millions of members, in every state and congressional district, who will send text messages, knock on doors, donate to compelling candidates, get trained in electoral and movement organizing skills on an unprecedented scale, create videos, leverage their social media networks, shape media coverage, and mobilize together in other ways to have measurable impact.
- MoveOn.org Political Action will spend at least $15 million dollars—from hundreds of thousands of small-dollar contributions from members in all 50 states—to fund its mass mobilization. MoveOn members expect to endorse and support at least 100 candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives to expand the congressional map, and 100 down-ballot candidates, in addition to Senate candidates.
- The campaign will build on tactics and technology that the organization has developed and tested in 2017—tactics in the areas of recruitment, training, voter persuasion, mobilization, organizing, social media, mobile tools, tech, analytics, and video. In 2017, with partners, MoveOn led a series of Ready to Resist mass mobilizing calls that regularly engaged tens of thousands of activists, and also organized a Resistance Summer training program that supported 1,000 MoveOn members across the country as they developed powerful organizing skills. MoveOn members mobilized and trained via these activities will play a key role in 2018.
- In 2017, MoveOn’s analytics team and Video Lab also pioneered innovative social media persuasion testing and delivery technology that proved effective at persuading and turning out thousands of voters in both Virginia and Alabama. MoveOn’s tech and mobile teams developed a new peer-to-peer messaging platform, Spoke, that has already been responsible for mobilizing 60,000 grassroots actions. MoveOn will put all of these tools to work in service of its electoral objectives in 2018.
In addition to the $15 million that MoveOn.org Political Action will invest in this electoral work, MoveOn.org Civic Action expects to invest $10 million next year in advocacy campaigning to resist the Trump-Republican agenda.
To date, MoveOn.org Political Action has endorsed for the Senate: progressives Tammy Baldwin (WI) and Sherrod Brown (OH) who are running for reelection in states Trump won; as well as progressive champions Mazie Hirono (HI), Chris Murphy (CT), Bernie Sanders (VT), and Elizabeth Warren (MA). MoveOn members have also endorsed Marie Newman for Congress (IL-3) and Stacey Abrams for Governor (GA).
In 2017 to date, MoveOn members contributed $1.5 million directly to candidates—including $250,000 for Senator-elect Doug Jones (AL) and $620,000 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (MA) re-election.
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