Subject: [big campaign] Weekly Standard on ProgressNow & Progressive infrastructure
From: Aniello Alioto <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 11:51:47 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Friends -

Apparently we are doing our jobs correctly if the Right is educating their
disciples about us & starting to replicate our model (I can't blame them...
we do kick a lot of serious conservative arse - daily).

*As you may have heard, ProgressNow is expanding. We are currently in search
mode for potential Directors in all states. If you know of stellar
candidates in the states, please drop me a line at [email-masked]*

Read... enjoy... battle!

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/party%E2%80%99s-over
The Party’s Over The Colorado Model goes national. BY Adam
Schrager<http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/7835>and Rob
Witwer <http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/7836>
August 9, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 44

Earlier this decade, Colorado progressives pioneered a political strategy
for electing Democratic majorities in what had once been GOP strongholds.
Since then, the strategy has been quietly deployed in at least 18 other
states in time for the 2010 election cycle. And while nothing may be able to
prevent Democrats from losing ground this November, they are hopeful the
Colorado Model will act as a levee against the coming storm, minimizing
losses in a bad year—and laying the groundwork to maximize future gains.

In a nutshell, the Colorado Model is about infrastructure. Following the
passage of state and federal campaign finance reforms in 2002, Colorado
progressives recognized that the Democratic party could no longer raise
enough money to fund the kind of organization necessary to sustain a
long-term political movement. So with backing from a handful of large
donors, they built a network of specialized, coordinated nonprofits to fill
the void.

The results were stunning. In 2004, Colorado Republicans held the governor’s
mansion, both U.S. Senate seats, five of seven congressional seats, and both
houses of the legislature. After the 2008 election, the opposite was true.

*Even taking into account political and demographic trends, there can be no
doubt the Colorado Model intensified the state’s shift from red to blue.
Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver,
recently calculated that in the 2004 and 2006 elections Democratic
legislative candidates supported by left-leaning nonprofits enjoyed a 4
percentage point bump in their final vote tallies—enough to swing close
seats.*

In Masket’s view, the Colorado Model’s significance is more than tactical;
it portends a major change in the way politics is practiced. “This new model
of campaign activity may in fact represent a new form of political party,”
Masket writes. “It is a form that has arisen as an unexpected consequence of
campaign finance reforms; with parties limited in their ability to directly
fund campaigns, party actors have developed innovative ways of using
campaign resources to aid preferred candidates.”

Led by Colorado strategists Ted Trimpa and Al Yates, progressives have made
a major push to expand their “independent sector” strategy to other
states.On the eve of the current election cycle, elements of the
Colorado Model
have been developed in California, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan,
Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

*An example is ProgressNow, a network of state-based nonprofits that uses
online organizing and media outreach tools to generate, push, and amplify
negative information about Republican candidates.* *Originally formed in
Colorado in 2003, ProgressNow boasts an $8 million budget, a grassroots
network of more than 2.4 million people, and chapters in 12 states. **
*

*ProgressNow’s state chapters are already using multimedia, online
organizing, and “rapid response” communications tactics to target a number
of Republicans in close races, including gubernatorial candidates Tom Emmer
in Minnesota and Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, as well as Senate candidates
Carly Fiorina in California, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Dino Rossi in
Washington, and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.*

Progressives hope extensive opposition research conducted over the past 12
months will offset some of the strong headwinds Democrats face in 2010.
“Ultimately the commodity we’re dealing with is political power,” says
ProgressNow founder and CEO Michael Huttner. “It’s all about building
political power at the state level. We’re trying to replicate our model in
every state.”

But ProgressNow is just the tip of the iceberg. Under the auspices of a
group called the Democracy Alliance, progressives are stitching together
dozens of left-leaning nonprofits into a cohesive, tightly controlled
national network.

The Democracy Alliance is an association of more than 100 donors who have
agreed to pool their resources in furtherance of what they call “progressive
philanthropy.” Its members are among the wealthiest and most powerful people
in the country. According to Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center,
the list includes financiers George Soros and Steven Gluckstern, Hollywood
personalities Rob Reiner and Norman Lear, Taco Bell heir Rob McKay, SEIU
secretary-treasurer Anna Burger, Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis,
Families USA founder Philippe Villers, Quark founder Tim Gill, and medical
device heiress Pat Stryker.

Conservatives who routinely battle left-leaning nonprofits are learning only
now of the ties that bind these groups together behind the veil of the
Democracy Alliance. According to Vadum, Democracy Alliance donors have
supported over 30 entities, including America Votes, the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Center for American
Progress, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW),
Emily’s List, Media Matters for America, ProgressNow, and the Sierra Club.

According to its website, the Democracy Alliance is committed to providing
“long-term patient capital in the form of multi-year, general operating
support to organizations that are key to the progressive infrastructure.” In
other words, Democracy Alliance donors are in for the long haul whether
Democrats win or lose in November.

*Among the Democracy Alliance’s most ambitious projects is Catalist, a
massive voter database containing detailed information on millions of
Americans.* As Colorado progressives did before them, Democracy Alliance
donors use their financial leverage to force left-leaning organizations to
share data amongst themselves, eliminating redundancy and instantly
enhancing the outreach capabilities of like-minded groups.

Voter files are nothing new, but *Catalist’s ability to evolve in real time
makes it the gold standard. Unlike vendor services that simply lease
databases to political campaigns, Catalist also collects voter response data
from its more than 90 partners, forming a comprehensive, up-to-the-minute
file. The more it’s used, the better it gets.*

According to internal Catalist documents, in the 2008 election cycle,
organizations using its information

completed over 127 million contacts to more than 49 million unique
individuals. Of these, 28 million voted on Election Day, representing over
20 percent of all votes cast. Furthermore, and of greater significance, is
that 82 percent of this work occurred in 16 swing states, accounting for 37
percent of all votes cast in these states.

In the coming months, progressive nonprofits will again be using these data
to contact voters in targeted political races across the country, especially
below-the-radar state legislative races.

And this is where the Colorado Model’s most significant impact may be felt.

 Unlike other large donors before them, the Colorado Model’s founding
funders eschewed high-profile races in favor of less expensive local
campaigns, where they could have a greater impact. Since then, wealthy
progressives have funneled millions in direct and indirect contributions to
a handful of targeted state legislative races, in the process affecting the
balance of power in legislative chambers in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, and
Oregon.

With states preparing to redraw the congressional map following the
decennial census, legislative seats take on added importance. In 2010
progressives will devote unprecedented resources to down-ticket races,
aiming to influence not only statehouses in the near term, but Congress in
the coming decade.

*For conservatives, there is good news: At least a few leading strategists
appear to have embraced the necessity of beefing up their political
infrastructure outside the Republican party. And while such efforts are
embryonic and, for now, unproven, they’re a tangible sign that
conservatives have internalized and begun to copy key elements of the
Colorado Model. *

*Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer are coauthors of *The Blueprint: How the
Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care)*.*

-- 
Aniello Alioto
National Political Director
[email-masked]
502.664.2420

CA: Courage Campaign
CO: ProgressNow Colorado
FL: Progress Florida
MI: Progress Michigan
MN: Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM)
NH: Granite State Progress
NM: Progress New Mexico
NV: ProgressNow Nevada
OH: ProgressOhio
PA: Keystone Progress
WA: Fuse Washington
WI: One Wisconsin Now (OWN)

Twitter: @Progress_Now
Facebook: Progress Now

www.ProgressNow.org

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