Anti-Impeachment Web Site Tallies Millions in Pledges

January 8, 1999

Anti-Impeachment Web Site
Tallies Millions in Pledges

By JERI CLAUSING
ASHINGTON -- Thousands of Internet users, fed up with the impeachment process, have gone online in the past three weeks and pledged more than $10 million to try to defeat the politicians they believe have ignored voters' wishes to censure President Clinton and move on to other business, the operators of a new grassroots Web site say.

www.moveon.org
A bumper sticker from the Move On Web site.
How much of that money will actually be collected is anybody's guess, but the sheer volume of response is astounding, Internet campaign watchers agreed.
"Did you say $10 million?" asked a surprised Michael Cornfield, a professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. "That's like four orders of magnitude, as in decimal point, greater than anything I've ever heard of."
The key difference, he said, is that the previous measure pertains to campaign donations actually collected, not pledged, over the Internet.
"But the odd thing, and what is really interesting to me, is that this is not an interest group," Cornfield said. "This a bunch of people who have been following a news story and are outraged by the narrative. They want to change the narrative. We've had enormous reactions before, to things like Vietnam and Watergate. But this is new. We've never had anything like this. I've never heard of anybody getting this kind of money before."
The pledge drive, launched immediately after the House voted Dec. 21 to impeach the President, is part of an anti-impeachment movement started on the Internet in September by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, a married couple better known in technology circles as the founders of Berkeley Systems, a software company that created the popular flying toaster screensavers and the computer game show You Don't Know Jack.
The Berkeley, Calif., entrepreneurs sold their company about a year ago and since have been working out of their home developing educational software. But those efforts have largely been moved to the back burner since September, when they decided to put their technical expertise to work in the political arena.
"Fundamentally, it happened because a group of friends and family were talking about what was going on, at that time it was close to the time of the Starr report, a little before. People were saying, this is crazy. There are important issues that are being ignored. It's time to move on," Blades said in a telephone interview. "If you walked into a Chinese restaurant you heard people saying that."
So the couple started doing some research and talking to people around the country.

MoveOn.org e-mailed its 450,000 supporters and urged them to make a "We Will Remember" pledge.

"We got the message that people wanted to censure and move on," Blades said. "We wanted to create a place for the centrist viewpoint to express themselves."
On Sept. 22, at a cost of $89, they launched the MoveOn Web site, which began collecting petitions to deliver to Congressional candidates before the November elections.
Participation was promulgated mostly by Internet word of mouth -- people sending e-mail to friends and family. "We were very careful not to spam," Blades said.
"The first day we had 300 something petitioners," she said. "Then 1,500, then 9,000, then 16,000, then 25,000. Anyway, it was just amazing the growth curve." To date, some 450,000 Internet users have signed on.
As the elections neared, Blades said, volunteers began mobilizing, presenting lawmakers from 44 states with printouts of the online petitions and launching a get-out-the-vote effort.
After the elections, which resulted in the defeat or several Republican Congressional seats and the resignation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Blades said she thought voters had made it clear that they were tired of the Presidential sex scandal.
"I think people were absolutely shocked when it looked like they were going to go ahead and impeach anyway," Blades said.
So the group mobilized again. Using a donated "800" telephone number and volunteers, they began calling and e-mailing House members. And they also gathered more petitions, which were presented to House leaders.
On Dec. 19, one minute after the House of Representatives voted to impeach, MoveOn.org e-mailed its 450,000 supporters and urged them to make a "We Will Remember" pledge. The pledge commits a person to donating from $25 to $1,000 to up to 20 campaigns of candidates. The pledges are to be sent to the Year 2000 campaigns of candidates running against those who voted to impeach. By Thursday, Blades said, more 16,000 people had committed pledges that were nearing $11 million.
"Some politicians think the public has a short memory," Boyd said, "but they are mistaken. We will remember that these Representatives do not reflect our values and do not hear our voice."

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Boyd added that MoveOn is forwarding thousands of e-mail messages to individual Senators this week as the Senate debates how to handle the impeachment trial.
Although Blades and Boyd said they are keeping a database of the pledges and intend to follow up next year with reminders and information on how and who the money should be sent to, it is tough to say how much of that money will actually reach the campaigns.
"I'd imagine it will be about the same as a traditional pledge drive," said Melissa Ratcliff, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. "There's always some drop-off. But I don't think it will differ that much."
Others are more skeptical.
"This is an expression of emotion, and it's a little more concrete than most expressions, but it's still a long way to the Year 2000," Cornfield said.
What happens with the Senate trial, Cornfield said, will likely determine how many of the pledges are actually made.
"If it lasts three or four months, if it's really ugly, if the story is sustained and people are led to think that members of Congress have betrayed them in some way, yes," the pledges may come through, he said. "But if there's a vote this week and the Senate and everybody agrees to censure, I think people will remember it forever but I don't think they will be motivated to act on it in the next election."
Regardless, what MoveOn has achieved in such a short time is an important signal for the future, said Jonah Seiger, co-founder of Mindshare Internet Campaigns in Washington, D.C.
"Regardless of actual pledges, it is significant because political power is based on a group of people with a like-minded agenda," Seiger said.
"I find its whole existence very important. This is a signal of the future of the political process in that someone with access to technology, a little bit of money and a compelling message can organize a very effective constituency essentially overnight."

Related Sites
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George Washington University
Berkeley Systems
MoveOn
Democratic National Committee
Mindshare Internet Campaigns

Jeri Clausing at jeri@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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MoveOn.org e-mailed its 450,000 supporters and urged them to make a "We Will Remember" pledge.