Group That Bridged Arkansas Voters With National Support for Bill Halter Looking Forward to Today's Race

08 June 2010

How Blanche Lincoln Fueled Primary Challenge by Flouting the Opinion of 80% of Arkansas Democrats

$3 Million in Small Dollar Donations for Halter Counters Lincoln's $3 Million in Corporate PAC money

Accountability Now is looking forward to the Arkansas Senate primary election, in which Bill Halter hopes to upend incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln for the 2010 Democratic nomination.

In February of 2009, the group brought together such organizations as MoveOn, DFA, SEIU, the Steelworkers, and blogs like Daily Kos and Firedoglake with the express mission of organizing national support for challengers to members of Congress whose voting records showed that they were beholden to corporate lobbyists rather than their constituents.

"Many successful efforts were being waged against GOP insiders but it was a tough year for challengers to Democratic incumbents" said Glenn Greenwald, who along with Jane Hamsher co-founded the organization. "We knew that building a coalition of unions, bloggers and grass-roots groups could convince potential challengers that they could mount a credible challenge and would thus be willing to incur the wrath of the Party and the White House. And we felt that the dynamic was more truly one of political insiders vs. outsiders. regardless of party affiliation. What is happening in the Lincoln/Halter race is a testament to that."

Accountability Now began its Arkansas efforts in May of 2009, sending staff into the state to meet with members of the community after polls indicated local discontent with Lincoln. They found that Arkansas residents strongly felt that her voting record consistently reflected the interests of the PAC donors, who have contributed over $3 million to her campaign, rather than the interests of the voters in her state.

The group spent the next year working with community leaders in Arkansas to determine what it would take to mount a successful challenge to Lincoln. They served as a bridge between local efforts and the national groups who could potentially energize small-dollar donors to counterbalance the millions in out of state PAC donations that Lincoln had at her disposal.

"We wanted to support a candidate who could win," said Hamsher. "Blanche Lincoln had the support of the DC power elite -- Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Wes Clarke and Barack Obama were all backing her. It would take someone capable of running and winning a statewide race to defeat her, and also someone who wouldn't be intimidated by that kind of opposition. Bill Halter was that kind of candidate. But it was going to take a lot of small dollar donations and volunteers in order to run a successful race against Lincoln's $3 million in corporate cash that came from companies like JP Morgan, AIG, Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs."

National groups, however, were cautious about taking on the DC political establishment that Lincoln would be able to muster and expending the necessary resources to counter her corporate backers unless they believed a candidate had a chance of winning.   They wanted to see the polling, research, number crunching and district support that showed a path to victory before they would take that leap.   Accountability Now provided that.   Many of the national groups had come together on an ad-hoc basis to support Donna Edwards in her primary victory over Al Wynn for his Maryland congressional seat. Accountability Now was formed for the express purpose of bringing such groups together early on, before candidates got into the race, in order to encourage stronger challengers to take on incumbents.

Contrary to the myth spread by Lincoln and her campaign, according to FEC filings only $169,000 of Halter's campaign donations have come from union PACS. The majority of the $3,179,332 he raised came from small dollar donors interested in offsetting the influence that Wall Street banks, insurance and oil companies have on the political system through politicians like Blanche Lincoln. The rest of the money spent by the unions was in the form of outside expenditures -- something Lincoln herself was happy to have as late as December of 2009 when she was promoting ads paid for by SEIU on her behalf against Republican opponents.

“The main points I would make is: we talked to a lot of potential candidates across the country for this election cycle," said Greenwald. "Many people who were credible, who could run good campaigns, didn't want to do so because they knew they'd be running against their own party machine and incumbents who had millions in corporate money at their disposal. They believed that if they lost, their careers could be over. They needed to feel confident that they could count on the support of groups who were capable of countering the influence of huge sums of corporate cash.  With Bill Halter, we proved that grassroots organizations could work together and deliver that kind of support."

In the future, Accountability Now hopes that candidates with the skills to take on entrenched, corporate-sponsored incumbents will see what happened in Arkansas and be emboldened. "We want them to know that they can reach out to us and that they don't have to wait for lightening to strike," says Hamsher.

"Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, this is a very hopeful moment for everyone who is concerned about the ability of the American people to work together to push back against the corporations who dominate our political system," adds Greenwald. "This shows that it is possible."

Accountability Recruits First Candidate for 2010: Bill Halter

01 March 2010

Accountability Now, the Political Action Committee set up to challenge corporate-controlled incumbents and hold them accountable for their actions, today announces their first candidate in the 2010 election: Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter, who will challenge Blanche Lincoln for her Senate seat.

"As the head of the Agriculture Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, Blanche Lincoln has stood at the front of the line when it comes to repaying her corporate donors with political favors" says Accountability Now co-founder Jane Hamsher. "Lincoln has personally been the recipient of big ag subsidies, and her continued tenure as Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee would mean the death of sustainable agriculture for a generation. She's the prime target for an accountability campaign."

Accountability Now, which was co-founded by Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, draws its inspiration from the way in which former Rep. Al Wynn, D-Md., was ousted from office in 2007 by a coalition of progressive groups who came together to support Rep. Donna Edwards. “We want to destroy the taboo against challenging politicians from within their own party," says Greenwald. The group first brought together representatives from organizations including SEIU, DFA, Daily Kos, MoveOn, the United Steelworkers, Color of Change and Blog PAC in early 2009 to discuss the recruitment of primary challengers.

The group began introducing progressive leaders to Halter last year, and launched a "draft Halter" campaign in January: http://www.drafthalter.com/

"Too often incumbents hold a stranglehold on their local party machines, and without hope of significant backing the candidates with the political experience to potentially defeat them did not want to risk their careers and challenge them," says Hamsher. "We are delighted that our efforts to draft Bill Halter and organize institutional support for his campaign led to his decision to enter the race. We look forward to working with the groups in Accountability Now and the people of Arkansas to support him in this race and to see him sworn in as the next Senator from Arkansas."

New website Launched www.cooperuncovered.com

25 September 2009

Primary Opponent Being Recruited to Challenge Tennessee Representative Jim Cooper

Nashville Voters and Accountability Now Cite Cooper’s Financial Ties to Big Insurance and Obstruction of “Public Option” in Healthcare Debate

Nashville, TN – Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN) is being targeted for defeat in the 2010 Democratic Primary by citizens in Tennessee and Accountability Now, the Political Action Committee set up to challenge incumbents who fail to represent their Congressional Districts.

According to a Research 2000 poll from August 24, 2009, Cooper’s approval rating has sunk to below 50 percent (47% favorable, 41% unfavorable). Even more telling, was that just 36% of likely voters stated they would vote to re-elect Congressman Cooper.

Ranking high among Nashville voters concerns was Cooper’s perceived obstruction of the “public option” during the recent congressional debate on health care. According to the poll conducted in August, 80 percent of Democratic voters and 64 percent of independents support a public option. 77 percent of Democratic voters and 60 percent of independent voters disapprove of Congressman Cooper’s actions on the health care issue.

"Cooper has spent so many years in Congress without being accountable, that he's forgotten how to represent his constituents," said Markos Moulitsas, owner of Daily Kos and the commissioner of the poll.. "He has a choice ahead of him -- continue representing the interests of his insurance company buddies, or those of the people who elect him."

Cooper, who has collected more than $1 million dollars from health care special interests and related political action committees, has come under fire in recent weeks for failing to represent Democrats in the 5th Congressional District.

“Representative Cooper’s decisions to repeatedly vote with Big Insurance while accepting over $1 million from related special interests along with his decision to block the public option during the healthcare debate have caused his approval rating to plummet,” said Ben Tribbett, Executive Director of Accountability Now.

“Nashville voters want someone who will represent them, not big health insurance companies.”

A breakdown on Cooper’s money, votes, and polling are available here:

Money: http://cooperuncovered.com/money

Votes: http://cooperuncovered.com/healthcare, http://cooperuncovered.com/military

Polling: http://www.dailykos.com/statepoll/2009/8/19/TN/350, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/24/771526/-TN-05:-Natives-arent-happy-with-Blue-Dog-Jim-Cooper

2009 Year-End Report

31 December 2009

As 2009 draws to a close, we are excited to update you on the substantial progress we’ve made this year in fulfilling our prime mission: recruiting fresh, vibrant, and innovative candidates to mount credible primary challenges against unresponsive, entrenched and unaccountable Congressional incumbents. The lack of primary challenges plays a crucial role in enabling both political parties to ignore their core constituents and instead faithfully serve the interests of the large corporate factions that dominate all aspects of Washington, from Wall-Street-subservient financial and economic policies to endless military adventurism and civil liberties erosions. Subjecting incumbents — along with the parties’ political and fundraising infrastructure — to challenges from within can alter that dynamic in numerous ways.

We began the year by assembling a diverse and unprecedentedly broad-based network of organizations, activists, advocacy groups and prominent individuals to provide the potential base of initial support for our recruited candidates. As ABC News wrote in February when we unveiled that network, its purpose is to put the parties’ establishments “on notice that [we] will recruit and support primary challenges to vulnerable incumbents who become ‘more responsive to corporate America than to their constituents’.” In reporting on our coalition, The Washington Post wrote that “Congressional Democrats may have little to fear these days from their Republican counterparts, but they now face a new potential threat from their own side.”

Persuading that many large organizations to become part of our campaign was painstaking and time-consuming. Each has their own agenda and set of concerns that made them reluctant to directly challenge the Washington power structure. We spent months communicating with them, persuading them, assembling reports for them, culminating in a four-hour meeting in Washington attended by their leading officials to make the comprehensive case for our project. The value of primary challenges against incumbents — once the supreme taboo in Beltway power circles — is being increasingly embraced, and our ability to assemble such an impressive team of affiliates both reflects and, we believe, advances the growing acceptability of the primary challenge strategy.

Our recruiting efforts this year have encompassed multiple Congressional districts and, with an eye towards Senate incumbents, even entire states. We have sent our Executive Director to numerous districts around the country to survey the political landscape, meet with local political leaders and activists, interview potential recruits to determine suitability and credibility, and ascertain the receptiveness in that district to challenging the targeted incumbent. In the most promising districts, we have spent weeks physically in the district and months analyzing these races and speaking with potential challengers. We are currently analyzing races and communicating with potential primary challenges from both the Democratic and Republican parties, and from every region of the country, from Tennessee, Arkansas, and Florida to Arizona and Pennsylvania.

To inform our potential partners about the viability of the challenges we are targeting, we have conducted localized polls, interviewed political strategists, and produced lengthy and detailed reports assessing the viability of each of the challenges we are attempting to mount. Primary challenges can pose a genuine threat only if they are done the right way, and most of our time, efforts and resources this year have been devoted to ensuring a highly professional and rigorous approach to choosing our targeted incumbents and recruiting our desired challengers.

Our project was grounded in the recognition that there are very substantial barriers to mounting primary challenges against entrenched incumbents, and we’ve encountered those barriers first-hand this year. Any rising local political star is certain to incur the wrath of the national Party establishment if they challenge an incumbent. Potential challenges are promised all sorts of benefits if they refrain, and are bullied and threatened if they actively entertain running in a primary. Incumbents enjoy extreme advantages in name recognition, fundraising, and institutional support, which make challenging them from within their own party a difficult task even under the best of circumstances. The entire fund-raising system and political culture is designed to protect incumbents and to make primary challenges as difficult and stigmatized as possible.

These are the formidable obstacles we have spent all year navigating in attempting to identify vulnerable incumbents, find credible and worthwhile challengers, and devise effective strategies for a successful campaign. It’s easy to find challengers, but difficult to find ones who can pose a serious threat to an incumbent. Our philosophy from the start has been that we do not need to be guaranteed of a victory, but do need to be certain that our organization’s resources and efforts are directed only to challenges that will be credible and meaningful, mounted against incumbents who are both nonresponsive and vulnerable.

We are very close to being able to unveil several exciting challengers who have been heavily recruited, supported and persuaded by Accountability Now. For obvious reasons, identifying our targeted recruits before they decide to run is unwise and counter-productive, but press reports have detailed some of our efforts in this regard. In conjunction with local activists, we have created innovative tools for exposing corrupt incumbents with an eye towards a possible challenge. As the first several months of this year is the key time period for primary challengers to commit to running for the 2010 midterms, we hope and expect to have concrete and exciting announcements soon.

We are most proud of the fact that we have done all of this on a shoe-string budget and with a skeletal staff designed to maximize our donors’ contributions. All of the work done over the past year has been borne by only three people working for AN — founders Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher, who have overseen and managed the organization, along with an Executive Director. The entire budget of Accountability Now comes from the 2008 fundraising we did from small donors who support our mission. We have purposely avoided hiring a large staff or incurring the type of unnecessary expenses typically incurred by PACs (including even office rentals) in order to make our donors’ contributions last as long as possible and be as devoted as possible to our central mission. As a result, we have achieved substantial progress with only three people doing the work, and without once having to go back to our donor base and raise more funds.

For the three of us working for AN, trying to find ways to subvert and disrupt the standard, bipartisan Beltway incumbent-protection racket is of overarching importance. In some ways, this project has been more difficult, time-consuming and challenging than we anticipated, but we are more committed than ever to this goal. There are few more important goals than putting an end to incumbent complacency, and we believe that, with your support, we have taken significant steps toward that objective.

Glenn Greenwald Jane Hamsher

Accountability Now PAC

Click here to see the 2009 Expense Report

Liberals seek to defeat Democratic congressman

25 September 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A political organization headed by two prominent liberal bloggers is actively recruiting a candidate to challenge centrist Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee in the 2010 primary.

Accountability Now, a political action committee, accuses Cooper of being out of step with voters of his Nashville-based district. The PAC specifically criticized Cooper for his reluctance to embrace President Obama's health care reform plan, and said that it is time to replace him with "a Democrat in Congress accountable to our district!"

A PAC representative has been in Cooper's district interviewing potential candidates for the past week, co-founder Jane Hamsher told CNN in an interview. Hamsher is a prominent liberal activist who founded the progressive blog Firedoglake. Unlike her blog, Hamsher said that Accountability Now does not emphasize liberal politics, but rather its mission is to defeat incumbent congressmen who the PAC believes has sold out to big business.

"Our goal is to get the corporatists out of there," Hamsher said.

Cooper is the PAC's first target. Hamsher said the organization is in talks with Libertarian-minded Republicans about possible primary challenges, but nothing has been set in stone.

CNN called Cooper's office for comment and is waiting for a response.

Hamsher said there is plenty of interest from possible challengers, but would not disclose the names of any potential candidates. If a person is found, then the PAC will promote the candidacy, raise money, and help push back against the national Democratic Party, which is backing Cooper's reelection. Still, Hamsher said the challenger needs to show viability.

"Someone has to decide they want to run and they have to run their own race," she said. "We can't run the race for them. They need to show they can run their own campaign. We can then help them."

It is unclear who the PAC will target next. But Hamsher said that they plan to continue polling in search of vulnerable incumbents who they think have sold out to corporate America.

Follow Mark Preston on Twitter: @prestoncnn