Dear MoveOn member,
My name is Cheryl Zando, and I am MoveOn's new chief operating officer. This is the first time I've ever been asked to send an email to all MoveOn members, and unfortunately I don't have good news to share.
As COO, it's my job to oversee MoveOn's budgets, and after reviewing the books for the first quarter of 2022, I'm worried. We're significantly below our fundraising projections at this point, and if we don't catch up fast, we'll have to consider scaling back our campaign plans for the year.
This couldn't be happening at a worse time.
November's midterm elections are fast approaching, and dozens of Donald Trump Big Lie conspiracy theorists are running for key state-level offices where they will have the power to throw out votes and refuse to certify election results. If Trump's cronies win, they will finish what Donald Trump started on January 6 by installing him in the White House in 2024.
That's why, when our elections team proposed a multimillion-dollar effort to defeat Trump-backed secretaries of state—something we'd never done in our history—I enthusiastically gave it the green light … assuming that we'd meet our fundraising benchmarks as the year went on.
This is where the rubber hits the road. If we're going to continue with this ambitious plan to defend our elections, we need our members to step up. Will you chip in $5 a month to make sure we have the funding to implement our full midterm election plan without cutting back?
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
At last count, at least 163 Republicans who have embraced Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election are running for statewide positions that would give them authority over the administration of elections, from governor to secretary of state.1
We're talking about candidates like Tina Peters, who is running for secretary of state in Colorado after being indicted for tampering with voting machines in 2020 and leaking election information to right-wing conspiracy theorists to fuel Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election.2 Luckily, her legal troubles are likely to keep her from being able to continue as a candidate, but there are so many other candidates like her.
In Arizona, Trump's candidate is Mark Finchem, who attended the January 6 insurrection and is a self-described member of the Oath Keepers, the white supremacist group that helped organize the deadly Capitol attack.3
In Georgia, Trump endorsed Jody Hice, a member of Congress who attempted to stop the certification of Georgia's election after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused Trump's demand to "find 11,780 votes."4
If these people are in charge of counting votes and determining the outcomes of our elections, then American democracy is over. We cannot let that happen—but unless we close this urgent fundraising gap, we may have no choice but to scale back our plans.
We are currently in the testing phase of innovative new voter engagement and turnout strategies that build on the hugely successful work we did in 2020 to ensure that young voters, voters of color, and those who voted for the first time in 2018 and 2020 turn out again. But if we don't have the funds, we won't be able to deploy those new strategies widely.
Can you chip in $5 a month to defend our democracy and stop these Trump lackeys from taking over our elections?
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
After the 2010 midterm elections, when President Obama was in the White House and Democrats lost big, Republicans were able to use their majorities in Congress and in the states to gerrymander voting maps and pass voter suppression laws to further tip elections in their favor.5 Then, they were able to block tens of millions of Americans from getting health care and shovel trillions in tax cuts to their super-rich friends.
We're still living with the fallout today. If Democrats hadn't lost the midterm elections in 2010 and 2014, Mitch McConnell wouldn't have been able to steal a Supreme Court seat and ram through the far-right majority we have now. Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neal Gorsuch wouldn't be on the Supreme Court, and Roe v. Wade wouldn't be on the chopping block.
Now, the stakes are even higher. Republicans are no longer just trying to rig elections with voter suppression and gerrymandering. Now, they're aiming to finish what Trump started on January 6 and gain the power to simply toss out any election result they don't like.
I'm so proud of the work our team is doing. But for our campaign to be firing on all cylinders on Election Day, we need to be building that operation right now. There's no wiggle room in this plan, and as a people-funded nonprofit, we rely on your donations to power our work.
Please don't make us scale back these plans. Chip in $5 a month to make sure we can fully fund our multimillion-dollar campaign to stop Trump and his allies from taking over our elections.
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
Thanks for all you do.
–Cheryl Zando, Chief Operating Officer
Sources:
1. "How Republicans became the party of Trump’s election lie after Jan. 6," The Washington Post, January 5, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/160080?t=8&akid=320631%2E40999114%2EAd2zRS
2. "Colorado clerk is indicted for election tampering and misconduct," NPR, March 9, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/161300?t=10&akid=320631%2E40999114%2EAd2zRS
3. "Mark Finchem was much closer to the Jan. 6 insurrection than he claimed," Arizona Mirror, June 2, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/161676?t=12&akid=320631%2E40999114%2EAd2zRS
4. "Trump Endorses a Loyalist, Jody Hice, for Georgia Secretary of State," The New York Times, March 22, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/161677?t=14&akid=320631%2E40999114%2EAd2zRS
5. "Inside the Republican Plot for Permanent Minority Rule," The New Republic, October 15, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/158823?t=16&akid=320631%2E40999114%2EAd2zRS
Want to support MoveOn's work? Donald Trump's preparations for being able to steal the presidency in 2024 are well underway and include working to replace top election officials in battleground states with his own loyalists. Which is why MoveOn is doing something we've never done in our 23-year history: We're launching a powerful, multimillion-dollar effort to defeat Trump-backed secretaries of state across the country and elect individuals who will count every vote and ensure fair elections.
Will you chip in monthly to power our campaign to defeat Trump and protect our elections in 2022?
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
PAID FOR BY MOVEON
This email was sent to John xxxxxx on April 8, 2022. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. MoveOn's privacy policy was recently updated. To read our new privacy policy, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.