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?
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in monthly.
[ [link removed] ]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?
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in monthly.
[ [link removed] ]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.
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in monthly.
[ [link removed] ]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
[link removed]
2. "Colorado clerk is indicted for election tampering and misconduct,"
NPR, March 9, 2022
[link removed]
3. "Mark Finchem was much closer to the Jan. 6 insurrection than he
claimed," Arizona Mirror, June 2, 2021
[link removed]
4. "Trump Endorses a Loyalist, Jody Hice, for Georgia Secretary of State,"
The New York Times, March 22, 2021
[link removed]
5. "Inside the Republican Plot for Permanent Minority Rule," The New
Republic, October 15, 2020
[link removed]
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?
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month.
[ [link removed] ]No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
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