Press Coverage

The liberal advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered 200,000 pledges to President Obama’s campaign headquarters Friday, demanding he hold their line in debt ceiling negotiations or lose their support.

About a dozen people representing the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered what they said were 200,000 pledges from people who will refuse to donate or volunteer for Obama’s re-election campaign if he cuts the entitlement programs.

“It’s not a question of who they’re going to support for president, they’re going to vote for Barack Obama. It’s a question of where their time and money is going to go,” spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.

With entitlement programs potentially on the chopping block during the current debt ceiling negotiations, a prominent liberal group is threatening to pull its support for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign if Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security benefits are cut.

In Chicago, members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered 200,000 petitions to Obama’s Prudential Building headquarters, threatening to cut off donations and volunteer hours if Obama puts Medicare and Social Security on the table. Ann Marie Habershaw, the COO of the Obama Campaign, met the small group in the Prudential Building lobby to receive the petitions.

A group of liberal Democrats who fundraised and volunteered for Barack Obama in 2008 plans to protest Friday outside his reelection campaign headquarters in Chicago. Organizers with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal PAC, say they will attempt to deliver 200,000 signatures on a pledge to withhold support from the president if he consents to cuts to federal entitlement programs.

PCCC Co-Founder Adam Green takes questions from Left, Right and Center while outlining the PCCC’s role in the upcoming election cycle.

In the midst of ongoing debt talks, the liberal-leaning Progressive Change Campaign Committee is urging people not to donate their time or money to President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign if he agrees to cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

More than 160,000 people have pledged to withhold support for Obama in 2012 if concessions in Social Security or health care are made, according to the PCCC.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is backing state Sen. Eric Griego in the Democratic primary for New Mexico’s open 1st district, the group’s first endorsement of the 2012 cycle.

“We had zero members, zero dollars, and just an idea a couple years ago,” says PCCC co-founder Adam Green. “When hundreds of thousands of people take action at BoldProgressives.org and chip in their hard-earned dollars to support our work, that inspires us to keep fighting even harder.”
The $3 million raised in the last cycle – along with an additional million raised so far for next year – came from 190,000 donors, each chipping in an average of $15. Most of the money was raised through ActBlue, an online fundraising conduit for Democratic groups.

House Democrats are calling on President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the next Senate recess.

Two left-leaning progressive groups have launched an Internet campaign to get Warren appointed. CREDO Action and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee set up a website pushing for a Warren nomination. They’re touting 256,000 electronic signatures calling for the president to appoint Warren.

Liberal boosters for consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren are redoubling their pressure on President Barack Obama to pick her to lead a new financial watchdog agency — despite Republicans’ all-out attempts to undermine the bureau, deny her stewardship of it and block Obama from giving her the job over the Memorial Day recess.

Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee told POLITICO in a statement Friday that his group will keep pressing Obama to name Warren as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He noted his group has collected 175,000 signatures supporting her in just two days, and challenged Obama and Democratic lawmakers to fight for her with all the weapons in their political arsenal, “the biggest being the presidential bully pulpit.”

The once-obscure judicial race, which will be decided in an election Tuesday, has taken on national implications, both because Gov. Scott Walker’s signature legislation stripping public unions’ bargaining powers could be decided by the court and because it’s the first time voters have gone to the polls since Walker signed the bill that sparked the national push.

The same national groups that created the TV ad showing Capitol Square demonstrators expressing their opposition to Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill is out with another one featuring volunteers working on the recalls of Republican state senators.

In the aftermath of Wisconsin Republicans using a procedural move to pass an anti-collective bargaining bill last night, two liberal groups reported a fundraising bump of $200,000 alone since the bill passed.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/progressives-get-serious-about-wisconsin-recalls.php

If the money pouring in is any indication, supporters of union workers in Wisconsin like the TV ad campaign launched by two national progressive groups on Wednesday.

As if we needed another sign that the labor standoff in Wisconsin has become a national proxy fight, an air war has broken out on Wisconsin televisions. The latest salvo comes from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America, which has bought time on Madison and Milwaukee television stations for a one minute ad blasting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s anti public union budget proposal.

On the heels of their nascent campaign to (maybe) recall five GOP state Senators in Wisconsin, a coalition of national progressive groups is going on the air with ads aimed directly at embattled Gov. Scott Walker (R) and the state GOP.

Today, the liberal groups Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America launched robocalls in the districts of five Republican state senators to determine whether voters are interested in pursuing recall efforts against their respective representatives.

Liberals on Capitol Hill are upping the pressure on President Obama to amplify his support for public workers in Wisconsin and beyond.
The Progressive Caucus co-chairman said this week that Obama’s words “are important,” but “there is more to do.”
“There’s a bully pulpit there that the president has and I think it needs to be used – it needs to be used to rally national support,” Grijalva said on a press call Wednesday sponsored by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
“I don’t think you can turn the cheek on this one,” he said. “This is one where you have to be very firm.”

The first poll of voters in California’s 36th district shows a neck-and-neck race between the two top Democrats vying to replace Rep.Jane Harman, who will make her resignation official next week.
The results also showed voters in the district think it is more important for government to create jobs than reduce the deficit: 51 percent to 40 percent.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in recent days has had to do some damage control to tamp down criticism over the slow pace of his city’s Christmas weekend blizzard clean up. Now a liberal group is aiming to put New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a rising GOP star, on the defense as well.

Voters last week sent Washington a strong message about fixing the federal budget, according to exclusive numbers from a new poll obtained by TPM: Raise taxes on the wealthy and cut the military budget before you touch the nation’s largest entitlement program, Social Security.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is circulating a petition in response to news that Google will soon announce a traffic-management deal with Verizon: “Don’t be evil.”

A progressive grass-roots organizing group is launching a federal lobbying arm Saturday, seeking to leverage the energy of its members to advance liberal policy in Congress.