PCCC

Rep. Nancy Pelosi announced Wednesday that she will stay on as House Democratic leader in the next Congress… Liberal groups, which have been wary that Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip who was expected to replace Pelosi had she stepped down, would be too quick to cut entitlement programs in order to solidify a bipartisan deficit deal, were quick to cheer her decision. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Nancy Pelosi,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Wednesday in an email. “The mandate of the election was to tax the rich and protect programs like Medicare and Social Security from benefit cuts. Steny Hoyer would likely not have respected that mandate, but given her track record, we have high hopes for Nancy Pelosi.”

A prominent liberal group launched a last-minute campaign urging Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) to stay on as the top House Democrat next year… The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a Washington-based liberal advocacy group, sent out a notice at 11 p.m. Tuesday night warning that, if Pelosi steps down, “a conservative Democrat will take over.” Although the PCCC email doesn’t name names, the reference likely is to Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip who’s expected to replace Pelosi if she steps down. As highlighted by the PCCC, many liberals fear Hoyer will be too quick to cut programs like Medicare and Social Security for the sake of reaching a deficit deal with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the Republicans.

Led by the AFL-CIO, the progressives have presented a united front on two basic demands: No cuts to entitlement programs, and no reauthorization of the Bush tax cuts for higher income brackets. “If it’s bad for workers, it doesn’t matter to us who proposes it. We won’t be on board. We won’t be taken for granted,” Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s president recently told Salon’s Josh Eidelson. “Some people in the White House think that compromise and bipartisanship for its own sake is a principle the American people will admire,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which boosts liberals in primary fights against moderate Democrats. “But there’s good compromises and there’s bad compromises, and if he cuts Social Security or Medicare, that would just be a huge betrayal of the mandate the American people gave him.” Green said his group would “absolutely” mobilize against the president, including running TV ads, if it looks like he’s going to cut a bad deal. During a previous fight with Congress over taxes in 2010, the PCCC ran TV ads hitting Obama by merely repeating his own words opposing the Bush tax cuts.

In this week’s installment of Break Room, political columnist Michelle Cottle talks with Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, about what Petraeus’ scandal might mean for Obama’s meeting with progressive groups on Tuesday.

Created in 2009, PCCC supports unabashedly left-wing candidates with dollars and operations help—a busy, if quiet, liberal answer to the Tea Party movement. But while the collective Tea Party shriek seemed to blow itself out around the time of the Republican primaries and lost ground in last week’s elections, PCCC’s star is rising… And then, exhausted, they watched the results come in. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. Sherrod Brown in Ohio. One after another, 30 Senate and House candidates PCCC had put its weight behind became victors. Far from resting on its laurels, Taylor said PCCC is readying for a fight against expected attempts to cut Medicare funding during the coming lame duck session of Congress, and they’re scouting for a new crop of progressive candidates.

One organization that immediately offered comment on the way it influenced the 2nd Congressional District race was the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The organization is being credited for assisting Kuster’s effort this year, helping her raise nearly $240,000 from donors in New Hampshire and nationally. The organization also made more than 275,000 calls for Kuster in both 2010 and 2012, and had volunteers on the ground assisting the campaign, according to T. Neil Sroka, the press secretary, for the organization.

Sroka noted that Kuster, on a conference call, credited the org as an “integral” to her team as “invaluable to the cause of bold progressives.”

Warren, a Harvard University law professor, has become a liberal darling in her first race for elected office. She helped President Obama create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and won a featured speaking slot at the Democratic convention in Charlotte. “Progressives just won our marquee race of 2012 and elected a leader who will shake up the corridors of power from Washington to Wall Street,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of Warren’s earliest supporters. The group raised more than $1 million for Warren.

The president’s former advisor and the conceptual founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren is now the Democrats’ candidate for senate in Massachusetts. Her campaign has become a second rallying point for politically-concerned celebrities — and in a new spot from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Massachusetts native Ben Affleck sings the Harvard professor’s praises.

But ultimately, Obama cannot implement a deal alone. He has to get members of his own party to vote for it in Congress—so regardless of the president’s disposition, there are many pressure points in Congress for progressives who want to keep Democrats from cutting the safety net. To that end, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has been seeking out Democrats running in tough races and getting them on board with a no-cuts agenda, in exchange for valuable financial and logistical support. At least eight House candidates are receiving PCCC support, along with four Senators or Senate candidates: Sen. Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and now Representative Shelley Berkley, whom PCCC endorsed on Monday. On a call with volunteers this week—joined, quite notably, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—Berkley re-stated her position on safety net cuts: “I will promise you without fear of contradiction, I will do everything in my power to strengthen and protect Medicare and Social Security and it’s going to be a cold day in the middle of August in the Nevada desert before I do anything that’s going to harm those two essential programs.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based liberal advocacy group and a federally registered political action committee, says it made 8,000 calls to Vermonters on Sunday on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin and Democratic treasurer candidate Beth Pearce. The calls were part of the committee’s “Call out the Vote” campaign in which members of PCCC are trying to reach out to one million Americans with advice about federal and state candidates to support.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is using a combination of a paid call center and a predictive dialing system for volunteers in order to meet a goal of at least one million calls on behalf of progressive candidates, the group’s organizers say. “What we wanted to do here is to set up a system where we can take the scale of the national volunteer program, and still operate it with the level of focus and volunteer cultivation that you would normally get with physical offices, face-to-face,” said Michael Snook, the PCCC’s chief information officer.

On the eve of today’s 10th anniversary of the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), family, friends, former Congressional colleagues and average Americans who were touched by Wellstone’s work gathered on a conference call to share their memories of one of the icons of the progressive movement, vowing to continue to champion the causes he fought so hard for… This is a person who understood his moral compass,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee Co-Founder Adam Green said on the call. “And even when he was an isolated voice in an out of touch Senate, he voted his conscience and was very much the tip of a spear of an entire movement across this country.”

Cravaack’s opponent, Rick Nolan, is getting a boost from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in the form of phonebanking. The group has placed 11,108 phone calls to voters on behalf of Nolan, according to a press release.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is up with a new ad in New Hampshire’s 2nd District for Dem Carol Shea-Porter that provides a good example of how progressives should message around Medicare and the safety net in general.

PCCC plans to make hundreds of thousands of calls for Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts Senate race. Another top priority is Alan Grayson’s House race in Florida. Call Out The Vote will also help Sen. Sherrod Brown’s re-election effort in Ohio and Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign in Wisconsin. On the House side, calls will go out for Rob Zerban, who is trying unseat Paul Ryan, Annie Kuster’s campaign in New Hampshire, and several other progressive candidates.

Bold Progressives, a Democratic action organization that’s almost a million members strong, has created a great get out the vote (GOTV) campaign targeting essential election races. It’s called “Call Out The Vote” and you can get involved by helping to make calls to critical voters in key elections.

As corporations and conservative moguls like the Koch Brothers dump millions of dollars into this year’s election season, it’s difficult for progressive candidates to stay afloat. But some may have found a secret, and it’s all about taking it back to volunteer, grassroots efforts. On Tuesday, a campaign titled “ Call Out The Vote ” was launched by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to encourage people to volunteer to make phone calls on behalf of progressive candidates. The Call Out The Vote campaign is in its third and, perhaps, most important year, as it aims to make one million calls to targeted voters on behalf of 20 progressive candidates running for the House and Senate this election season.

One of the most prominent progressive groups in the country is launching a major voter outreach effort on behalf of 20 congressional campaigns, calling it the “crown jewel” of its election functions. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee hopes to place one million phone calls to targeted voters through the effort, named “Call Out The Vote.”

President Obama leads Republican candidate Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, 51 percent to Romney’s 43.5 percent, according to a new poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the liberal-leaning Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC).

As parents, students and teachers all wait to see when, and if, classes will resume, which they could as soon as tomorrow, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is releasing an ad, set to hit Chicagoland airwaves immediately, thanking the teachers’ union “for their fight for students and parents.” Regardless of what happens today with the House of Delegates’ vote, PCCC officials say they will continue to run the ad as they see the Chicago teachers’ strike as indicative of a national battle between unions and politicians, particularly conservatives like Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who released a statement at the start of the strike blasting CTU.

It won’t be until this evening at least when we’ll find out whether the Chicago teachers strike is over. But there sure is a lot of activity out there — mostly by the Chicago Teachers Union and its allies. In one development, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a left-of-center political action committee that has been active in Wisconsin, began airing a “thank you, unions” ad on broadcast and cable TV and on the Internet. “Because we’re a union, we can work together to make things better for our schools,” it says.

WISCONSIN — The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) endorsed Mark Pocan (D), who is running to replace Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

Late last night, CTU President Karen Lewis and Chicago Board of Education President David Vitale both said there were major strides made in negotiations yesterday and that students could be back in school by Friday. Meanwhile, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a left-leaning political activism group, has been urging Chicago residents who support the teachers to call on their elected officials to do the same.

A liberal political group is criticizing Ann Romney’s comment that she and her husband “have not had a financial struggle in our lives.” The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is launching online ads, first set to run in Ohio, that highlights Ann Romney’s quote and suggests it shows that she and husband Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential nominee, are out of touch with middle-class voters.

Progressive Campaign Change Committee (PCCC) co-founder Stephanie Taylor speaks with Michael Shure (host of TwenTYTwelve on TYT Network) at the 2012 Democratic National Convention about speeches from Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Sandra Fluke, and more.