Progressive Change Campaign Committee

1. Progressive Victories Everywhere:

The PCCC enter the new Congress with more partners than ever. Bold progressives won early primaries against corporate Democrats — electing Senator Brian Schatz in Hawaii, and Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman in New Jersey, Ruben Gallego in Arizona, and Ted Lieu and Mike Honda in California.

These bright-blue districts will be represented by real progressives! And PCCC members helped elect great progressives to the Senate and House in November. (Read the full 2014 Elections Report.)

2. PCCC Members Called Out The Vote:

Thousands of national volunteers signed up to Call Out The Vote (COTV). Together, they made over 4 million phone calls to voters in key races.

The PCCC was the only national call program of this scale that worked directly with campaigns — so they could use the data the PCCC collected, making the work twice as effective.

These calls helped key progressive champions like Al Franken and Jeff Merkley win re-election to the Senate — and helped Rep. Rick Nolan in Minnesota win one of the tightest House elections.

P100 field trainees working on a project.

3. PCCC Infrastructure Worked:

The PCCC has been developing infrastructure to support thousands of progressives up and down the ballot, and it’s beginning to pay off.

This cycle, the PCCC trained over 600 candidates, campaign managers, field directors, finance directors, and communications directors, from Iowa to Florida to New Hampshire.

And the PCCC’s special technology for campaigns helped support over 150 candidates.

Considering a run for office in the next several years? Let the PCCC know here.

Zephyr Teachout speaking at PCCC event supporting Elizabeth Warren’s call to break up Citigroup, Dec 2014.

4. PCCC Loves Zephyr …

Since the election, the PCCC has been telling Democrats to run on Elizabeth Warren’s bold agenda of big, popular ideas like Wall Street reform.

When rumors swirled around Washington D.C. last week that Nancy Pelosi might nominate former Goldman Sachs executive Jim Himes to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the PCCC got alarmed.

Like the PCCC, the DCCC recruits Democrats to run for Congress. Unlike the PCCC, they don’t always choose progressive candidates. Having the DCCC chaired by a banker who Businessweek called “Wall Street’s Favorite Democrat” would have been disastrous for progressives and hurt Democrats’ chances of winning back the majority in 2016.

That’s why PCCC members took immediate action to head off Jim Himes’ appointment — calling Nancy Pelosi’s office, sending her tweets and, in the process, making headlines in Time Magazine, The Hill, Politico, The Associated Press, and more.

PCCC members calls and tweets made a difference!

Here’s the statement PCCC co-founder Adam Green made when Pelosi announced that Rep. Ben Ray LujA?n of New Mexico will chair the DCCC:

We thank Leader Pelosi for not selecting Jim Himes to lead the DCCC — thereby rejecting the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party. In order to win key House races, Democrats must run on big, bold, populist ideas like those championed by Elizabeth Warren. This means recruiting economic populist candidates — especially in red and purple states — and working with them to integrate a populist vision into their campaign messaging. The PCCC will be doing this, and we hope to partner with Rep. Ben Ray LujA?n and others to achieve success in 2016.

To see the difference this will make, read the statement Rep. LujA?n made when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill was signed into …

The op-ed below appeared in The Nation on Nov. 19.

From the rubble of the 2014 election, a conversation has started about the future of the Democratic Party. Senator Elizabeth Warren is central to that conversation.

This week, we learned that Warren will be joining the Senate Democratic leadership as strategic policy adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. In this role ai??i?? created specifically for her ai??i?? she will help craft the partyai??i??s policies and priorities as well as serve as a liaison to progressive groups.

While there is some skepticism about the idea of a “liaison” to base Democratic voters, there is largely agreement that it is a good thing for the Democratic Party to follow her political footsteps. After all, she’s adored by big swaths of the Democratic electorate and the public at large. On the campaign trail this fall, she was welcomed with open arms in Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan, and other reddish-purple states, drawing overflow crowds cheering on her message of tougher Wall Street regulation and kinder policies for working people.

But what is it that works about her? What is her special sauce? Other Democratic and progressive candidates ask me all the time how they can capture the intangible “it,” that Warren magic. Below, I’ve dissected her tactics and her policies, which are one and the same, to help candidates better understand how to tread her path.

Take, for example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB); the idea that students should be able to borrow money for school at the same interest rate as banks can borrow money from the federal government; and the idea of adding basic banking ai??i?? check-cashing, bill-paying, and small loans ai??i?? to post office locations.

These proposals have a number of things in common. Whatai??i??s Warrenai??i??s …

TheAi??Huffington Post reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gained a leadership position in the Senate Democratic caucusAi??Thursday […] Warren’s role, which is a new position created specifically for her, will be in crafting the party’s messaging and policy.

This is a good reminder that when PCCC members invest early in progressive leaders, it’s not just about winning elections in the short term — it’s about building power over time.

As Elizabeth Warren advocates for big ideas like reforming Wall Street, making college affordable, and expanding Social Security benefits, her voice will now be even louder — because she’ll be at the Democratic leadership table.

Click here to sign a congratulations card to Elizabeth Warren (and add a personal note), which the PCCC will deliver to her.

The PCCCAi??ran the “Draft Elizabeth Warren for Senate” campaign and was herAi??#1 grassroots supporter in 2012Ai??raisingAi??over $1.17 million through over 70,000 small-dollar donations for her campaign. The PCCC partnered with Warren on big legislative pushes in 2013 and 2014.

With this news, that partnership grows stronger — and all of Elizabeth Warren’s and the PCCC’s work together has more impact.

Last Tuesday was not a repeat of 2012, when PCCC members helped elect 30 amazing candidates — including Elizabeth Warren. It looked more like 2010. It was tough. It was disappointing.

Candidates who ran great campaigns — and should have won — lost in the Republican wave. Bold progressives achieved some important victories Election Night, and some were too close for comfort.

But progressives need to remember that we don’t just work for one election, one candidate, or one party. The PCCC and its members work to build a movement, to build long-term progressive power.

The PCCC Post-Election Report outlines the huge investments made this election cycle that are now for the long term — in future leaders, new technology, new best practices, and more member empowerment. All in addition to congressional victories.Ai??Check it out here.

In the days ahead, there will be a national conversation about the future direction of the Democratic Party — and the progressive movement.

Frankly, Democrats did not have a united economic agenda in this election. There was a lack of big ideas. Some Democrats tried to sound like Republicans, and they lost.

Elizabeth Warren was the most popular Democrat on the campaign trail for a reason: Her message of taking on Wall Street, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits is popular everywhere — red, purple, and blue states.

Moving forward, something needs to change. America needs a bigger politics.

Progressives won’t win their own tidal wave elections unless they can build a movement around big ideas — free college, full employment, Medicare for All, more Social Security — and the candidates who campaign on those ideas. Elizabeth Warren is the best example. But there are thousands of others out there who believe in a more expansive vision of political …

Sen. Majority LeaderAi??HarryAi??ReidAi??sent a fundraising email to the PCCC’s nearly 1 million members nationwide yesterday saying that aAi??Senate Republican Majority would “hold our government hostage in order to pressure President Obama to swallow right-wing policies.”

Sen.Ai??ReidAi??urged PCCC members to supportAi??Ai??Mark Udall (CO-Sen), Bruce Braley (IA-Sen), and Mark Begich (AK-Sen) to help Democrats keep the Senate and avoid a Republican Majority.

In addition to raising the prospect ofAi??impeachmentAi??in a Republican Senate,Ai??ReidAi??spoke publicly about expanding Social Security benefits for the first time ever.

Check out Sen. Reid’s email:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From:Ai??Sen. Majority LeaderAi??HarryAi??Reid
Date: Wed, Oct 29, 2014
Subject:Ai??I need these three

Mary,

In 6 days, the fate of the final two years of the Obama administration will be determined.

Either House Speaker John Boehner and a new Senate Republican Majority hold our government hostage in order to pressure President Obama to swallow right-wing policies.

Or, we shock Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, and many pundits like we did on Election Night 2012 — and have a Democratic Senate that puts hard-working Americans first.

I need Mark Udall (Colorado), Bruce Braley (Iowa), and Mark Begich (Alaska) to win their elections. All three races are neck and neck.

If you want Democrats to keep our Senate majority, please donate $3 to their campaigns. Please do it right away.

Udall, Braley, and Begich stand with me in opposing cuts to Social Security. In the red state of Alaska, Begich is narrowly leading after campaigning to expand Social Security benefits.

Americans are struggling. They need a government that actually tries to solve problems.But Republicans have already shown they have zero interest.

Frankly, a Republican House and Senate could go beyond shutting down the government — they could waste months of our lives onAi??impeachment.Ai??And every month that goes by without solutions, struggling Americans are in pain.

Join me …

It’s crunch time in the midterm elections, and Democrats are pulling out all the stops to hold on to their endangered Senate majority, including reviving the specter of impeachment if they lose control.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will sound the siren in an email set to be sent on Wednesday afternoon to the roughly 1 million members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a copy of which was viewed in advance by TPM.

Even if Republicans were to win control of the Senate, it would not mean they’d have the two-thirds majority needed to remove the president from office in the event that the House votes to impeach him. There was some talk of impeaching President Barack Obama among Republicans earlier this year but that has largely died down in the run-up to next week’s midterm election.

Is Hillary Clinton contending for the Democratic left, the ground Elizabeth Warren has been stomping? Adam Green and Ruth Marcus join to discuss.

And the more anti-corporate tone is pleasing to the ears of liberals who have pined for Senator Elizabeth Warren, a scourge of Wall Street banks, to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination. And, they say, it’s a message Clinton can use against Republicans because many in the GOP have turned wary of Wall Street and big corporations since the 2008 financial crash.

“Warren’s economic populist agenda offers a pathway to success for Democrats in 2014 and 2016 –if they choose to take it,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Hillary Clinton may be realizing that Elizabeth Warren’s economic populist positions are the path to electoral success in 2016–both in the primary and general election.”

Mayday is responding with even more money. As of this morning it’s upping its investment from $1 million to $1.25 million.

The straight-to-camera testimonial should be familiar to anyone who watches Mayday and its South Dakota partner, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. As Noam Scheiber explained last week, “PCCC insists on ads featuring local voters — often Republicans — which it unearths from its list of nearly one million members, distributed across every congressional district in the country.” It supplements this with direct outreach to its members, which MoveOn is also doing in South Dakota, in a race that’s unlikely to see more than 350,000 total votes cast.

Few progressives look forward to the prospect of a smaller Democratic caucus, especially one that loses the majority. But if there is a silver lining for activists, it will be that the candidates likely to win this November are those who have adopted a muscular, Elizabeth Warren-inspired approach; those who clung to muddled centrism will likely have lost.

“This year could show the Democratic Party that progressive populism is where the country is right now,” said T.J. Helmstetter, a spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has worked to fortify the campaigns of those lawmakers who represent what it calls “the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party.”

“That is going to be the lesson coming out of these elections: that this message doesn’t just work for America, it works for the Democratic Party,” Helmstetter said.

Our modeling of the district and our polling clearly showed a path to victory as long as we stayed focused and disciplined with our message and communications universe. This gave our communication team, headed by Darcy, a former staffer of Gov. Jon Corzine (D), the ammunition it needed to chip away at the media’s perceived view of the race. It also helped to bring early support from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Laborers International Union, critical early endorsers of the campaign, and to drive the all-important fundraising effort as more and more people came to believe that Watson Coleman could win.

While it’s not yet clear if the progressive wing of the party will rally around one left-wing figure who could serve as the anti-Hillary candidate, liberal leaders believe a successful Democratic candidate must embrace Ms. Warren’s message.

“An economic populist tide is sweeping the country, and by 2016 every presidential candidate will need to say whether they agree with Warren on key issues like taking on Wall Street, expanding Social Security benefits, and reducing student loan debt,” said Laura Friedenbach, spokesperson for the increasingly powerful Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

With just under a month to go beforeAi??November 4, let’s talk about the centerpiece of our plan to win major progressive victories and keep a Democratic Senate.

It’s the PCCC’s cutting-edge Call Out The Vote program (COTV).

It has three parts:

Calls from the PCCC’s Election Headquarters
National volunteers, calling from home (and house parties)
Local volunteers, calling from target districts

In 2010, we made 1 million calls. In 2012, we made 2 million.

In 2014, COTV has made over 1 million calls already, and we’re going big with the goal of achieving 4 million calls for top progressive candidates by Election Day.

PCCC members have helped 5 Elizabeth Warren wing candidates defeat more conservative opponents in tough primary battles this cycle: Ruben Gallego (AZ-7), Brian Schatz (HI-Sen), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Mike Honda (CA-17), and Pat Murphy (IA-1).

Other incumbents and candidates PCCC members are helping across the finish line include Al Franken (MN-Sen), Jeff Merkley (OR-Sen), Rick Weiland (SD-Sen), Bruce Braley (IA-Sen), Shenna Bellows (ME-Sen), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-1), Rick Nolan (MN-8), Alan Grayson (FL-8), Keith Ellison (MN-5), Michael Eggman (CA-10), and Kelly Westlund (WI-7).

PCCC volunteers made over 574,000 calls for Elizabeth Warren in 2012. Our COTV program is the single-most effective tool we have in an election year.

It’s how we make people power match and surpass corporate power in elections. The Super PACs and the Koch brothers can’t do this — only we can.

The reason it’s so effective is that with our new dialing technology, we can contact a ton of voters in a very short amount of time. We’ve nearly doubled the amount of contacts we can make compared with past elections.

It really is that much of a game changer. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what big primary winners and bold progressives elected to Congress …

ActBlue’s roots lie in the fund-raising strategies employed by Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential campaign. And in its early years the site often was used by candidates and committees using the “progressive” label. One of its heaviest users has been the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has backed more liberal Democrats such as Bill Halter, who mounted an unsuccessful challenge to Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas in 2010, and Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator. The committee has pulled in more than $3.2 million this year via ActBlue donors.

When Lessig launched Mayday, the consultants he envisioned employing were the sort of high-priced Washington hands who cut issue ads for billionaires on behalf of their pet candidates. In the months since then, however, Mayday’s understanding of “bad-ass campaign shops” has evolved. Mayday has now essentially outsourced oversight of the $1 million it’s investing in South Dakota, as well as $3 million in other races, to a nonprofit grassroots outfit called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which styles itself in opposition to the professional consultant class.

The typical media consultant takes a 15 percent commission out of any media buy a campaign makes—potentially millions of dollars in a statewide race. Right off the bat, PCCC negotiated a zero-commission deal with the three ad consultants it retained. (They will receive a flat fee instead.) The typical consultant tends to favor slick, highly-produced ads. PCCC insists on ads featuring local voters—often Republicans—which it unearths from its list of nearly one million members, distributed across every congressional district in the country. The typical campaign uses some combination of paid staff, robots, and volunteers to encourage voters to turn up on Election Day, but it keeps their efforts separate, and the campaigns often lack a critical mass of volunteers needed to make calls efficiently. PCCC, using its “Call Out the Vote” program, can seamlessly supplement the campaigns’ own efforts with calls from the humans on its membership list, providing that critical mass continuously. And because the list is so extensive, it can make calls at enormous volume in a very short period of time. It recently placed 23,000 get-out-the-vote calls in a single night in Minnesota, a scale the typical statewide campaign often achieves in a week.

For six months, frustrated White House aides have been promising that President Obama would do more than just raise money for embattled Democratic candidates, that he would set out a message that could carry those candidates to the finish line Nov. 4th. On Thursday, he finally did that with a speech at Northwestern University that offered a stout defense of his record and tried to chart an economic course forward.

Coming only 33 days before Election Day and long after the dynamic has been set in most of the contested races, it may prove ineffective, particularly if the president does not follow through and repeat his message in the days ahead. Indeed, Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee warned Thursday that it is “possibly too little too late for Democrats on the ballot who would have benefited from a strong economic populist message all year long.” Green has long championed a more aggressive stance by Obama and calls economic populism “a political winner.”

A progressive group aligned with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has outlined a plan to build a “firewall” around Warren’s staunchest allies running for Senate in 2014. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has raised more than $163,000 to support Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), and Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), lawmakers the group contends are critical to preserving Warrens’ populist vision. PCCC will officially endorse Merkley today, and it’s already raised nearly $70,000 for him.

“Jeff Merkley is one of the boldest leaders in the Senate because he isn’t afraid to take on the big fights like breaking up the big banks, expanding Social Security benefits, defending our privacy, and fighting to ensure Senate rules represent the will of the people,” said the group’s cofounder, Stephanie Taylor, in a statement.

A group aligning itself with Elizabeth Warren is endorsing and raising money for U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, whose election in 2008 predates Warren’s to the Senate from Massachusetts in 2012.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says it has 21,709 Oregon members and nearly 1 million nationally. It has launched a national fundraising appeal, and says it has collected $69,400 for Merkley from 7,260 mostly small donors in Oregon.

Like Warren, Merkley has taken on Wall Street, and championed the creation of a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that Warren proposed as part of 2010 legislation overhauling the financial system.

Progressive groups such as the PCCC and 350 Action are pushing House GOP energy chair Fred Upton to contribute cash raised from energy interests to a fund for cleaning up a gas line rupture in Michigan. The challenge for liberals: To push big money’s influence on to the national agenda — see the attacks on the Kochs — at a time when action by Congress is hopeless and SCOTUS is dismantling protections.

Progressive groups, transparency advocates and the whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers are coming out strongly against a Senate bill to reform the National Security Agency (NSA), arguing the reforms it contains are inadequate.

“Our fundamental civil rights — the human rights we hold dear — are not adequately protected by either the Senate or House versions of the USA Freedom Act,” wrote the groups and individuals, including the Sunlight Foundation, Credo Action, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Drake.

Candidate for New York Governor Zephyr Teachout called the Albany results “extraordinary,” and said they were reflective of the strengths of unions, specifically the Public Employees Federation, the white-collar government employee union that endorsed Teachout.

Teachout also thanked the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the National Organization for Women and the Sierra Club, who all endorsed her.

PCCC-endorsed Zephyr Teachout won a stunning 34.3% of the vote in what the New York Times is calling a “surprisingly potent liberal revolt” and “an embarrassing rebuke” to Governor Andrew Cuomo, adding that it could “put a sizable dent in any national aspirations he may hold.”

This is a victory for progressives everywhere. Andrew Cuomo’s corrupt economic policies hurt New York working families. In a few short weeks, Zephyr Teachout gave Andrew Cuomo the race of his political life — even though she was outspent 11-to-1, and fueled only by the hands and hearts of her supporters.

The national message for politicians is clear. If you run as a Democrat and govern as a Republican, you can be challenged and held accountable.

This developing movement, now often referred to as “the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party” (a variation on the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s declaration, “I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”), is focused on many of the issues that Warren raised in her electrifying July speech at Netroots Nation, where she vowed to fight for wage hikes, fair trade, pay equity, affordable education, and ironclad protections for Social Security and Medicare. “This is a fight over economics, a fight over privilege, a fight over power,” the Massachusetts senator said. “But deep down, it is a fight over values. These…are progressive values. These are America’s values. And these are the values we are willing to fight for.

Many of these candidates identify as “bold progressives,” borrowing a phrase from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Along with groups like Democracy for America and Progressive Democrats of America, which have formed over the past decade to push the party to the left, the PCCC argues that Democrats can’t win by proposing to be kinder, gentler Republicans. While there’s a general acceptance that support for reproductive rights and marriage equality benefits Democratic candidates in much of the country, the PCCC argues that this appeal can be strengthened and expanded with economic-populist stances. The PCCC doesn’t just defend Social Security; it backs candidates like Coleman who propose to expand it. And when “Third Way” centrists grumble that Warren and her allies are engaging in a risky politics, the PCCC counters with polling numbers that show compromising on economic issues is the real risk, since it blurs the distinctions between the two parties.

The Senate advanced a constitutional amendment meant to reverse two recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign spending after Republicans opted to back proceeding to debate on the measure.

Democratic political groups, such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), pushed hard for a vote, saying the issue motivates Democrats to go out to the polls.

“Citizens United gives corporate special interests the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who is up for reelection this November. “It’s wrong and I’ve been fighting it since the day the Supreme Court announced its egregious decision.”