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The PCCC is a new PAC dedicated to helping bold progressive candidates run effective campaigns and win.
It is led by former MoveOn staff, union organizers, top staff from Darcy Burner and Tom Perriello’s 2008 House campaigns, and the co-inventor of RSS and Reddit.
Your contribution in this early stage will go a long way. Can you chip in today?
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The mission
In 2008, one first-time progressive candidate in a key congressional district went through four campaign managers before losing.
Another spent $47,000 to retain a media firm that never produced a single TV ad. Another spent $40,000 on field consultants – enough to pay 10 field staffers for two months, but which only bought a few hand-holding consultant calls. And others wasted thousands of dollars and weeks of staff time designing C-rate websites.
Every election cycle, inexperienced candidates who run on bold progressive ideas – candidates who political insiders predict “can’t win” – come within a few points of victory. But too many lose winnable races due to the mistakes and inefficiencies of their campaigns.
Who is getting the backs of these progressive candidates? Who is helping them run competent, efficient campaigns so they can win? Right now, nobody.
Progressive Majority provides support to progressives on the state level, but not federal. The DCCC helps some congressional candidates, but many progressives with a real chance to win don’t make the DCCC’s target list or make it way too late.
Even then, the DCCC’s strength is not modern, people-powered campaigning or connecting candidates to the broader progressive movement. And progressives running in open-seat primaries won’t get any help from the DCCC because the DCCC doesn’t prioritize progressive Democrats any higher than conservative Democrats.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is filling this void – providing needed infrastructure and strategic advice early to progressive candidates so they can run first-class campaigns and win. And when PCCC-endorsed candidates get elected by working hand-in-hand with the progressive movement, they’ll trust the political instincts of progressives and be sturdy allies as we work with them to pass a bold progressive agenda.
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What people are saying about the PCCC
The PCCC is led by former MoveOn staff, union organizers, top staff from Darcy Burner and Tom Perriello’s 2008 House campaigns, and the co-inventor of RSS and Reddit. Here's what people are saying about the PCCC:
Rep. Tom Perriello was recently asked by a talk-show host if more progressive House candidates would have won in 2008 if the PCCC was around then. He said, “Just knowing the talent involved alone would make me think yes. It’s a tremendously experienced group who have seen what works and what doesn’t work. I think they would be very valuable to a lot of candidates.”
Perriello added: “We made some horrible decisions [in putting together a team] and it cost us a lot of money…The key is to be able to distinguish what I call movement people from mercenaries. And, I think when you find the folks who both have the dedication to really focus on the greater good and also the professionalism to know how to pull something like this off, that’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in money saved on the trail. But the fact is that often you’re choosing between movement people who are really really dedicated but don’t necessarily know what they’re doing or, say, the mercenary set that knows what they’re doing but not really in it for the cause necessarily. So, when you find those people it’s gold. And if PCCC or other organizations can help someone early on in doing that, I think it really could make a difference.”
OpenLeft.com’s Chris Bowers writes, “An exciting new piece of progressive infrastructure is emerging to help progressive candidates in federal campaigns: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee… it's experienced team knows what it is doing in a campaign setting. This is an exciting new piece of progressive infrastructure that should combine nicely with other emerging efforts…While it may seem shockingly early to start a 2010 campaign page, the early bird gets to govern.”
Columnist/author David Sirota writes, “I'm thrilled about this announcement...we need grassroots organizations taking this post-election moment to get (back) into the business of reshaping the Democratic Party and building a principles-based progressive movement. The news about PCCC shows that is happening.”
Blogger Digby writes, “This is an essential component of progressive politics. The stale conventional wisdom… gets passed on to congressional candidates by simple osmosis --- there's no creativity, no use of modern methods and no real progressive message and the progressive ends up losing…This is a very, very exciting project and I'll be watching with interest to see how it all unfolds.”
Republican Rep. Sue Myrick wrote in a Feb. 3 fundraising email, “…groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a loosely affiliated MoveOn.org organization, are considering targeting my seat.” This had no basis is fact, but it’s nice that some of the crazier House Republicans already fear the PCCC.