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Liberal Groups Mobilize $350 Million for November

Monisha Bansal

Senior Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) - A coalition of liberal organizations announced plans Tuesday to move "the most expensive mobilization in history this election season."

MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote, Acorn, National Council of La Raza, Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund, and the AFL-CIO announced plans for a $350 million initiative for the 2008 elections at the Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, called it a "sea change election" on Tuesday, "one that we really haven't seen since 1980 when Reagan was elected and conservatives really changed the course of our country for the next three decades."

"The conditions are similar - that is, a ruinous economy at home and a ... ruinous war abroad," he said. "They have led Americans in large numbers and vast majorities to look for a dramatic change in course."

Borosage said the initiative would focus on voter registration, education and get out the vote drives.

"Needless to say, the stakes can't be higher," said Karen Ackerman, political director at the AFL-CIO. "Working families desperately need a new direction after years of failed policies designed to benefit the privileged few at the expense of the rest of us."

The AFL-CIO is contributing two-thirds of the money for the initiative. Ackerman called it the "most aggressive and ambitious grassroots organization effort in history."

"The union vote will be key on Nov. 4," Ackerman said. She also noted that one in four votes is from a union household. Ackerman's group is working to mobilize more than 13 million union voters.

Page Gardiner, president of Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund, said her group would be targeting 1.3 million newly registered voters and 7 million other voters for turnout, particularly unmarried women.

Gardiner said this cycle is the first time unmarried women are an equal share of the electorate to married women.

"Unmarried women will be to progressives what evangelicals have been" to the Republican Party, she said.

Ilyse Hogue, communications director for MoveOn.org, noted that they will focus not only on the White House but also on electing 60 Democrats to the Senate.

Hogue said they would be highlighting Republicans' "wrong priorities" through paid advertisements and their field networks.

Due to various tax statuses within the coalition, Hogue noted that "to the extent that we are legally able to coordinate, we will" on efforts targeting different demographics.

Larry Hart, director of government relations at the American Conservative Union, however, told Cybercast News Service that the coalition would have a "marginal effect."

"It depends on how they utilize the money and how conservatives mobilize," he said, calling the groups "pretty far to the left."

Hart added that their message "does not resonate with the center."

He acknowledged, however, that "after eight years of any administration there is so much accumulated dissatisfaction that there is enthusiasm for change." Hart said, for conservatives, it is "harder to get that enthusiasm than it has been in the past."

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