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Overview:

MoveOn.org Stated Purpose: Working to bring ordinary people back into politics. Tax Status: 501(c)(4) Political Orientation: Democratic Profile: MoveOn.org, a group created during the Clinton impeachment battle, soared to prominence as a voice of opposition to the Iraq War. Since then, the group has evolved into a cyber-nexus for liberal activists. It claims 2.9 million members, a status that MoveOn.org affords to anybody who volunteers time, signs a petition or donates money.1 Like many electorally active liberal groups, MoveOn.org consists of several entities, a 501(c)(4) group, a 527 arm and a federally regulated PAC. Each has broadcast commercials criticizing President Bush.2 Some of those financed by MoveOn.org's 501(c)(4) entity may warrant categorization as political expenditures under IRS criteria. The IRS defines political expenditures as those "intended to influence the selection, nomination, election, or appointment of anyone to a federal, state, or local public office."3 The agency has published an 11-point "facts and circumstances" test intended to evaluate whether expenditures mentioning candidates during campaign seasons qualify as "political." Criticism of a candidate on a topic that is prominent in a campaign points in favor of political categorization. If the communication solely mentions the candidate as a public official in connection with a pending event in which he or she is in position to act (such as an upcoming vote in Congress), that points against political categorization. 4 A March 2004 commercial financed by MoveOn.org's 501(c)(4) entity criticized President Bush for choosing to go to war in Iraq. If the president had "told the truth" in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the narrator asks, "would we have gone to war, spending $125 billion and losing more than 500 American lives"? The commercial closes by calling on Congress to censure Bush.5 That call to action arguably points against political categorization of the ad, but the commercial may have been intended to harm Bush's re-election prospects, given that it was aired during an election year and there was no plausible movement in Congress to censure the president. A section of MoveOn.org's Web site supplements the evidence that electoral considerations lay behind the ad. In its continued "censure" campaign, MoveOn.org's Web site criticizes a Bush administration plan to conduct an inquiry into intelligence failures before the Iraq War. Not only would an inquiry allow Bush to deflect blame, MoveOn.org said, but it would also "delay any political damage until 2005, after the upcoming election."6 As with many other organizations included in the New Stealth PACs study, Public Citizen shared its findings with MoveOn.org. The group disagreed with Public Citizen’s conclusion about the “censure” ad discussed above. That ad, and another ad calling for Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, did not fall within IRS guidelines for "political” expenditures because they were “publicized long before the November elections and they pertained to policy actions that the president or Congress could have taken at that time,” wrote the group’s executive director, Peter Schurman, in an e-mail.7 Schurman said in his e-mail that a third ad financed by MoveOn.org's 501(c)(4), which criticized Bush for his focus on the proposed gay marriage amendment, could "be fairly described as partisan" because "the ad calls Bush out on cynically using this wedge issue to try to distract Americans from real issues like Iraq and the economy."8 MoveOn.org's 501(c)(4) posted revenue of $2.3 million for its fiscal year 2002, which concluded in mid-2003. The group reported $139,570 in political expenditures, making it one of only four groups in the New Stealth PACs database to report any political expenditures that year.9 1   Tara McKelvey, "Onward and Forward," American Prospect, Aug. 1, 2004. 2   MoveOn.org Web site. (Available at www.moveon.org. Accessed on July 23, 2004.) 3   IRS Form 990 Instructions, Line 81, 2003. (Available at www.irs.gov.) 4   Internal Revenue Bulletin: 2004-4, Internal Revenue Service, Jan. 26, 2004. 5   Meg Kinnard, "MoveOn.org Repeats Plea to Censure Bush," National Journal, March 19, 2004. 6   MoveOn.org Web site. (Available at www.moveon.org. Accessed on Aug. 16, 2004.) 7   Peter Schurman, MoveOn Executive Director, e-mail to Congress Watch Director Frank Clemente, Aug. 2, 2004. 9   MoveOn.org 990 form, 2002.