MoveOn Money

According to this L.A. Times article, MoveOn has started to get some serious money together for the 2006 mid-term elections. They just finished up raising $833K for Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Why West Virginia? Bush won West Virginia by 13 points in 2004. Byrd was elected to Senate in 1958 and has not received fewer than 65% of the vote since. In 2000, he received 78% of the vote and only spent $1.1M on his campaign.

But Byrd is 87 and has not yet publicly stated that he would run, but his spokesperson said that he would.

And some info on MoveOn's recent efforts:

Last week's effort for Byrd stood as another demonstration of MoveOn's formidable capacity to generate political activity over the Internet. During the 2004 election, it raised about $60 million; while about $10 million came from large contributors led by liberal investor George Soros, the group says it also collected funds from 500,000 donors who contributed less than $100 on average.

The group solicited contributions for Byrd with an online letter from first-term Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who gained national recognition with his speech to the Democratic National Convention last year.

Matzzie said 19,646 donors from the group's list contributed $832,538 to Byrd. More than 3,500 of the donors had not previously contributed, he said.

Gavin, Byrd's spokesman, said the senator was "humbled" by the outpouring.

Republicans charged that the response showed that Byrd is too liberal for his state.

I gave money to MoveOn in 2004 and will continue to do so as long as I can afford it.