Grass-Roots Organizing Effort Gets a Big Boost From Internet

WASHINGTON —  As senators plot the shape and scale of a Senate impeachment trial against President Clinton, an Internet-based group dedicated to ending the proceedings is stepping up its activism and promising to punish impeachment-minded lawmakers in the next election.

In late September, Berkeley-based software entrepreneurs Wes Boyd and Joan Blade launched an Internet campaign, called “Move On,” from a guest house in their backyard. By mid-December, their impromptu initiative had drawn signatures from 300,000 people, who urged lawmakers to “immediately censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the country.”

But in the weeks since the House of Representatives’ Dec. 19 impeachment vote, the Internet-based organization has gained new momentum. According to Boyd, it has picked up 170,000 new signatures and become the meeting place of would-be activists and campaign contributors, many of them entering the political fray for the first time.

A majority of Americans has consistently told pollsters that Clinton should not be impeached or removed from office because of his relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky. But interest groups that have traditionally supported Clinton have been slow or tepid in coming to his defense.

Throw the Bums Out, Online Style

In the wake of the House impeachment vote, however, anti-impeachment efforts have picked up some steam. And Boyd and Blade--themselves political neophytes--have launched a spinoff to Move On called the “We Will Not Forget” campaign. The campaign invites those who signed the Move On petition or visited its Web site to put their money where their keyboards are. In the span of a few minutes at their computers, Internet surfers could help threaten those who voted for impeachment by pledging contributions--from $25 to $1,000--to the campaigns of candidates who challenge them in 2000.

As impeachment has taken over the Senate docket, Boyd said, roughly 18,500 Americans across the political spectrum have pledged to contribute $12.6 million to unseat lawmakers whose votes supported impeachment or prolonged the process. As pay-up--or pay-back--time approaches, Boyd said, he will e-mail pledgers a reminder of their commitments and give them easy ways to make good on them.

With the next election 22 months away and political memories in this country notoriously short, many experts believe that such anti-impeachment drives will amount to little--either in the next few months or in the next election. They noted that many moderate Republicans, acting at their immediate political peril, already have decided that their institutional duties require them to discount public opinion and proceed with impeachment or a Senate trial. Beyond that, many are betting that former Wyoming GOP Sen. Alan K. Simpson was right when he opined that Americans rarely focus beyond next month’s movie releases or their next stock statement.

“I do not expect it will have a decisive impact,” said Larry P. Arnn, president of the conservative Claremont Institute in Claremont, Calif. “Because, first and foremost, they’re in the wrong on this matter. And second, you can’t deploy the citizen body into a high pitch of intensity but once in a while. For them to try to sustain the anger for this over two years? Yeah, right!”

But some of Move On’s signers say they are adamant: They will neither forgive nor forget their lawmakers’ disregard of majority opinion.

“I find it very offensive” when pundits and politicians suggest voters will not remember, said Debbie Marcia of Woodstock, Ga., a self-described swing voter who has pledged to contribute $1,000 to challengers’ coffers as part of the We Will Not Forget campaign. She said that her husband “nearly had a coronary” when she told him, but she intends to make good on the promise.

“I think they have severely underestimated my intelligence as a voter. I don’t care if it’s 10 years from now or two. To appease the right wing of the Republican Party, they have treaded onto dangerous constitutional grounds.”

In the meantime, Boyd is presiding over a growing list of names and electronic sign-ons that has become a potential gold mine for organizers at the local level. In three days in mid-December, Lori Hughes--a stay-at-home mom in Mercer Island, Wash.--used Boyd’s Zip-coded list of signers to organize an anti-impeachment rally. With three days’ work--largely on the Internet--Hughes and two others pulled together a rally that drew 3,000 people to a shopping mall.

Hughes knows well the limits of Move On’s power: After the mid-December rally, she and other representatives delivered a Move On petition signed by 6,600 constituents to Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.). Days later, the congresswoman voted in favor of impeachment on all four articles.

But Hughes, who said that she has never organized anything more political than a car pool, is undaunted by that. Now, she is helping to plan a rally and picket line outside Republican Sen. Slade Gorton’s district office in Bellevue, Wash. And after the impeachment vote, she pledged a total of $500 to the coffers of those who challenge impeachment proponents.

“I don’t like the idea that it sounds like a threat, but there’s a helpless feeling here and that’s all we know to resort to,” Hughes said. “We tried in a more passive way, but it seems to have not made a dent. . . . For a while, they had good reason to think we were complacent, but no longer.”

Boyd said it is the mobilization of people like Hughes that could make this an important moment for the impeachment debate, for American politics and for the Internet.

A Little Time May Be All It Takes

“There’s a lot of passion--a lot of frustrated people out there,” Boyd said. “It’s an important time for the American political system.”

The Internet, he said, could be the force that helps recalibrate a political system that has been riven by centrifugal forces. Special interests have driven politicians to political extremes, Boyd said. But because political organizing on the Internet is relatively quick and easy, it could give ordinary Americans a political voice.

“It could be a strong force for pulling the center back into the process,” he said. “We’re allowing people to be five-minute activists. If we can allow people to be effective with a small investment of time, that’s going to pull people back to the center.”