MoveOn, the liberal activist group launched to counter GOP efforts to impeach President Bill Clinton, is keeping the impeachment of President Trump alive with a series of attack ads targeting vulnerable Senate Republicans.
Two days after all but one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, voted to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment, MoveOn took aim at Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Martha McSally of Arizona. According to independent expenditure disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission, the group is running spots on television and Facebook against the three endangered Republican senators.
“We will hold Senate Republicans accountable for choosing party over constituents and Constitution,” MoveOn executive director Rahna Epting said in a lengthy statement announcing the group’s $20 million campaign to defeat Trump and boost congressional Democrats in the 2020 elections.
For more than two decades, MoveOn.org has been dedicated to electing Democrats and advancing liberal causes. However, MoveOn was founded in 1998 as an online petition under the headline: “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation.” Republicans never supported censuring Clinton and impeached him instead. But they now like the message.
“It’s time to move on,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters during a news conference immediately following Trump’s acquittal.
With the Republicans clinging to a three-seat majority, Democrats are targeting Republican-held seats in Arizona, Colorado, and Maine, as well as a couple of others, to try and win back the Senate. Arizona is an emerging swing state, and Colorado increasingly behaves like a blue state. Maine has voted for Democrat presidents since 1992, although Trump won the state’s 2nd Congressional District in 2016.
MoveOn’s investment is part of a broader attempt by liberal groups to break the Republican grip on the Senate by putting vulnerable incumbents in 2020 battlegrounds on the defensive over impeachment. “Need to Impeach,” backed by billionaire Democratic presidential contender Tom Steyer, fomented support for removing Trump from office in key states long before House Democrats kicked off the impeachment process in late September.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in conjunction with Democratic Party affiliates in the targeted states, has been active on the front since then, pushing messaging that has been picked up by local media outlets. To undermine Collins in Maine, the DSCC unveiled “WhatChangedSusan.com.”
