Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Politico:

Forty-four congressional Democrats who voted to condemn MoveOn.org for its ad branding Army Gen. David Petraeus “General Betray Us” have accepted more than $3.9 million in contributions from the influential anti-war group and its members.

Among those who opposed resolutions specifically repudiating the full-page ad in The New York Times, only 17 Democrats and one independent took cash from the group and its members — contributions totaling almost $1.4 million.

The resolutions approved by the House, calling the ad an “unwarranted personal attack,” were only symbolic. But the split of MoveOn beneficiaries on the votes highlights something of a rift between Democrats and the anti-war activists who largely fuel MoveOn.

A Politico analysis of MoveOn’s campaign finance records, upon which this story is based, goes back to 2002 and includes only contributions given directly by the group and those it funnels from its members to candidates, not the millions it spends on television ads and other so-called independent expenditures to help favored candidates.

These tools, along with aggressive online organizing, have made MoveOn an undeniable political force. It has helped boost many Democratic candidates to victory, including 20 or so freshmen who were essential to swinging the House and Senate to Democrats last year. Yet all but three of those freshmen voted for the resolutions blasting the ad.

Take Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). MoveOn boasted it helped him knock off incumbent Republican Rick Santorum in 2006 by steering more than $200,000 in earmarked contributions from its members and independent expenditures to Casey, not to mention more than 800,000 phone calls urging support for him.

Yet Casey voted to condemn the group’s ad, a move his spokesman Larry Smar said “is not remotely hypocritical.” He explained Casey “doesn’t agree 100 percent of the time with anyone who has supported him,” calling the ad “a distraction from the debate on the Bush policy in Iraq.”

Many Democrats who supported the resolutions said their votes were unrelated to their desire to end the war in Iraq — one of MoveOn’s main missions — but the group does not appear to readily accept that bright-line distinction.

“They were not doing what they were supposed to,” MoveOn Communications Director Jennifer Lindenauer said of the Democrats boosted by her group who voted for the resolutions. “We elected them to end the war. They didn’t end the war. … They’re wasting their time debating an ad and not doing what the American people want.”

Before it ran the ad, MoveOn posted a poll on its website asking whether it should “support primary challengers against some Democrats who side with the president on Iraq.” But asked if the group intended to either withhold support from — or even target — Democrats who took its help then later condemned its ad, Lindenauer would not be pinned down.

“I can’t say ‘yes,’ we will support this candidate or not,” she said, explaining that the group’s 3.3 million members decide which campaigns to endorse and fund. “MoveOn members work hard to support candidates that are working to end the war. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

MoveOn has used the congressional rebuke to rally war opponents and raise money, but the episode may have helped the GOP more.

Republicans in Congress and on the presidential trail have fanned the flames of the controversy, which has distracted attention from the war debate — a less advantageous issue for them.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a top GOP presidential candidate, ran his own ad in The New York Times blasting MoveOn.org and trying to link its ad to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton, whose presidential campaign this year has received $5,725 from MoveOn members through the group, voted against the resolution singling out the ad. So did fellow White House hopefuls Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who’s accepted nearly $2,000 from the group and its members for his presidential and Senate campaigns, and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), who’s gotten nearly $25,000 from MoveOn members.

But Clinton, Dodd and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who’s accepted more than $30,000 from the group’s members for his presidential campaign, voted for a less-pointed resolution that didn’t mention MoveOn and was rejected. It would have condemned all attacks “on the honor, integrity and patriotism” of military personnel.

Obama skipped the vote on the MoveOn resolution to campaign, as did Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), whose presidential campaign has accepted more than $5,000 from the group’s members.

Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called it “the height of hypocrisy” for Democrats who benefited from MoveOn’s cash and independent expenditures to repudiate its ad.

“Now that they have been forced to go on the record condemning this despicable ad,” Spain said, “it is incumbent upon them to do the right thing and pledge not to take another dime from MoveOn.org.”

Most Democrats e-mailed for comment did not respond when asked about whether they’d swear off MoveOn’s cash or urge it not to air television ads on their behalf.

But Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), a freshman who received $5,000 from MoveOn, rejected the idea through spokesman C.J. Karamargin.

MoveOn’s members “care deeply about a number of issues that also are important to the congresswoman,” Karamargin said. He presented his boss’s support for the resolution as proof she is not beholden to donors, a tack taken by representatives of other Democrats reached by Politico.

Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.), a fellow freshman whom MoveOn boasts of helping to the tune of $160,000 and 54,000 phone calls, supported the resolution partly because he thought the ad was a “disservice to our military,” said his spokeswoman, Jessica Santillo.

She said the congressman is “clearly an independent voice for the people of his district and is not influenced by any special interest groups on this or any other issue.”