Washington, D.C.—American Commitment, a national advocacy organization committed to free markets and limited government, easily won the vote in a national video contest organized by liberal groups MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.us—despite organizers changing the competition rules by extending the voting period.
At the end of the competition at 5:00 p.m. ET tonight, Friday, October 17th (based on the revised rules)—American Commitment led all other competitors by wide margins. American Commitment received more than 20 times as many votes as its nearest challenger. And it received more than 4 times as many votes as the rest of the Top 10 competitors combined.
American Commitment’s victory at the ballot box is a testament to the power and resonance of our video submission amongst those of all political persuasions. Yesterday’s surprise move by organizers to extend voting an extra day and email the vaunted MoveOn list to participate only expanded our lead. Our entry about America’s number one fatcat campaign contributor, Tom Steyer, shines a spotlight on him and on the role hypocritical liberal billionaire contributors play in stoking feigned outrage about conservative donors. Americans have overwhelmingly supported our ad with their votes, and the celebrity judges should now respect the democratic process by acknowledging this winning video and putting some of MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.us’s big money behind airing the ad on TV.
If MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.us are truly pro-democracy organizations, they should be up in arms about Tom Steyer’s ‘Republican Haircut Programs’ designed explicitly to suppress votes and diminish participation in our democracy.
American Commitment’s video submission, titled “America’s Biggest Hypocrite” highlights Tom Steyer’s role in hypocritically funding false political ads that attack conservative donors in order to whip up false outrage, recently revealed in a leaked memo to be a deliberate voter suppression tactic. The ad is an issue ad that does not support or oppose any candidate for public office and is entered in the contest’s Category 1, designated for such issue ads.
American Commitment’s Video Contest Submission: http://bit.ly/1CVLEDt
In an email announcing the competition, MoveOn.org had urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” In its call for submissions, MoveOn.org declared: “The scale of the problem is clear. The corporate wing of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts keeps insisting that money is speech and corporations are people. Shadowy, unregulated front groups are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into elections.”
Phil Kerpen is head of American Commitment and a leading free-market policy analyst and advocate in Washington. Kerpen was the principal policy and legislative strategist at Americans for Prosperity for over five years. He previously worked at the Free Enterprise Fund, the Club for Growth, and the Cato Institute. Kerpen is also a nationally syndicated columnist, chairman of the Internet Freedom Coalition, and author of the 2011 book Democracy Denied.