Wampum

Martha Ture, who contributes regularly to the TribalLaw list, started something worth paying attention to. Someting as important as MoveOn.Org's first little mailing, now a 2.4million email address list in Eli's hands. Here is the blub from the WaPo's write-up of the 18th:

washingtonpost.com
Some Put Money Where Their Politics Are

By Jeffrey Marcus
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 19, 2004; Page A08

Raven Brooks is making his Christmas list, but he is less concerned with what to buy than where to shop.

Brooks is one of a small group of frustrated Democrats who met while commiserating online after President Bush defeated Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Disenchanted and desperate for a voice, they started BuyBlue.org. The two-week-old Web site lists the political contributions of major companies to encourage people to shop at stores and buy products from businesses that supported Democratic candidates.

"If you are a progressive or a liberal, you won't be represented adequately by this administration, or this Congress," Martha Ture, a co-founder of BuyBlue.org, said. As for what Democrats do have, she said, "We have our wallets."

Ann Duvall and her husband, Bill, had the same idea. The semi-retired Silicon Valley couple started ChoosetheBlue.com. The bare-bones Web site lists companies and urges people to vote with their pocketbooks when they buy gifts, shop for groceries or fill up at the gas station.

"We wanted to have our voices heard, and felt that one way of doing that was to direct our spending towards companies who support . . . the candidates and issues in which we believe," Ann Duvall writes on the Web site.

This red-blue distinction is based exclusively on the political donations of businesses' political action committees or giving by corporate officers and employees. Corporations cannot donate directly.

Mega-retailer Wal-Mart is a "red" store, channeling 80 percent of its more than $2 million in contributions to GOP candidates, according to BuyBlue.org. Other "red" firms include Circuit City, Outback Steakhouse and Safeway. But bulk retailer Costco is "blue." The corporation funneled more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates. Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and J.Crew are also listed as Democratic supporters by BuyBlue.org.

The Web sites do not consider a company's labor practices, environmental record or other positions. "If we've ID'd someone as blue or red, that's what they are," says Ture, a writer and retired EPA employee in Northern California who coordinates research for BuyBlue.org.

Alex Knott, political editor at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, warned that the information "may not be as telling as they think it is." Knott said corporate America's political spending is foremost a business decision. "Donations are not actually given on a partisan level," he said. "Most of the time, it's incumbent versus non-incumbent."

Often, major corporate donors give to both parties to hedge their bets. The Center for Public Integrity found that four of the top 10 contributors to Bush and Kerry were the same.

"A lot of corporate givers are very pragmatic," said Lawrence M. Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. "They want to make sure they can get access."

The Center for Responsive Politics runs Opensecrets.org, the primary source of data for both BuyBlue.org and ChoosetheBlue.com, but it does not endorse the message of either Web site.

Noble said, "It's an interesting use of the data."

Although both groups cite the same sources of data, their information does not always match. BuyBlue.org identifies online retailer Amazon.com as a "red" company, giving 61 percent to Republican candidates; ChoosetheBlue.com says Amazon.com is "blue."

"We would like to be known as the most customer-centric company on the planet," Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman said. "However it's being perceived, the Amazon.com PAC supports neither party."

Trying to affect a company's policies with pocketbook activism is not new. But to be effective, said Michael Cornfield, senior research consultant to the Pew Study of Internet and American Life, it must hit the bottom line. At this point, "it's a great idea," he said. But only when the groups can put a dollar figure on where people choose to shop for political reasons will the campaign rise to the level of political action.

It is historically difficult to get consumer campaigns and boycotts off the ground, according to Noble. And it is difficult to affect the bottom line of companies as large as Anheuser-Busch, May Department Stores (which owns Hecht's and Filene's Basement) and Marriott, which are identified as Republican supporters.

"It will be interesting to see if these Web sites or this movement has a bottom-line impact on any of these businesses," Noble said.

Both BuyBlue.org and ChoosetheBlue.com have received a huge boost from the popularity of Web logs or blogs. After BuyBlue.org was launched on Dec. 3, the founders began e-mailing the link to friends and associates. They posted the Web site address on bulletin boards where Internet bloggers distributed it to a wider audience. After two weeks, the site gets as many as 50,000 visits a day.

BuyBlue.org has no marketing budget. The site is run on $500 in donations and $700 from Brooks's pocket. But through an e-mail campaign and persistent linking in the blogosphere, it has collected more than 4,300 e-mails for its online database.

BuyBlue.org is seeking legal status as a nonprofit organization in California and hopes to parlay the site's initial success into a future as a Web destination with more in-depth information on corporate behavior in politics for liberal activists. ChoosetheBlue.com has been less ambitious. "We came up with the idea and launched it seven days later," Ann Duvall said. The site went up just before
Thanksgiving, and Duvall circulated the link among a small group of friends. "We didn't really think that far ahead."

2004 The Washington Post Company

I really should have looked at Martha's note to me on the 3rd. Well, its not too late. Point your browser at buyblue.org. Red or Blue, its up to you.