FreedomWorks, a nearly 20-year-old grass-roots advocacy organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), will take on a deeper and more sophisticated role in the 2012 elections than ever before. The organization has its eyes on 15 Senate seats, including Utah, and will target both Democrats and Republicans. The group aims to raise $10 million through a new super political action committee called FreedomWorks for America.
It is also establishing an 18-member debt panel to counter President Barack Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission, which offered recommendations on how to reduce the federal deficit in late 2010.
“We’re not a protest movement anymore,” said Matt Kibbe, the group’s president. “It is a protest movement morphed into a get-out-the-vote movement. We are here to think nationally but act locally.”
The new PAC is part of that strategy. FreedomWorks for America can raise and spend unlimited sums of money from corporations, associations and individuals for independent expenditures. The group is barred from making direct contributions to campaigns, but that has never been FreedomWorks’ focus.
FreedomWorks will use the super PAC to let activists anywhere “help their brothers out” in other states. But that principle is what Washington Republicans find most concerning. Some Republicans grumbled about the group’s antics Monday, arguing that kind of thinking might have won primaries in 2010 but ultimately cost the party the Delaware Senate seat and caused an ugly recount in Alaska.
Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
FreedomWorks GOTV & Super PAC
