We had reported on this issue over at the main AMERICABlog home page the other day:
Much of the controversy around Change.org [working for conservative clients] revolved around their construction of an open campaign platform, staffing themselves with many notable progressive campaigners, accepting the mantle (both earned and perceived) as being a progressive piece of infrastructure, and then deployed a defense of "But we're an open platform!" when criticized for working with union busters.
In fairness, NationBuilder has been more open about a willingness to work with the Tea Party from its earliest days. But its founders' backgrounds in Democratic electoral politics and the activist-progressive film and organizing group, Brave New Films, have lead to many grassroots progressive organizations to embrace the tools. Again, NationBuilder has said they're non-partisan, but there's a bit of a difference between being an open platform and inking a contract to provide tools to just about any Republican state legislative candidate in the country.
It isn't openness when what you mean is you'll work for anyone who gives you a big check. That's what Lanny Davis does with his lobbying services and I don't think it'd be accurate to call him an open platform.
But Jeremy at GoodAsYou uncovered even worse clients that this "liberal" company is helping, including electing an arch-homophobe activist:
I have learned that not only is this progressive-built firm working with anti-equality candidates as part of its deal with the GOP, but that they are also making money helping out some of the most hostile voices in the nation. One of those voices is Stephen Pidgeon, the man who is running for Attorney General in Washington State and, more to our purposes, heading up the even more far-right coalition that has been working separate from the NOM crowd to ban marriage in that state.
Jeremy concludes by arguing that working to elect an arch homophobe is different than a liberal firm simply working on other conservative causes:
This is where the situation changes for me. It's one thing for a company, regardless of root, to expand its business in a new, nonpartisan way. But Stephen Pidgeon is a full-on anti-gay activist who is working for that expressed purpose. The website that NationBuilder created and is powering is filled with marriage stuff related to Pidgeon's ongoing attempt to demonize gays and overturn their legal rights. This is not pure politics—this is personal!
On matters this personal, there is more than profit motivation involved. Or at least should be.
Is he right? Or would other non-gay progressive causes consider the breach of etiquette just as serious were their issues involved?
