MoveOn targets Hoyer, Levin

A liberal grassroots group, MoveOn.org, is running advertisements that target House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), citing the lawmakers’ votes against measures to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq as evidence of a “failure in leadership.”

On a host of issues ranging from Iraq to trade policy to lobby reform, liberal advocacy groups are criticizing Democratic leaders for the slow pace of change and a failure to push shared goals aggressively.

{mosads}Hoyer and Levin are the latest offenders.

Last week, Hoyer opposed an amendment to the Iraq war supplemental spending bill that called for a complete withdrawal in 180 days. The amendment, offered by Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), failed by a vote of 255-171; two Republicans supported the bill.

The irony is twofold. First, MoveOn.org helped House Democrats in late March by throwing its weight behind the first version of the Iraq supplemental spending bill, which narrowly passed 218-212. Many liberal lawmakers favored a more aggressive bill and felt the legislation catered to the party’s centrist members.

Second, during that debate, House Democratic leaders did not allow a vote on an amendment that would have required the Bush administration to withdraw troops from Iraq in 45 days.

Six weeks later, Democratic leaders — Hoyer included — reversed course. 

McGovern had not heard about the advertisements until informed of them by this reporter.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced an amendment this week to withdraw most troops from Iraq within a year. The amendment failed and Levin, a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, opposed it.

Following the recent votes, MoveOn.org began running radio advertisements featuring a man and a woman who express disappointment with Hoyer and Levin.

“It’s sad,” a first voice says.

“I feel let down,” a second voice says.

The script notes that in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) voted for the McGovern amendment. In the Levin ad, the voices note that presidential candidates and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted for the Reid-Feingold amendment.
The vote on the McGovern amendment was not whipped, so it was considered a vote of conscience. Hoyer waited until all votes had been cast until he voted so he would not influence any of his colleagues, his communications director, Stacey Bernards, said.

Levin said in a statement, “My focus for some time has been to begin the reduction of American troops in Iraq as a way to pressure the Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement and to recognize their responsibility for their own country, without cutting funding for our troops or implying that we’re cutting funding for our troops.”

He added, “That is exactly the approach that was adopted in the Senate with the bipartisan support of 51 Senators on the Supplemental Appropriations Bill last month.”

Even some of the caucus’s most liberal members empathized with the Democratic leaders, who have to balance a range of ideological constituencies.

“We’re in uncharted waters,” the chairwoman of the Out of Iraq Caucus, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), said. “Different members of leadership are trying to juggle different philosophies, and that’s going to take time to gel.”
Still, the nuanced approached favored by Hoyer and Levin failed to satisfy MoveOn.

“Both are leaders in the party who ought to know better and do better,” the executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, Eli Pariser, said. “There are a group of Democrats who look to Hoyer to know what to do … His leadership was missed. The same is true of Levin.”

Pariser said in a statement that Hoyer is out-of-step with constituents in his district, but admitted that he had no polling data — only anecdotes based on the comments of “hundreds” of people who have contacted MoveOn. 

To be sure, Hoyer’s district includes parts of liberal Prince George’s County and extends south toward Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties. The district also has a heavy military presence, including the Patuxent Naval Air Station, Andrews Air Force Base and the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Md.

The $50,000 ad buy will run through May 21. Whether MoveOn.org will run advertisements against other Democrats or Republicans is unclear, Pariser said.