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Thursday, July 1st, 2004
He feels mission to fight terrorism Sometime this week, in some unnamed theater, one of the most outspoken opponents of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” plans to watch what he’s been encouraging others to boycott. Howard Kaloogian, chairman of the Sacramento-based Move America Forward, makes it clear he won’t be paying to watch the anti-Bush film, denying Moore any ticket proceeds from his pocket. Kaloogian believes he’s already seen enough to personally launch a full-on campaign denouncing Moore’s box-office hit. “I’ve seen a transcript and 30 minutes of the film, and the contents have been widely reported,” he said. The former three-term assemblyman from San Diego County last year successfully propelled himself via the Internet and the talk radio circuit into the campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis - and right into history. He also was the energy behind last year’s Defend Reagan Committee, instrumental in getting CBS to cancel the network broadcast of a miniseries on the former president’s family, forcing it to the network’s corporate cable sister Showtime instead. Kaloogian is using the same strategy - draw visitors to the Web site, get them behind the cause, get them to donate - in yet another transformation, this time for what he describes as support for the war on terrorism. First target in his cross hairs: Moore’s film, a critical if lopsided look at Bush’s foreign policy. The documentary looks at Bush and his reaction to the terrorist attacks, the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. “I want to give Americans a reason to support our troops in the field. I want to demonstrate that we’re the good guys,” Kaloogian said. “I want to make sure the troops didn’t think the people back home are losing faith with them. That’s why we jumped on this Michael Moore movie.” Contribution totals weren’t available, and the group’s support in terms of individual numbers, given its Internet existence, is hard to gauge. And while the group may not have discouraged many “Fahrenheit” filmgoers, its efforts to get theaters to boycott the movie generated national coverage, putting the month-old Move America Forward on the media map. “We just want to get the word out that this is not a documentary, that he’s using the troops for a domestic political agenda,” said Kaloogian, who said he was arranging a private screening. As part of that effort, Move America Forward this week attended Walt Disney Co.’s local screening of Disney’s new “America’s Heart & Soul.” It’s now promoting the movie, described as a compilation of uplifting stories about Americans overcoming adversity with a flavor quite different from Moore’s offering. Critiquing and screening movies, though, isn’t the group’s main mission. Move America Forward’s executive director, Siobhan Guiney, said the group will concentrate on tangible efforts to support American troops, such as its latest effort to ship medical supplies to Iraq. Kaloogian, who lives in San Diego County, left the Assembly in 2000 because of term limits but has stayed politically active. The 44-year-old attorney lost to Bill Jones in the Republican primary for the Senate and led one of the recall efforts, the Recall Gray Davis Committee. Move America Forward could be the latest proof that Kaloogian has become a master of Internet grass-roots organizing, a new and increasingly powerful force in the realm of politics, political observers said. “The Internet is the best form of fund raising. It’s usually not large donors, but people who are giving out of commitment to the issue, which is better than -special-interest donations,” said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based nonpartisan research group that studies campaign financing. “There’s groups out there we don’t even know about. That’s the benefit and the bane of the Internet. Anybody who wants to send out messages can do so,” he said. Best of all, it’s relatively cheap, said Washington, D. C.-based researcher Steven Weiss of the Center for Responsible Politics. “Web fund raising, if done right, can be done a lot easier. You save on postage and the cost of putting on an event. It was just a matter of time before groups and candidates would have gotten it right,” Weiss said. Kaloogian’s done it with less than a handful of employees, renting space in political consultant Sal Russo’s downtown Sacramento office. The vast majority of contributions to Kaloogian’s recall effort were $100 or less, like Gary Anderson’s. “Once I knew about it, I stayed up-to-date daily online,” the Air Force retiree said. The Citrus Heights resident first heard Kaloogian on one of many talk radio appearances, a key component of Kaloogian’s campaign. Conservative talk show host Melanie Morgan of KSFO 560 AM, who helped raise the recall group’s profile, is now Move America Forward’s co-chair. With the help of Sacramento GOP consultant Russo, Kaloogian’s recall committee raised $884,799 from people like Anderson, according to campaign documents. The second recall group, Rescue California, by comparison, raised $3.5 million. Rescue California was helped considerably by Rep. Darrell Issa, who dumped some of his personal fortune into the effort. Helped by professional petition workers, Rescue California gathered 1.3 million of the signatures that got the measure on the October 2003 ballot. Russo estimated his group was responsible for 600,000 signatures, mostly on petitions individuals had downloaded from the Internet, then signed and mailed either to the committee or to Ted Costa, the official proponent of the recall. Russo, a seasoned campaigner, said signature-gathering never was the definitive goal. “The bottom line is you have to get all the signatures, but in California, you have to get the people’s attention. We had to generate a lot of interest,” said Russo, whose consulting firm was paid $107,644 for consulting and producing radio spots. Russo is now on the board of directors for Move America Ahead, which, according to Kaloogian, has raised “tens of thousands” of dollars since it formed as a nonprofit in early June.
“The main purpose,” he said, “is to coalesce American support around the war on terrorism.”
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