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When George Soros, one of the world’s richest men, announced this week that he’s made getting rid of George W. Bush “the central focus of my life,” it was good news for Berkeley-based MoveOn.org. 

Soros announcement coincided with news that the billionaire is giving five million bucks to fund MoveOn issues advertisements attacking the neoconservative agenda. 

The Hungarian-born financier is just one of several deep pocket donors who have recently pledged to match monies offered by the 1.7 million recipients of MoveOn’s regular electronic mailings. [To be fair, this writer should note that he’s on the mailing list, though he hasn’t given any cash]. 

Another donor—whose name won’t be released till next week—has given a million, and others have volunteered lesser sums, all tied to matching sums from MoveOn subscribers. 

But that should be a snap. 

“Tuesday we took in $800,000 from our subscribers, and that means we’ll be getting a matching funds check for $400,000,” said Carrie Olson, one of MoveOn’s six staff members and the person who handles the incoming contributions. “We’ve had two $500,000 checks so far.” 

MoveOn is one of the leanest political operations ever, with six full-time staff, including Olson, aided by founders and full-time volunteers Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. 

“There are advantages to being lean,” Olson says. “You can turn on a dime because you don’t have to stop and convene a meeting of the board of directors. 

“We also have an absolutely fabulous support team we deal with. We have a great public relations firm, Fenton Communications, the absolutely best political and legal advice you could ask for, and excellent relations with representatives in the Congress and Senate. It’s been an amazing ride. 

“The days are long and we work hard, but we play hard too, and we allow our folks to take time off and recharge.” 

The newest addition to the staff is James Rucker, hired as director of MoveOn’s Political Action Committee after running—as a contractor—the group’s No on 54 campaign in the recent California elections. “We’ll be offering a full slate of candidates in the congressional and Senate races across the country next year,” Olson added. 

MoveOn’s skillful use of the Internet has showcased the electronic superhighway’s role as a medium for political activism. Howard Dean’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination has exploited the MoveOn model with such success that Dean has decided to run his bid without matching federal campaign funds. 

Ironically, it is often forgotten that it was the extreme Right that first capitalized on computerized communications, as extremist groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s created dial-up electronic bulletin boards to organize and share information. 

MoveOn’s success and increasingly high profile have targeted the group for frequent attacks by conservative commentators—Fox’s Bill O’Reilly among the most prominent—and Internet sites, most of which refer back to the organization’s creation to mobilize activist to fight the impeachment campaign against that ultimate neocon bete noir, Bill Clinton. 

“The more people like Bill O’Lie-ly—that’s what I call him—and people like him attack us, the more people are interested in what we’re doing,” Olson said. 

“There’s a growing awareness of people that they are being discounted as people whose opinions don’t count. Like they’re soccer moms who don’t care. But they really do care—in Kansas, in Mississippi, in North Carolina—and they’re waking up and wanting to get involved. 

“I wouldn’t be doing this unless I felt I was making a difference. It’s very unusual in this world that one person can feel they’re making a difference, and because I’m making a difference, I know that thousands of others are. It gets so it’s hard to stop working at night.” 

As MoveOn’s Chief Operating Officer, Olson runs the group’s day-to-day operations. The role is a natural extension of the job she held as Director of Internal Operations for Berkeley Systems, the software company created by MoveOn founders Boyd and Blades and most famous for creating the “Flying Toasters” screensaver. 

Peter Schurman is MoveOn’s executive director, New York-based Eli Pariser is campaigns director, and Washington, D.C.-based Zack Exley is the group’s organizing director. 

MoveOn’s most recent campaign, launched two weeks ago, calls on members to produce their own advertisement and commercial ideas. Once the entrants have been submitted, MoveOn will pick 15 finalists for submission to a panel of celebrity judges that includes polymath documentarian Michael Moore, activist actress Janeane Garofalo, Moby and others, who will pick the winner—which will then be aired for the public, thanks to the generosity of Soros and MoveOn’s many other contributors. 

“The great thing about the Internet is that we can provide a wealth of information people wouldn’t otherwise be able to find in a newspaper or in a 30-second news broadcast segment. People like to say the press is liberal, but that’s not true. There’s one liberal press left here in America, and it’s here in Berkeley,” Olson says. 

MoveOn’s success has attracted considerable interest from organizers in other lands, and efforts to duplicate the program are being tried in at least two other countries. 

“In addition to the 1.7 million on our domestic list, we have 600,000 from outside the country, most of whom came to us in the runup to the Iraq war. We don’t send them e-mails we don’t think will be of interest to them,” Olson said. 

MoveOn is also zealously protective of its mailing list. “Too many do-gooders share names, and you wind up with all this garbage in your e-mail box. We don’t want that.” 

Olson and her colleagues are clearly doing something right, raising cash and issues and sending and unending series tremors through the electronic ether and challenging the growing might of the Neoconservative machine.