Media Transparency

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Bill Berkowitz
June 6, 2005

William Greene's Right Wing Rapid Response Team

Following in the footsteps of Richard Viguerie, Greene, a 'conservative Internet guru' and 'rising star' is making his presence felt

He's there to defend Christmas from "attack"; when Terry Schiavo's parents needed some fundraising firepower, they called on him; he's currently advocating for the abolition of the filibuster in the US Senate, defending the embattled Rep. Tom DeLay and the beleaguered John Bolton, and promoting an outfit called the European Conservative Union. In 2002, Campaign & Elections magazine selected him as one of its "Rising Stars of Politics"; the Washington Times has called him a "conservative Internet guru"; and "Who's Who in America" recognized him in 2003 and 2004.

Meet William Greene, the head of RightMarch.com and Strategic Internet Campaign Management. RightMarch.com, whose slogan is "Patriotism in Action," has been flooding conservative Internet neighborhoods with Christian Response e-Alerts on all things right wing, distinguishing itself as a cranky group able to concoct and launch campaigns at the click of the "Send" key.

RightMarch.com first came to my attention during the 2004 holiday season. A RightMarch.com "e-Alert" helped motor the Christian right's frenetic campaign to stop what it perceived was an attack on Christmas. The e-Alert, with a laundry list of what it said were examples of how Christmas had been attacked during the year aimed "to STOP groups like the ACLU from removing all mentions of Christmas from the public square!"

The centerpiece of that campaign was a radio ad that RightMarch.com claimed aired "on over 200 STATIONS across America, EVERY DAY for the past TWO WEEKS, reaching over TWO MILLION PEOPLE each week with the message of how they can stand up and DEFEND Christmas from these blatant attacks." RightMarch.com supplemented its radio spots with "full-page newspaper ads in national publications reaching over one hundred thousand readers, plus an internet ad campaign that has reached hundreds of thousands more viewers online!" (Emphasis in original text.)

RightMarch.com aims to "convince people that there is a 'them' out there -- liberals in this case -- who are out to destroy America's moral fiber and are thus responsible for working-class misery," wrote Thom Hartmann in a late-December 2004 article entitled "The Myth of National Victimhood - All Wrapped and Delivered for Christmas".

Greene's group was intimately involved in the Terri Schiavo case. Randall Terry, the anti-abortion/anti-gay activist brought to Florida by Terri Schiavo's parents to act as a spokesperson, specifically requested RightMarch.com's Greene and Terry, writes the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick, "asked his friends and fellow conservative activists, William Greene and Philip Sheldon - the son of Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition (website), to help raise money through Greene's organization.

However, less than a week after her death on March 31, RightMarch.com donned battle fatigues for the mother of all judicial battles. With the Christian Response e-Alert focusing on "the far-leftists at MoveOn.org" and other liberal organizations, Team CR warned that liberals were trying "to stop President Bush from nominating solid conservative judges to the Supreme Court and other federal seats."

The way to stop the liberals is by "getting Senators to change one Senate rule -- and stopping their [Democrats] 'judicial filibuster,'" otherwise known as the "nuclear option," and which RightMarch prefers to call the "constitutional option."

For "just $19" RightMarch pledged to send "Blast Faxes" to the GOP Senators or the Democrat Senators, and for "just $29," each and "EVERY SINGLE ONE" of the Senators will get a fax.

RightMarch.com has also mounted the barricades in defense of two embattled conservatives, John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who the organization calls a "solid conservative icon."

It's e-Alert regarding DeLay covers all the bases, from again trashing MoveOn.org and "radical left-wing billionaire" George Soros, to claims that the "press played the part of 'lapdog' to the radical leftists every chance they got, with the goal of bringing down [President George W. Bush] the top conservative leader."

And, get this ringing DeLay endorsement from Ben Stein, the longtime conservative author, columnist, television personality ("Win Ben Stein's Money") and speechwriter and lawyer for Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate years of 1973 and 1974: "Tom DeLay is morally probably the highest level public servant I have ever met... This is a man with more moral decency in his little finger than his detractors have in their whole bodies." Then he concluded, "If we throw him to the wolves, we are betraying a dear friend of the party, and a good man... He has been there for us, and we need to be there for him."

European Conservative Union

In addition to saving Bolton and DeLay, in late-April, RightMarch.com gave over its "Christian Response" e-Alert to Jo Spatgens, the Executive Director of the European Conservative Union. According to Spatgens, Europe is being overrun by the voices of "anti-conservati[sm] and anti-American[ism]," and the European Conservative Union (ECU), an organization that "represents a growing number of individuals calling for a new attitude on the continent, one that values good ties with the United States, supports the Bush Administration's proactive solutions to world problems, and respects the cultural and religious values that gave the West unprecedented freedom and prosperity," can turn things around.

The European Conservative Union has "dared to challenge liberal propaganda like the Kyoto Protocol, the International Court, and the position of Chancellor Schröder and President Chirac on the globally-raging War on Terror…A voice crying in the wilderness, the ECU is standing up to the left-wing establishment, fighting anti-Americanism in European politics and media, combating anti-Bush rhetoric, and casting a vision for a renewed Europe; strong, peaceful, moral, and conservative."

Make out your check to...

Although the organization doesn't appear to have much of a presence on the Internet -- a Google search yielded only a few citations and no web site -- for the past three years it has been one of the sponsors on the Conservative Political Action Conference (website), the star-studded right wing gab-fest that claims to be the US's "oldest and largest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives."

Strategic Internet Campaign Management (SIC-EM)

Greene also presides over the Buford, Georgia-based Strategic Internet Campaign Management (SICM) (website), an organization whose mission is "Helping nonprofit organizations, corporations and political candidates to achieve a better bottom line by using the Internet for fundraising and grassroots activism." According to its web site SICM is pronounced "sick 'em"!

The company "specializes in online fundraising for political candidates and organizations, as well as political and corporate grassroots activism using the Internet," confident in the words of Michael Gilbert, the author of "The Basics of Non-Profit EMail" and "The Campaign Cookbook," argues in "The Gilbert E-Mail Manifesto", that "E-mail is more important than…[a] Web site!"

Gilbert's "Three Rules of Email" appears to be the playbook from which Greene's "Christian Response E-Alert" takes its cues:

SICM's web site offers a batch of case studies, divided into three categories, Fundraising, Political and Grassroots Activism. Here is one from each category:

Fundraising: Anti-Abortion Legal Foundation
Goal: To raise funds online for a legal foundation's anti-abortion project to reverse Roe v. Wade, and to build a database of names, postal addresses and opt-in email addresses of pro-lifers on the Internet for future solicitations.
Solution: Developed and marketed a campaign-specific website, where users could "virtually" sign the legal foundation's "Friend of the Court" brief and download their mail-in affidavits. Through emailings to opt-in email lists and revenue-sharing partnerships with evangelical and conservative news websites, users were driven to contribute funds and give their postal and email addresses for more information and future solicitations.
Results: In a three-month test, online appeals grossed over $20,000 and brought in over 7,000 postal addresses and over 4,000 opt-in email addresses. As a result of this success, the recommendation was made to also roll out a postal direct mail appeal for the legal foundation.
Political: Conservative Political Action Committee
Goal: To raise funds online for the 2000 election efforts against Al Gore for President and Hillary Clinton for Senate, and to build a database of names, postal addresses and opt-in email addresses of conservatives on the Internet for future solicitations.
Solution: Capitalized on the heightened political exuberance of conservatives following the Clinton years, and developed methods of "translating" direct mail appeals to the Internet for fundraising purposes. This was accomplished through emailings to opt-in email lists, revenue-sharing partnerships with conservative news websites, development of informational political websites, driving traffic to websites and soliciting email addresses in direct mail appeals, and press coverage in traditional news media.
Results: In less than three months, online appeals grossed over $150,000 and brought in over 3,000 donor postal and opt-in email addresses, for future solicitations.
Grassroots Activism: Pro-Bush Website
Goal: To build a database of names, postal addresses and opt-in email addresses of supporters of George W. Bush in the post-election Florida recount controversy; and to generate revenue through political actions in which those supporters could participate.
Solution: Implemented & supervised the construction and marketing of a pro-Bush website, where Bush supporters could go to sign petitions, send Western Union mailgrams, send "faxgrams" (multiple faxes to political leaders), take part in polls, and contribute to support Bush campaign efforts against Al Gore's vote recount attempts in Florida. The site's activities extended beyond the election into supporting Bush's first nominees, especially Attorney General John Ashcroft. Shared revenue partnerships were established with other conservative activist sites to drive users to the website through targeted emailings and web postings. Press releases were sent to - and reported on by- major news media outlets.
Results: Over 55,000 users gave their names and addresses through the various avenues provided on the site, to be mailed for conservative issues and actions in the future. Of these, over 75% opted in with their email addresses. Users purchased and sent over 300,000 faxes and mailgrams; gross revenues exceeded $100,000.

Current SICM clients include: American Vision (website) -- "Equipping & Empowering Christians to Restore America's Biblical Foundation"; Citizen Outreach (website) -- "Putting the Public Back in Public Policy"; Conservative Book Club (website) -- "Conservatives Serving Conservatives for Forty Years"; ConservativeAlerts.com (website) -- a RightMarch.com operation; National Defense Council Foundation (website) -- "A 501(C)(3) nonprofit think tank [headed by Maj. F. Andy Messing Jr., USAR (Ret.)] serving US national security interests since 1978"; and NewsMax.com (website) -- "America's News Page."

Perhaps the most unusual SICM client is Zogby International (website), an international polling firm founded in 1985 by James Zogby through the Washington, DC-based Arab American Institute (AAI). Zogby is also the founder and president of AAI, which, according to its web site, "serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community." In the late 1970s, Zogby was a co-founder and chairman of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, and he later co-founded and served as the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Unusual because in its "Fundraising" case studies SICM cites its work for the Anti-Islam Apologetics Foundation (A-IAF), which included raising money for "an anti-Islam apologetics foundation, and to build a database of names, postal addresses and opt-in email addresses of evangelical Christians on the Internet for future solicitations." SICM "put together a timely post-9/11 appeal & book incentive to "Help Fight Radical Islam" (the author is the man who originally fingered Osama bin Laden to the FBI)." There is no web site address listed by Google for the A-IAF.

SICM also lists ConservativeHQ.com (website) as a client. It is where Greene, who earned his stripes at the side of Richard Viguerie, the guru of right wing direct mail, served as the vice president of Internet Marketing & Development prior to starting up SICM.

According to SICM's Web site, at C-HQ.com, Greene "spearheaded Internet grassroots efforts such as BackBush.com and the Sixty Second Activist Club, which generated over 1,020,000 faxes, 250,000 petition signatures, 15,000 hand-delivered mailgrams & FedEx's, and 125,000 emails/letters to Congress, the President and other leaders." He also worked with many of Viguerie's clients including the Traditional Values Coalition, the American Conservative Union, the Texas Justice Foundation, Linda Chavez' Stop Union Political Abuse, and the Conservative Leadership Political Action Committee, among others.

In March, Greene was a panelist at the "Politics Online Conference" hosted by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (website). Founded in 2002 and formerly called the Democracy Online Project, the Institute "is funded primarily by grants from The Pew Charitable Trusts." Its mission "is to promote the development of U.S. online politics in a manner that increases citizen participation and upholds democratic values."

Last fall, Greene's company hitched its wagon to the rickety bandwagon of Alan Keyes, the radical right wing African American candidate for Senate from Illinois who was soundly defeated by Barak Obama.

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Reader Comments

Bill, Randall Terry lives in Florida. Right here in Ponte Vedra Beach in a home purchased by his "admirers". He had to lay low for a while when his adopted son revealed that he was gay, but RT is back. He plans to run in the Republican primary for the State Senate seat of Jim King, the former Republican leader, based on the Schiavo case. Maybe you could look into his backers and history for your readers.

--- maduce | 6-8-2005 | 11:11 am