Frequently Asked Questions

Can I send in a check instead of contributing online?

Yes! The quickest way to get your dollars working to defeat the Tea Party Ten is to make a secure contribution using your credit card or PayPal account online.

If you would prefer to contribute by check, please make your check out to CREDO SuperPAC and mail it to:

CREDO SuperPAC
101 Market St., Suite 700
San Francisco, CA 94105

Please include your employer and occupation on a note accompanying the check as we are required to report this information to the Federal Election Commission. If you also include a brief personal note to the CREDO team explaining why you want to join us and help Take Down the Tea Party, our campaign team will read your comments out loud in one of our meetings!

What is the CREDO SuperPAC and who is CREDO?

The CREDO SuperPAC is a political committee working to defeat ten of the most odious Tea Party members of Congress. Most super PACs are vehicles for big corporations or wealthy right-wing activists to make unlimited contributions to pay for expensive attack ads to help elect Republican politicians. The CREDO SuperPAC is primarily funded by thousands of small-dollar contributions to fund an unprecedented volunteer grassroots effort to take down Tea Party incumbents in Congress.

CREDO is a social change organization that fights for progressive values. The people behind CREDO Mobile helped found the CREDO SuperPAC, and the members of the company's action arm CREDO Action are powering the effort through their small-dollar donations and volunteer efforts.

I live in or near one of the Tea Party Ten. How can I get involved?

We need you! Our offices will be opening soon near you. But in the meantime, if you sign our Pledge to Take Down the Tea Party Ten, we'll be in touch with local opportunities to get involved.

I don't live in or near one of the Tea Party Ten. How can I get involved?

We need you! We'll be asking you to take action in national activism campaigns to help us put the Tea Party Ten on the run. And we'll also have a Get Out The Vote calling campaign that allows you to make phone calls from wherever you are to help Take Down the Tea Party Ten. Be sure to sign our Pledge to Take Down the Tea Party Ten so we know to contact you as opportunities to get involved in the campaign opportunities come up.

Will you help take down my Tea Party Member of Congress?

We will definitely be asking our members to give us input on who we should choose for the final two targets in our campaign to Take Down the Tea Party Ten. You can make sure you are on our email list by signing our Pledge to Take Down the Tea Party Ten and you can nominate your member of Congress here.

If this is a campaign to Take Down the Tea Party Ten, why are there only eight candidates on your site?

There are so many odious Tea Party members in Congress, that it was hard to pick just ten. And we're still waiting on important information for our targeting and in some instances delays in redistricting means we don't know even know what the Congressional District boundaries will be.

We've chosen our first eight races. And in the coming weeks — with input from our members — we'll pick the final two. Stay tuned for emails about ways you can participate in choosing other Tea Party incumbents to take down.

Aren't we supposed to be against super PACs?

Our system of campaign finance is in deep trouble. In fact, we think it's one of the single greatest threats to our democracy there is.

We want corporate money banned from politics entirely. We support public financing of campaigns. We have fought for and will continue fighting for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and the travesty of so-called corporate personhood.

The Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited, easily hidden spending by corporations and the ultra-wealthy, in the form of PACs in the 2010 election, and the immediate result was the election of the most extreme Congress in our history.

The fact is, we need to hold extremists accountable in order to fight for a fair, democratic system of campaign finance. And we made the decision that we can do that best by using some of the same tools that corporations and the ultra-wealthy are using now to wage an assault on our democracy in the other direction. Our system is polluted. But we are much less likely to actually clean it up if we are unwilling to jump into the mess feet first and fight for what we believe in.

The CREDO SuperPAC is different from others in that we actually represent 2.9 million progressive customers and activists, who are connected with CREDO precisely because we fight for progressive values. Earlier this year, we polled our members and they overwhelmingly supported creation of a campaign to defeat Tea Party incumbents given how extremism has been escalating. And over 30,000 of these activists have already donated to fund this campaign.

So this isn't a case of one corporation or a wealthy few using a super PAC to fight for a narrow agenda. And while super PACs can easily hide their sources of funding by funneling them through 501 C4 contributions (that does not have to report its donors), we'll disclose every expenditure, and the source of every donation over $200. Not only that, but having a super PAC will not in any way diminish our advocacy work to get money out of politics.

Unlimited super PACs are a problem. Our democracy is in trouble. We wouldn't launch this SuperPAC unless we felt it was absolutely necessary to fight back. We hope you'll join us, but if you can't we understand, and there will be plenty of other ways for you to join with CREDO in fighting for progressive change outside of the 2012 election.

What is ActBlue, the name that appears on my credit card statement when I make a contribution online?

ActBlue makes it easy for people like us to raise small-dollar contributions to defeat Republican candidates. They don't raise any money for Republicans. And their process for taking credit card contributions — and getting those contributions quickly into the bank accounts of campaigns like ours — is extremely fast and effective. We use ActBlue because it's the easiest and most cost-effective way for us to put your contributions into action defeating Tea Party incumbents.