Tick, Tock: Time Running Out on McCain’s Membership on Non-Profit’s Board

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ProjectVoteSmart.gif As Mother Jones reported Monday, the nonpartisan voter-education non-profit Project Vote Smart (PVS) has spent nine months trying to get John McCain to respond to its Political Courage Test. The test is a survey that PVS sends to state and federal candidates every time they run for office — it tries to get politicians to cut the spin and equivocations and tell voters where they really stand.

We all know McCain loves straight talk more than anyone, so it’s natural that McCain has been on PVS’s board of directors for a decade. But after nine months, 17 phone calls, and eight emails, PVS simply can’t get a response to its survey. It’s executive committee has a set a deadline: if McCain doesn’t respond by the end of the day today, he gets the boot.

Since Mother Jones‘ story came out Monday, the McCain campaign has not responded to calls for comment or sent any materials to PVS.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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