PAC Raises Dough With Big Bake Sale

Bake sales are the standard fundraiser of marching bands and church groups, not the fuel of national political movements.

Tell that to the MoveOn political action committee, a group working to elect Sen. John F. Kerry and other Democrats that organized more than 1,000 bake sales manned by 10,000 volunteers nationwide Saturday.

The group estimated that it raised about $250,000.

The bake sale concept “really hits home with people, the idea that people are not powerless; that together we can do something, which at the smallest level is kind of silly,” said Adam Ruben, field director of the MoveOn PAC.

“It’s not like you’re going to raise a million dollars at a bake sale in your frontyard, but when [thousands participate], it really adds up to something.”

MoveOn’s PAC operates independently of the MoveOn.org advocacy group and MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a group that is paying for advertisements that criticize President Bush.

Ted Kinder, an unemployed construction worker from Huntington, W.Va., planned “Out of Work and Baking Back the White House” sales in his community for Saturday and this Tuesday.

“We’re just trying to show a grass-roots support here for John Kerry,” said Kinder, who was joined in his chocolate chip cookie baking by several construction worker friends who are also out of work. “We’re just trying to get the working man, the small person there, involved.”