People United Means Action
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"People United Means Action" (or PUMA) was a political action committee in the United States that opposed the Democratic Party leadership and the nomination of Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for President in the 2008 presidential election. PUMA began as an effort by supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton who believed that Clinton should have been the Democratic nominee. According to PUMA, "We [were] protesting the 2008 Presidential election because we refuse to support a nominee who was selected by the leadership rather than elected by the voters."
On May 11, 2011, the PUMA PAC was stripped of its status as a recognized Political Action Committee for failure to meet reporting requirements.
The PUMA PAC registered as a non-affiliated political action committee (PAC) with the Federal Election Commission and organized as a 527 Organization with the IRS in June 2008. PUMA's founders state that the group originated out of online comments of a group of Clinton supporters on a pro-Clinton blog, The Confluence, which was created by New Jersey biochemist and former John Edwards supporter Riverdaughter, who had been recently banned from a pro-Obama liberal blog. The website ClintonsForMcCain.com was, however, registered by the Republican National Committee on May 15, 2008, well in advance of Clinton's concession speech.
PUMA is also part of a coalition of online activists with similar goals, the JustSayNoDeal coalition. The PUMA acronym as originally coined stood for "Party Unity My Ass", but the PAC was registered as "People United Means Action," a backronym. Executive Director Darragh Murphy estimates that PUMA PAC proper had gathered over 10,000 members and the organization's official site had received more than a million hits between its founding in June through August 2008. Dianne Mantouvalos, founder of the larger JustSayNoDeal coalition, estimates the coalition comprises over 100 groups, and accounted for more than 10% of the 18,000,000 votes Clinton received in the primaries.
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