Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Conservatives Launch Petition Site To Challenge Change.Org

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
Font Size:

A conservative media firm in Washington, D.C. has launched a new petition platform that could become the Change.org of the right.

Paul Van Remortel, political development director at Intermarkets, announced exclusively to The Daily Caller the launch of StandUnited.org, a site where conservatives can make issue-based petitions go viral and get on some lawmakers’ desks on Capitol Hill.

“It is a new platform for advocacy via petitions,” Van Remortel told TheDC. Intermarkets, which manages advertising for Michelle Malkin, Newsbusters and other conservative publishers, started working on the site about a year and a half ago.

As of Wednesday night, top petitions on the homepage include pushes to oppose Common Core and President Obama’s executive amnesty, and to institute federal term limits for Congress.

The site is inspired in part by Change.org, which has a lot of followers pushing for liberal or progressive issues.

“We’re going to put it out there as a grassroots tool. It’s similar to those other sites in that anyone can create a petition. We have the capacity to grow into a large-scale platform like Change.org,” Van Remortel told TheDC.

“We’re self-funding it through Intermarkets,” he added. “We’re definitely in it to make a profit.”

Issue advocacy groups will pay to post petitions on the site.

“For a sponsored petition started by a group, they’ll pay per signature,” Van Remortel said.

“We expect that lawmakers will be paying attention. For our sponsored petitions we deliver a message for each signer to their [congressional] delegation. We also expect that we will have compelling petitions that will get some media. We expect our audience to be engaging lawmakers on social” media.

Follow Patrick on Twitter

Patrick Howley