Rahna Epting to step down as head of MoveOn

Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn, will step down from her role in the prominent progressive group this coming summer, she told ABC News.

Epting, who will have served as MoveOn's chief for about six years by the time she steps aside, will stay on in advisory capacity through end of 2025. Epting spoke with MoveOn's board over the summer about her departure and they mutually agreed to announce the move after the November elections so as to not distract from the group's work.

In an interview, Epting said the organization would carry on its work without her, though she wouldn't be far.

"I think it's time for the organization to have fresh leadership, and I think that's healthy for an organization like ours that embraces change and actually thrives through change," she said. "I will be continuing to play a role in some other cross-movement efforts … but in terms of what my next big thing is, I don't know yet, and I'm excited to explore what's possible."

"But I for sure, remain committed to the overall calling that has always brought me to this work, which is figuring out the best way I can play a constructive role to ensure this country works for the people within it," Epting added. "I can't see a world in which I'm not continuing to play some significant role in some way."

MoveOn, first founded in 1998 to fight Republican efforts to impeach then-President Bill Clinton, has emerged as one of the heavier hitting outside groups in the Democratic ecosystem.

The progressive group announced a $30 million investment in midterm races in 2022, a figure that rose slightly to $32 million for the 2024 cycle.

MoveOn also formed an unlikely alliance with the center-left think tank Third Way to stop the prospect of the group No Labels from launching a third-party presidential "unity ticket" made up of one Republican and one Democrat, a concept that Democrats feared would hurt President Joe Biden, who was still his party's presidential nominee.

No Labels' ticket never formed.

But Epting said she's proudest of the work she did in 2019 and 2020, shortly after she took the role leading MoveOn and as Democrats were desperate to unseat Trump.

"This country was under the leadership of Donald Trump, we had just experienced a global pandemic of epic proportions, and leading up to that election, things were really fraught," she said. "That election was incredibly high stakes, incredibly fraught and scary for a lot of folks, and MoveOn played a key role to knit together the pro-democracy coalition that organized and mobilized people to the polls."

Now, however, Democrats find themselves in another fraught situation.

Trump just defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, setting off a wave of both Democratic panic and soul searching, leaving party members wondering how their presidential nominee became so revolting to voters that they instead voted for a convicted felon.

Democrats have pointed to an array of factors, though top points of contention include poor messaging on the economic pinch voters were experiencing to a fractured media landscape to the way specific campaign resources were deployed.

"We have some early preliminary analysis, but I'll say broadly, we need to continue to listen to our members and voters and ensure we are meeting people where they are at," Epting said.

"How are we doing a better job of that, given that the information environment that we live in today is so incredibly dispersed, and people are living in their own echo chambers or bubbles all across the country. And so, how are we reaching people? How are we building better relationships? How are we listening to them and really meeting them where they're at?"

Democrats went through a similar era of soul searching after Trump's first win in 2016, and while clearly there weren't permanent fixes, the party was able to make significant gains in the 2018 midterms and win back the White House in 2020, in part due to backlash over Trump's policies and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have work to do to align folks, and that is part of the role of an outside political organization like MoveOn, is that we need to get on the same page about how we're how we're going to collectively counter the authoritarian playbook that they have continued to dig into," Epting said.

"The effort to fight back against MAGA and Trump has to be fueled by more than just outrage at Trump," she added, referencing Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan. "It's got to be about tying the actions of Trump and its allies to how it impacts the lives of the American people, and that is the project in front of us over the next four years."

For her part, Epting said she wants her legacy to be helping the coalition to "defeat MAGAism" -- even if MAGA won this year.

"We're in this for the long game," she told ABC News. "The struggle for power in the history of humanity is never ending. There's no, 'we won, let's tie a bow on it and we can go home.' And MoveOn's been around for 26 years, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. We're going to continue to be in this work. I'm going to continue to be in this work, and this is a point in that longer timeline. I'm not worried about that."