This campaign was focused in key states during the 2008 primary and general election campaign. Our challenge was to get the candidates, media, and opinion ‘influencers’ to start talking about the importance of American coal to our energy future and the need to fund clean coal technology,” the newsletter said. “Building on our existing 200,000-strong grassroots citizen army, we leveraged the presidential candidates’ own supporters, finding advocates for clean coal among the crowd to carry our message.