Brace yourselves

by | Sep 30, 2016 | Editor's Blog, Politics

Brace yourselves. Walk away from your inbox. Today is the final of day of the third quarter. It’s the most important deadline of the campaign. Some candidate (maybe me?) is just $1,374 shy of meeting her goal. Can you help her get there by midnight tonight?

It’s all part of the fundraising game. Back in 2000, John McCain showed that candidates could raise large numbers of low-dollar contributions online. Four years later, Howard Dean perfected the process and our email hasn’t been the same since. Candidates will do as much as they can to entice people to open their wallets and relieve them of $10, $20 or $100.

The deadlines are important for some candidates. Big donors, particularly PACs and institutional players like the DSCC or NRSC, will watch end-of-quarter reports to determine where to spend their money. At this point in an election, they don’t want to prop up campaigns; they want to supplement communications programs that are at least partially funded.

When the low-dollar efforts began, they helped long-shot candidates and those without deep ties to big money get off the ground. On the Democratic side, they were supported by blogs like DailyKos and grassroots organizations like Democracy for America. The low-dollar money would be followed by the bigger dollars if the campaign was lucky—and in more than a few cases they were.

Traditional campaigns were slow to adopt online programs but once they did, email programs became a staple of every campaign. Today, top-of-the-ticket contests have robust small-dollar programs that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars. And today your inbox will see the result.

At one time, the low-dollar programs were seen as the great equalizer. Lesser-known and lesser-connected candidates could raise money and compete with more establishment opponents. Those cases are rarer and rarer today. The low-dollar money that once sustained upstart campaigns today goes to establishment campaigns, too. Bernie Sanders may have funded his campaign on $27 per contribution but he couldn’t have done that if he didn’t start with a level of celebrity.

So brace yourselves. The onslaught is coming today. Every campaign desperately needs your money whether they really do or not. Have a good weekend.

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