Loaded Orygun: "Mike Caudle, King of the Oregon Netroots"
This past weekend Torrid Joe over at Loaded Orygun crowned Mike the "King of the Oregon Netroots" citing Mike's unique successes in raising money using ActBlue. TJ writes,
If you want to help push that number up and support Mike's campaign in this key moment in the election, please make a contribution today!In the month since ActBlue, a federal PAC and website that enables anyone to fundraise for the Democratic candidates of their choice, opened its virtual doors to candidates for state office in Oregon, Caudle has raised more money through the service than any other Democrat in the state. In fact, Caudle’s neary $500 in online contributions from 17 unique donors ranks him among the most prolific online fundraisers of any state House candidate in the country [through the service].I noticed this a while ago. If you go to the ActBlue page for Oregon state house candidates, you'll see that not only is Caudle outpacing everyone else's returns from the process, he's being nice: he's crushing everyone else combined, and sadly I have yet to find anyone who has ANY money raised this way. Look up the candidates deemed hot picks these days: Arnie Roblan--nothing. Jean Cowan--nope. Chris Edwards--bupkus. Dan Thackaberry, Brian Clem, Sal Peralta, Tobias Read, Larry Galizio, Tina Kotek, Rob Brading. Rob Brading? The Great White Hope of Oregon progressives has zero dollars contributed electronically through one of absolute key tools of the netroots fundraising revolution? And the guy the party keeps kind of half-heartedly supporting for lack of confidence and competitive vision, he's got $500 from 17 people. That's not going to beat Wayne Scott by itself, but $0 sure as hell isn't either.
The strategy of engaging and empowering people looking for a confident shift in direction based on common sense, and using small viral technologies like moneyraising at the retail level, is taking candidates large and small into office around the country. The blogosphere as instigator and conduit for connecting local politicians with voters can work at a very small level, with low financial inputs and low-level engagement. It's word of mouth on the cheap, but as Mike proves it more than pays for itself.
posted by Jonathan Singer at 11:11 AM
2 Comments:
Love ya, Mike & Jonathan, but you guys are overstating the claim here. I'll repeat my comment from Loaded Orygun:
I like Mike Caudle a lot, but this claim - "$500 in online contributions from 17 unique donors ranks him among the most prolific online fundraisers of any state House candidate in the country" - is absurd.
During the primary alone, Tobias Read raised over $20,000 online.
ActBlue is not the only way that people take money online.
There are two reasons that legislative candidates in Oregon aren't using ActBlue.
First, it just launched.
Second, long before it launched, there have been two very good, very cheap, services for taking money online here. One is ours, MandateMoney, used by Chris Edwards, Jean Cowan, and Tobias Read (in the primary).
The other is the contributions engine from -- which is fully integrated into the bookkeeping systems. C&E is used by dozens of progressive Oregon campaigns.
ActBlue rocks, and I love it, but they weren't available when all these sites went live. Not only that, but getting a check twice a month ain't good enough for real money.
I appreciate the comment and have changed the sentence to read "$500 in online contributions from 17 unique donors ranks him among the most prolific online fundraisers of any state House candidate in the country through the service," which is a clearer and more precise statement. Thanks for the correction.
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