It’s a well-known fact of the American political system: The candidate with the most money wins. An Open Secrets report found this to be true for the 2008 presidential election and 9 out of every 10 congressional elections.
But what do you do when you’re a little-known candidate with limited funds to get your message out? Use the greatest invention since the printing press, of course: the free and open World Wide Web!
The trend in online campaigning and fundraising has roots in then Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s 2003 presidential campaign. Although this Green party candidate lost, he revolutionized the use of online tools for political communication and raised $27 million in online contributions. He used MeetUp.com to organize groups of like-minded people online to meet in person off-line. He also incorporated blogs-”Call-Action”, later re-named “Blog for America,” on which he still posts comments regarding his stance on current political issues.
In 2008, Congressman Ron Paul, a candidate on the opposite side of the political spectrum, used the free communication medium to set an online fundraising record raising $4.2 million in a single day. This video features Paul’s finance director attributing their online transparency to the success of the “money bomb.”
That December, Paul’s campaign broke their own record, raising more than $6 million with their “money bomb” technique.
This August, Ron Paul’s son, Rand, followed his father’s successful online strategy and raised more than $400,000 on a single-day internet drive toward his senate campaign. Congressional Quarterly hailed the return of the ‘money bomb.’
Furthermore, on Nov. 5, Rand hopes to benefit from the ‘largest one-day multi-candidate donation event in history’ through ThisNovember5th.com.
The site boast the mug shots of a list of candidates along with the number of pledges and dollar amount they’ve received. The total number of pledges with a countdown to the deadline is featured at the top of the page, with links for visitors to share the site via the Facebook group or other social sites. I will be interested to see how well this online push fares for the candidates come Nov. 5!
[...] a displayed in my last post, the candidate with the most money wins the race. In the lobbying world, the groups with the most [...]