I want to share some numbers with you that tell you something important about my campaign -- and the wild two days since I made my announcement here on DKos that I'm running for California State Senate District 29 against Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff. (And thank you all for your fantastic comments!) Those numbers are below the fold.
(By the way, rather than put the "(CA-SD-29)" slug for my race in my diary titles, I'm going to be slugging them with <Alt-4>, or "♦", to save space. I welcome anyone else who writes about my race to do the same. I have a last name that requires just one ASCII character, so I might as well take advantage of it. After all, it's an pretty exclusive ♣!)
A lot of the important numbers in a campaign, deal with voter population, comparative registration, total amount raised -- but I'm not discussing those today. The numbers I want to share have something to do with you -- and with DKos as a community.
The first number to tell you is 82 -- the number of ActBlue contributors I've received since Wednesday evening. (Still others are mailing in checks; PM me, for now, for the address.) Here are the other numbers that I want to share:
$50
$5
$100
$25
$10
$50
$10
$25
$25
$25
$25
$25
$500
$25
$25
$20
$75
$15
$5
$50
$25
$20.01
$50
$30
$10
$50
$20
$20
$25
$20.01
$40
$10
$50
$50
$25
$25
$25
$10
$5
$10
$10
$100
$5
$20
$15.01
$100.01
$10
$20
$100
$25
$100
$20
$5
$10
$100
$20
$25
$25
$10
$100
$25
$20
$100
$250
$25
$50
$100
$50
$10
$10
$17.76
$25
$5
$5
$50
$20
$50
$20
$20
$50
$20
For those of you who weren't around in the old days -- and I've been donating through Eschaton links to DKos since 2004, a year before I joined here -- we used to have a great tradition in the netroots of adding $.01 to every donation so that candidates would know that it came from us. I often forget to do it myself, but I'm happy to see people honoring it!
I could give you a total, but for me the total doesn't matter as much as the sheer number of $5 and $10 donations, combined with the people whose larger donations fill in for those who cannot donate.
Until the horrible campaign finance decisions are reversed and we get public financing (ideally along the Arizona/Maine model), to a great extent this is what democracy looks like! I promise you that you'll get your money's worth. A lot of this will pay for the things I need to do to get free media in this guerrilla campaign.
All the money in the world can't prevent me from making typos, though, so keep those embarrassing reports of them coming in! I'll be talking about seeking volunteer staff (and maybe not always merely volunteer staff) soon.
I'll thank contributors individually, but thank you again collectively. This is going to be fun.
Greg Diamond, aka "Seneca Doane," candidate for California State Senate, District 29
2:20 PM PT: Oh yeah: my ActBlue link!
6:15 PM PT: Oh yeah, and my still-a-work-in-progress-but-already-shows-some-promise website!