On June 1st,
DraftGore2008.org launched an unusual visibility and fundraising event, the $5 Qualifying Contribution Primary. In the early morning hours today, we passed the 502 contributors mark, placing us a full 1/4 way to our final goal of 2008 $5 contributors by June 30th, the end of the second financial reporting period for FEC registered PACs, as well as our official
kickoff event in Iowa City.
Here's what I wrote about it when we started:
In 1996, the voters of Maine took the issue of public financing of state elections into our own hands and passed, by "citizen's initiative" the nation's first "Clean Elections" law. Beginning in 2000, candidates for State House, Senate and Governor could obtain public funding of their campaigns by collecting a pre-determined number of "qualifying" contributions of $5 each from registered voters. For the House, the number is 50; for the Senate, it's 150; and for the governor's office, 2500. The reasoning behind qualifying contributions was simple: It's easy to say you support a candidate running for office, but putting money, no matter how small an amount, behind those words increases the level of commitment and support. The specific numbers are meant to indicate one's financial support goes beyond a small circle of friends, depending upon the size of the expected constituency.
Today, we kick off the formal formation of the Draft Gore 2008 PAC. I happen to be from Maine, and overwhelmingly support the concept of public financing of political campaigns. So, from June 1st through June 30th, when the second fiscal quarter closes for FEC-registered candidates and PACs, DG08 asks Gore supporters to vote with their wallets: While total fundraising amounts are important, our initial goal for our first reporting quarter is the number of supporters we can point to as wholeheartedly supporting Gore, whatever your financial position in life. Can we reach a goal of a hundred, or a thousand, or five thousand individuals within the grass- and net-roots willing to send the message that Gore is the most qualified candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2008? We believe we can.
Since then, we've been very lucky to have growing support throughout the blogosphere, even though we've have yet to widely publicize the effort (mostly due to concerns over how our fledgling Drupal platform could handle it.) On our first day, a plug by the kind John Amato of Crooks and Liars took down the site for five hours, while we were stuck in traffic outside of Asheville, NC. Still, over 200 contributors joined the effort that day.
Our tech guru later rewrote some faulty Drupal code, and so we were ready for our next test, a link from Atrios, who on Monday wrote:
Gore Mania
I'm not quite sure of what I think of online presidential draft movements, though they're certainly a way of gauging support among a certain constituency.
DraftGore08 is run by sensible trustworthy people. They're having a "$5 primary" go gauge support. And, also, they're seeing if their server can handle the load of getting linked to by a site like this.
By the end of the day, we'd topped 400, and through links, email and general word of mouth, we've broken that first major milestone of 502 (25%), as well as having over 100 new members officially join the site.
We have 22 days left to reach the goal of 2008, and show the world that there is in fact a groundswell to not only offer words of support for Al Gore, but are willing to make a financial commitment, a la Maine's Clean Elections Qualifying Contributions.
Please join us at DraftGore2008.org.