Today Daily Kos is announcing the birth of a new ActBlue fundraising page -- the Orange to Blue List. This marks the retirement of the joint Blue Majority ActBlue page, previously maintained by Swing State Project, Open Left, MyDD, and Daily Kos.
We launched that joint page in early 2006, when our mantra was "more Democrats". At the time, it didn't matter much who we helped elect, so long as we replaced an inevitably regressive Republican with a Democrat, even if that Democrat would be just marginally better. We were also, as communities, much smaller in size. So it made sense to pool our communities in order to maximize what we could raise for individual candidates.
And on that front, we were effective. In 2006, we raised $1.54 million for 18 candidates. Many were successful -- Jon Tester, Jim Webb, Tim Walz, Paul Hodes, Patrick Murphy, Jerry McNerney, Joe Sestak, and Ciro Rodriguez. Several others came so close, that they're back this year to finish the job, such as Darcy Burner, Eric Massa, Gary Trauner and Dan Seals.
We have already raised half a million for our 2008 batch of candidates, including Donna Edwards who won her primary battle against corrupt Democrat Al Wynn, but we suddenly came to a new realization -- now that Democrats look to expand their majorities, we can afford to be more picky about who we support. If our unofficial motto is "More Democrats, Better Democrats", we have graduated from the "more Democrats" part to "better Democrats". And on that front, in a target rich environment, we realized that our various communities had different criteria for who we wanted to support. While we all share concerns over the war in Iraq and civil liberties, Open Left focuses a great deal on Net Neutrality and gravitates toward hitting "Bush Dogs" and Republicans representing Kerry/Blue districts. Daily Kos is concerned about immigration issues and is more drawn toward Western candidates, Swing State Project loves to sniff out winnable races ignored by establishment forces.
Finally, as a group we made candidate endorsement decisions by consensus, which sometimes slowed our ability to rapidly respond to the news cycle. That's why Swing State Project did their own fundraising drive for the Mississippi special election, why Open Left raised money for Ed Fallon's primary challenge to Rep. Leonard Boswell (and flipped his war vote, in the process), and why Daily Kos did their own Scott Kleeb fundraiser the week before the Nebraska primary. Suddenly, we realized that we could be more nimble and responsive to the issues and concerns of our own communities if we created our own fundraising pages.
It's a sign of maturation that we can do this. Even just two years ago, splitting up would've seriously hampered or killed our fundraising efforts. Today, splitting up ultimately means more candidates will get support (like Scott Kleeb and Travis Childers) while better allowing us to meet the needs of our own communities.
For now, the Orange To Blue List features the same candidates on the Blue Majority list. But that will change in the next few days as we begin to add a new batch of candidates. So stay tuned.