Guys, as you might've seen, Orange to Blue candidate Darcy Burner lost her house yesterday to a fire. The tragedy has obviously upended her life, and she's struggling right now to put all the pieces back together. As such, she now faces a dilemma -- the more time she dedicates to dealing with her personal affairs, the less time she has to campaign and raise money.
We can't help with the "campaign" side of things, but we can help with the money side of things. Darcy would have to raise about $150,000 in the month of July to keep up with her Republican opponent. Us bloggers are going to try and raise that for her.
Darcy is currently at $250,000 across all of ActBlue. We want to get that to $400,000. A tall order, but no one deserves the respite from the rigors of fundraising more than Darcy.
One last point: Darcy is a huge netroots sensation because she is truly one of us -- a former Microsoft exec who is a geek at heart, and someone who has been with us on the war and FISA since she first started running in 2005. Some politicians can put up a facade or say the right things for the right audience, but there's no faking it when you've just run out of your burning house, seeing all your worldly possessions go up in flames as you frantically try to ensure your family is safe.
Look at the shirt she was wearing:
(Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
She is family.
I know I promised a lull from the fundraising after the end of the quarter, but these are not normal circumstances. Darcy will be someone who will be there for us when she's in Congress. Now's our chance to be there for her during these horrible, trying times. Let's do what we can to help her out.
Update: Goldy:
[...] that’s XML for “end war.” And the fact that this was the shirt that Darcy was wearing at 7AM when she and her family fled their burning house, tells us in the netroots all we need to know about Darcy Burner [...]
Darcy needs to raise about $150,000 this July to keep pace with Dave Reichert and her own 2006 fundraising, and everyday she takes off makes her campaign budget that much harder to hit. That’s about $5,000 a day.
And that’s why I’m joining with bloggers nationwide to ask our readers to contribute what they can today, to help give Darcy the breathing room she needs to tend to her own affairs without worrying about neglecting her campaign. Every $5,000 increment we raise represents a day that Darcy won’t have to dedicate to her own fundraising efforts. It is a gift more precious than money; it is a gift of time.