it's not any Democrat -- it's crazy-assed Ron Paul.
Ron Paul has raised 3.5 million from over 22,000 donors with just under 4 hours left in the day. Paul has also passed Mitt Romney’s one day haul of 3.1 million dollars in a single day fund raising effort, making it the largest one day fund raising effort among all Republicans this campaign.
The eventual number raised Monday was around $3.8 4.2 million, with 35,000 contributors. And amazingly, it had nothing to do with Paul's campaign. His supporters decided on their own to do a flash mob fundraiser and pulled it off handily. Paul's haul for the quarter is already $7.6 million, which is well on its way to leading the GOP pack the last three months of the year. Meanwhile, his supporters are banned from Republican websites like Red State and establishment Republicans try to find ways to keep him out of their debates. Pretty funny.
This is the single biggest example of people-power this cycle. And as annoying as it is that we're seeing it from a Republican -- and a crazy one at that -- it's nevertheless a beautiful thing to behold. Jerome explains why it's happening:
Our frontrunner websites, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards websites are much too inward-looking, and are walled off websites for the most part. HillaryHub-- if under-developed-- is a step in the right direction, the Edwards effort of blog outreach has been terrific lately, and Obama did early-on rocket through support on MySpace & Facebook. And in fact, fundraising-wise, no one could complain, but the Democratic campaigns have become a little too complacent in viewing how the web works, and can learn some real lessons from Ron Paul in doing outreach from within the candidate's website.
Look how, on his website, how Paul pushes his supporters out onto the social networking platforms of Technorati, del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Stumble Upon, and Newsvine.
Its a brilliant tactic, because rather than having to develop these costly platforms that take up valuable time, or rely upon closed vendor systems that use laggard technology, the campaign just uses the existing infrastructure built by others for that specific vertical. There is no RonPaul2008.com community. Instead, it exists out on the web, outside the campaign website walls. So rather than all their own supporters talking to eachother, they are forced to congregate in places where others that don't support Paul gather. Evangelize. Outreach.
And the way Paul's campaign has done it, by not setting up a social networking account on every new-fangled socnet site, but by targeting a few and then expanding, is also the way to go. The Paul campaign recognizes decentralized, organic signs of Paul community, and then officially sanctions the congregation through post links on their website-- start going here. The Paul campaign didn't directly create ThisNovember5th.com, but they did create embrace the environment where it could happen.
There's a ton of good lessons there for future campaigns to learn. Paul's internet team -- out of necessity, no doubt -- have been brilliantly efficient and effective in evangelizing their candidate on social networks throughout the web. The cost is likely negligible -- a couple of staffers -- while the payoff speaks for itself.
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