LA-2: You are the gap

Well, that was fast! Tim just posted another article on MyDD.com tonight, and I'm putting it up in it's entirety because it's timely and they can use your small-dollar online donations ASAP. It doesn't have to be a lot, anything will help!

It's a fantastic way to help a TRUE Democrat defeat an alleged corrupt Democrat (remember, he's innocent until proven guilty; hey, it's entirely possible Congressman William Jefferson kept $90,000 in undeclared cash in his freezer because, you know, banks are such a risky place to keep your money).

Read the article, then CLICK HERE TO DONATE to Karen Carter's campaign.

This is a GREAT way to get rid of that pesky extra cash I'm sure you have anywhere but in your freezer!

by Tim Tagaris, Tue Nov 28, 2006 at 06:59:45 PM EST

Tray.com beat me to the punch, but Karen Carter and William Jefferson both filed their latest campaign finance reports today. This is the last full report before the run-off on December 9.

First things first, Karen Carter out-raised Congressman Jefferson by nearly a five to one margin in the month between 10/19 and 11/19. Carter netted $320,741, while Jefferson brought in a meager $72,485. That said, the report shows Jefferson with a healthy cash on hand advantage: $117k to $58k. All signs point to Carter narrowing that margin significantly -- the first signal being that Carter has reported $17,500 in mandated 48-hour reports. Those are disclosures candidates must file for every contribution over $1,000 in the two weeks before an election. Finally, the netroots have almost hit the $30,000 mark for Carter's campaign, most of that coming after the closing date for reporting funds raised. Obviously money is still coming and going into and out of campaigns, but all things equal, this would decrease the CoH margin from to around $59k to $12k.

Basically, it's going to be netroots contributions that close the gap between Carter and Jefferson in the final days before the election.

As a side note, small dollar contributions have totally changed the way campaigns are able to (or unable to) track the amount of cash an opponent has right before an election. The 48-hour reports used to allow campaigns to monitor cash coming in for their opponents, giving them a rough estimate of what they are going up against down-the-stretch. Since you don't have to report small dollar contributions on a 48-hour report, it can create a situation where the opposition is totally caught off-guard.

With Paul Hackett, for example, Jean Schmidt's campaign manager had absolutely NO IDEA how Paul was able to dominate the airwaves in the final week and a half of the campaign. None. Their campaign manager even said it to Paul's Finance Director after the final OH-2 debate. That was us. Online. And they had no idea what hit them. Of course, they were too stupid to check ActBlue and watch the numbers skyrocket. But in the case of candidates like Ned Lamont, where we raised a lot of money online, most came in through our own website and there was no public tracking for that. Now we spent ungodly amounts of money in that race, so a mere million or two here wasn't going to change much, but imagine how an extra few hundred thousand dollars could blind-side a candidate in the final days of a campaign. Just small piece of the puzzle in regards to why a broad small-dollar donor base is so important.