Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
After a Republican congressman resigned unexpectedly, a lefty blogger called for readers to send money to his opponent -- and the cash poured in.
Jul 23, 2004 | On Monday afternoon, July 19, Stephen Yellin, a 16-year-old politics junkie and frequent contributor to the lefty blog Daily Kos, noticed an intriguing development in Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District, an area to the north of Philadelphia. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call was reporting that Jim Greenwood, the district's popular, moderate Republican congressman, had unexpectedly decided not to seek reelection, meaning that his House seat was now up for grabs. This is the sort of news that sets partisans like Yellin jumping for joy, and so, of course, he blogged about it.
"I would suggest that we get involved ASAP," Yellin, who goes by the handle MrLiberal on Daily Kos, wrote. Virginia "Ginny" Schrader, the Democrat running for the open seat, "supports civil unions and is against Bush's positions on Iraq and the Patriot Act," he noted approvingly. But she was woefully low on cash -- as of June 30, Schrader had only $7,000 in the bank. Yellin implored Daily Kos' politically obsessed readers to change that situation: "This is completely out of left field, folks, and it gives us another opportunity for a pickup," he wrote. "Ginny Schrader is the luckiest candidate in the nation today, but can her luck hold?"
What happened next was beyond anything that Yellin had expected. Hundreds of people began pitching in, documenting their small donations in the comments threads of Daily Kos and other blogs: "$25.01 coming from me." "$30.01 from me too." "Yeah, this liberal kicked in $20.01." (Daily Kos readers add in the extra penny as a kind of signature for the site, letting a campaign know where the money's coming from.) The tide came in for at least two full days, and when it was over, Ginny Schrader, a candidate who was recently unknown to even the most obsessive campaign watchers, found herself flush with more than $30,000. She was suddenly a political force to contend with.
Thanks to blogs and the Internet, we now live in an age when news can be translated into action -- into money -- in no more than the time that it takes to post a paragraph online. What happened to Schrader was not novel; it's a phenomenon we've seen dozens of times in the past year, ever since Howard Dean put himself on the map with an extraordinary day of fundraising last summer: It starts with a small, hopeful appeal posted on a blog, something short and sweet and inspirational. And then, out of nowhere, the money starts pouring in. Loads of money -- more money than anyone involved in the process had ever dreamed of. In his one-day push last June, Dean raised more than $800,000, a trick he repeated several times during his presidential campaign. In a two-week period in January, readers of blogs sent $80,000 to Ben Chandler, a Kentucky Democrat running for Congress. Stephanie Herseth, running for South Dakota's House seat, saw similar unexpected money spikes during her campaign this spring.
The most newsworthy point about this latest episode of online fundraising is perhaps how normal it's become. The blogosphere and its readers are on hair-trigger alert, ready for any new development to spur them into action; this is especially true of the left-leaning online communities, where people seem to be as fond of making political donations as they are of making fun of George W. Bush. But what makes them do it for a particular candidate? Why do people online suddenly come together in hordes, aligning themselves behind Ginny Schrader, Ben Chandler, Stephanie Herseth and Howard Dean -- while dismissing some of the dozens of other candidates who regularly advertise on blogs in search of such pots of gold?
The answer, alas, is nobody really knows. In interviews, neither the bloggers on Daily Kos, the officials in Schrader's campaign or some of the people who donated money could fully account for what exactly caused hundreds of people to decide, en masse at the same time, to open up their wallets for a woman they'd just discovered. Obviously it had something to do with newfound opportunity -- Ginny Schrader's luck only turned after it was announced that her opponent would be dropping out. But was it only that? Was there something about Schrader that appealed to bloggers? Certainly, that mattered too. Liberals appreciated her positions on certain issues. But at the same time, Schrader was untested in a major political campaign. Why didn't this bother people?
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