Dean, Kucinich democratize fundraising
The latest financial numbers are now in, and Howard Dean is way ahead in what the pundits call the first primary: the money primary.
In the third quarter of 2003, Dean pulled in $14.8 million--more than three times as much as his nearest competitors.
The amazing thing about this is not the tally itself, but how Dean accomplished it. Rather than relying on clubby fundraisers for the superrich, Dean has democratized the way to bring in the dough. And he's done this mostly via the Internet.
He e-mails his legion of supporters, and they then e-mail their friends on their own personal listservs, and so rather than get a relatively small number of contributors giving the $2,000 maximum, Dean has gotten a huge number of contributors giving modest amounts.
A chart by the Center for Responsive Politics shows the reliance of most of the Democratic candidates on donations at the $2,000 level. (The percentage is of all contributions greater than $200. See opensecrets.org.)
Edwards: 67%
Gephardt: 56%
Lieberman: 54%
Kerry: 53%
Clark: 31%
Braun: 30%
Dean: 13%
Kucinich: 12%
(Accurate information for Sharpton was not available.)
Note the huge dependence on $2,000 gifts by Edwards, Gephardt, Lieberman, and Kerry. And contrast that with Kucinich and Dean barely getting into double digits.
Kucinich is the least reliant on $2,000 contributions, which is all to his credit. The Kucinich campaign says it has 44,000 contributors, with an average donation of $75.39.
According to the Dean campaign, he brought in contributions from 168,000 Americans in the third quarter, and fewer than 1 percent of those came from people dishing out $2,000 each. Instead, the average contribution was $73.69.
Dean and Kucinich have managed to become less reliant on the superrich, which should make them more responsive to the needs of ordinary people.
And they have also managed to ignite the grassroots, giving vast numbers of people a sense of empowerment in the process of nominating a Presidential candidate, a process that usually is reserved for the handlers and the pollsters and the $2,000-a-platers.
How a candidate raises money tells us a lot about who the candidate is. In this primary, Dean and Kucinich are neck and neck.
-- Matthew Rothschild
Subscribe to this blog's feed