Hackett has benefited from a surge of online support in the last week that has brought in, as of Thursday, an estimated $303,000 from more than 5,000 small campaign contributors through a Democratic group called ActBlue.com.
The online buzz for Hackett started last week when Democracy for America, the group founded by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean endorsed Hackett’s campaign in an e-mail to supporters, calling on them to contribute.
Several other liberal-leaning political Web logs, called blogs, urged their readers to contribute to Hackett on July 19, in honor or Blogosphere Day. On that date in 2004, online campaign contributions for Ginny Schrader, a Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, raised $25,000.
Hackett’s online contributions, which increase each minute, surpassed the money raised for Schrader in the first day and continue to grow.
I was born in Cincinnati (and still crave Skyline Chili and miss the 1975-1976 Reds) and my parents still live there, so I have a great deal of interest in this race. As a previously, my Dad the lifelong Republican is voting or Hackett and may actually contribute.
This is great news. First, Dean sends out an email asking for contributions. Then, a few other blogs make requests. As a result 5000 people contribute on average $60.60/person. And a Democratic Candidate has a good chance of pulling out an upset.
Before Dean, this would have been a yawner. The Democrats would have found a sacrificial lamb who would make a few token speeches and then get 30% of the vote.
After Dean, we fight and we fight hard for every race.
Let’s look forward to 2006 for a minute. Imagine a large number of Democrats contributing $30-$50/per person at their local level. Let’s add in some money from the Central office and various other committees and PACS, and we have a race. IN EVERY DISTRICT.