I just wanted to say thank you to Booman, for representing yourself, your work here, and this community so well. Very articulate interview.
I understand the way you answered Jess’ question on fundraising. You, nor any blogger, can just say “support this person” without knowing about the campaign and candidate. That would not be responsible.
We are running a responsible campaign. I don’t want anyone trusting anyone running for office. I want everyone examining the candidates, myself included, before deciding to support anyone. Then support them.
I was not asked to run by the DCCC, the DNC, or the IDEMS(State Party), I was asked to run by County Chairs, District Officers, and people who had never been active before in politics, because of how I campaigned for State Senate. I ran for State Senate because our state was giving 17 million a year in subsidies for the two horse racing tracks in the state and he wanted to raise it to 44 million. I thought education might be a better place for that money, and opposed him. Under funded, and out gunned, we took him on, and lost. But s did the horse tracks as the money is being used for education.
If you look at the Presidential Numbers or last two Congressional numbers, we shouldn’t have a chance. But in four counties of the 19, there were 20,000 more Democrats that voted for the Governor, and other Democratic Candidates, but not for the congressional candidate. That’s a 40,000 vote swing in just four of the counties. There are many others, and I am bring them back as well as talented people who have never been involved with Politics. We have the grass roots, we have the netroots, we have the traditional party on the ground, and we lack funding, and need help.
I have come here and posted on occasion, asking for support. I have never demanded, expected, or pressured, but I have come and asked, and will continue to do so. When you run a campaign based on nothing but the ideology of people should matter, the only one’s that will support that, is the people.
The only way I can compete is by reaching people all across the country. If 250 people give our campaign $100, that $25,000 matters. Our budget goal is only $300,000 with a $150,000 bare bones worse case scenario. So $25,000 matters to our campaign. To a campaign with millions, it doesn’t matter so much.
So, those of you still reading this, I am not here asking for money. I am asking for you to investigate our campaign website. We are not mounting debt, and we are not going to. I do not believe that millions of dollars should be spent on a public service job which pays one tenth that.
Our campaign did not make the fund raising limit required for FEC filing until just after the new year, and we will be filing in April. The website alone is a large payment in kind donation, and that actually put us over the top when it came online.
I just wanted to share a little bit about the inside of the campaign while I had a few minutes this afternoon. Thank you again to Booman for this outlet, and to my wife for spending her lunch hour blogging and informing me that the Booman interview was happening.
My wife went online yesterday afternoon, and spent the whole afternoon writing and submitting her first diary and post on her own blog. She wanted her own voice unfettered by our campaign, and I respect that. The problem is she got hooked on blogging instantly. (Smile) So she will be back a lot. As the campaign heats up, and there are less days of snow on the roads, I will be posting less and less.
Please feel free to post any questions you might have and I will try to answer them.
Barry
www.barrywelsh.org
