Wikileaks Exposes John McCain’s Illegal Request for Campaign Cash From Russian Ambassador Who Sudden

Exactly. The letter was a routine prospecting piece, a direct mail mass solicitation to a commercially purchased list.

People really should read the letter before commenting. It is the kind of letter that a candidate would never even see before it went out. Note that it was written for a joint solicitation committee, with proceeds going to the RNC, the McCain-Palin campaign, the compliance fund, and several identified state party organizations (meaning that it was a regionally targeted mailer). This is direct mail 101.

It is not what it seems.

It was a mass mailing, generic fund raising appeal sent to a New York City address, where the Russian happened to be living. Nine chances out of ten the address got swept up by a mass mailer working for the campaign, and no human or robot checked the names on the addresses with any list to filter out any names.

To me it’s like all the Obama and Hillary appeal letters I got as a registered Republican. I laughed. I bet the Russian did to, and Putin’s people expected their electronic logs went get hacked into a source that would make it public and embarrass McCain - whom I can’t stand.

Yes, thank you, Mark. While my eyes skipped over that important information in the Wikileaks release the first time I read it, when I did see it, I thought that the McCain contribution request was only important because of Churkin’s detailed reply.

Strange, two elderly opponents of our political system dying within days of each other with such dire consequences implied. One, the blind sheik, a combatant and this other a diplomat.

Like Godfather II.

“Nothing to this. The attached letter is a very routine mass mail prospecting letter. Note that it solicits a very wide range of donations, starting at $35 and ranging up to $5,000. That indicates that it was mailed to a raw, untested list; a group of previous donors would be more tightly grouped by the amount of the ask. This is the kind of thing that goes out in waves, to two or three million of the candidate’s closest friends at a time.

All that such a letter means is that the McCain campaign purchased a direct mail list that had a Russian name on it. It would be mildly interesting to know what list the Russian Ambassador had gotten himself on.”

Had to be said twice. This isn’t an email, or a link to a voice file of a conversation. It’s junk mail, essentially.

Correct. But why would the Russian diplomatic mission be on the senator’s campaign mailing list?

A fundraiser working for the McCain campaign, or the RNC, or one of the state parties specified in the disclaimer, purchased a commercially available mailing list that happened to contain the Russian name and address. From the story, we don't have any idea of what list the fundraiser purchased, or why the Rooskies were on it. Direct mail strategists are very creative in looking for, and testing, possible synergies. For all I know, they bought a list from the History Book Club, thinking that people who read history are disproportionately Republican, and the Russian ambassador was on it because he liked to read on WWII. That's a silly made-up example; the point is the list could have been from just about anywhere, and there are 1001 legitimate reasons the Russian ambassador might be on it.

The one thing that is certain is that the list in question was NOT a political donor list, because the Russian ambassador can't donate to an American political campaign, so he would not have been on such a list.

For what it's worth, we don't even know if this fundraiser was actually employed by any of the Republican entities mentioned above, or whether the fundraiser was an outside vendor doing contract work. (Outside contractors are very common in direct mail prospecting; housefile lists are much more valuable, and it is likelier -- though still not certain -- that a housefile mailing would be done in-house.)

It’s junk mail, essentially.

It's a prospecting piece. In political direct mail fundraising, there are two kinds of lists. The housefile consists of your previous donors. Modern technology makes segmentation of the housefile lists very easy. Some people are small donors; others send larger amounts. You solicit these groups differently. Some people give frequently; others are once a year. Some people give for presidential races but are hard sells in non-presidential years. Enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and all housefiles develop large groups of inactive donors, who many not have contributed in some time but who still should be mailed periodically. (You never know what can flip the switch back to the "on" position.) Technique is important; some people respond to long, discursive letters while others want it short and sweet ("Republicans good, Democrats bad, send money.") Others respond to surveys. Some respond to the "gimmick" pieces that still others despise. Over time, the managers of the housefile list will segment their lists accordingly and try to mail the highest probability of return techniques to each donor. It's not a perfect science, but it does get pretty sophisticated.

Then there is prospecting, which the McCain piece in this story clearly was. Prospecting is mailing to people who have never given to you before. This is an entirely different art form. You buy a list from anywhere you can that you think might have affinities for your candidate or party, and you give it a try. Development of prospecting lists is a sophisticated business, really no different in politics than it is in commercial advertising. You don't want to waste postage mailing to people with no likelihood of a response, so the prospecting list may be bounced off other lists to try to weed out mismatches. And any fundraiser will screen it against his housefile, because you don't want to bombard your existing donors with even more mail. (If nothing else, existing donors -- the housefile list -- will ALWAYS be acknowledged for their prior, generous, loyal support.) All kinds of names will crop up on these propecting lists. This is why, from time to time, Republicans get Democrat mailers and vice versa.

So: the Russian ambassador somehow wound up on a mass mail list that some Republican fundraiser was testing for the McCain campaign. He got this mailer for the same reason that he probably got mailers from 101 commercial advertisers.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.