Posted on 08/25/2007 1:59:54 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Call it ActRed.
There’s something of a competition brewing between three new Republican groups angling to cut into the online fundraising advantage enjoyed by Democrats and their Internet money machine, ActBlue.
Rightroots, Big Red Tent and Slatecard.com are the latest in a series of as yet unsuccessful efforts by GOP operatives to close their party’s Web-cash gap with Democrats.
All three will allow visitors to their websites to contribute to Republican candidates running for federal offices, plus in Rightroots’ case a few who aren’t – namely might-be presidential candidates Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich and Chuck Hagel.
The committees will forward contributions to the candidates’ official committees, sort of like an e-bundler, and will also solicit contributions to pay for their own operations.
Using a similar system, ActBlue has passed along more than $22 million in conduit contributions to federal candidates and millions more to non-federal candidates since its creation in the months before Election Day 2004.
“ActBlue has been wildly successful. They’ve got a big head start on us,” said Jason Torchinsky, general counsel for Rightroots and the political action committee behind it, ABC PAC.
Torchinsky is also a top lawyer for Rudy Giuliani’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, but he said the two jobs won’t conflict because of the egalitarian nature of Rightroots, which launched a beta version this week.
Like ActBlue does with Democrats, Rightroots and Slatecard.com will accept contributions for every Republican candidate for federal office and will eventually allow users to create their own “slates” of candidates, which they can promote by e-mailing the link to friends and associates.
Big Red Tent, which launched earlier this month, puts more emphasis on the community approach, requiring a vote of its users before candidates can be included on the site.
The site currently lists only three GOP candidates: presidential contender Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; Rep. Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado; and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. But Ryan Gravatt, co-founder of Big Red Tent, asserted the site’s structure will yield a more engaged user base.
“We’re really trying to keep the focus on the organic properties of community building,” Gravatt said.
David All, one of the creators of Slatecard, said his site will launch this fall and feature a system allowing donors to “tag” candidates based on their stances on issues.
The features of the respective sites will determine which becomes most popular, he predicted, adding that “the competition in this space is a good thing which will help ensure a solid platform.”
Republicans lagged in online organizing and fundraising because they had the institutional advantages of controlling the White House and, until this year, Congress, he said, allowing easier access to traditional media.
In the meantime, the bloggers, activists and donors who form the Democrats’ so-called Netroots have helped shape the party’s platform, candidate recruitment and fundraising efforts, rivaling and in some ways overtaking established forms of campaigning, such as direct mail and phone-banking.
And the three new GOP entries into the field may face an inherent demographic disadvantage on the Internet, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.
Younger people are more likely to contribute using the Internet, he said. “And young people have been tilting substantially Democratic because of Iraq and social issues,” Sabato asserted, comparing Democrats’ domination of the Internet to Republicans’ domination of talk radio.
“Older people grew up listening to the radio, whereas the Internet is a young person’s game,” he said. “It’s just a matter of how old you are and what you’re used to. I don’t know whether this will ever equalize.”
Still, ActBlue is flattered by the conservative copycats, said treasurer Matt DeBergalis.
But he pointed out that the Internet’s brief history is littered with ideas that never took root, and he cautioned that online fundraising is not “as simple as throwing up the Web page that you see. ActBlue has been a substantial effort for us.”
Didn’t the Swift Boat Vets raise all their $30+ million cash online and go on to sink the trophy husbands Presidential campaign?
When the time is right the money will come.
I agree, and this is good news. But, once the campaign gets in full swing and especially after the GOP has settled in on it’s potential nominee by April of ‘08, the money will start to flow from the traditional “big donor” coffers.
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