End Of The Quarter Blues

Blues in a good way though. We don't like making a big fuss about these arbitrary reporting quarters, as though they have any kind of intrinsic value. It's just a Beltway subterfuge Blue America prefers to ignore. Except not this quarter. We're embracing it. Yesterday we announced a fun little "contest." The Blue America PAC, we decided, would give a thousand dollar check to whichever progressive House candidate-- they're all here-- motivates the most supporters to contribute to their campaign by 6AM (PT) tomorrow.

Actually, Jacquie just made me alter the rules slightly. Instead of one check for a thousand dollars, she went out and found a matching donor so that there will be two checks for a thousand dollars each. Jacquie's reasoning was pretty simple. Alan Grayson has helped all the other Blue America candidates build up their mailing lists and their donors are all Grayson donors too. So what we've been finding, as we do every year, is that when someone donates to, say Rob Zerban, they also donate to Alan. Actually, Alan is so much of a netroots hero that even supporters of the candidates he hasn't helped yet, like Patrick Hope for example, are also giving Alan a contribution.

When we started the contest yesterday, Alan had 504 donors on the page. This morning he already has 571 donors-- and he hasn't even sent out a letter to his own supporters yet! So we'll have two prize checks-- one that we already know will be headed to Orlando and one for another candidate whose staffers manage to work hard enough and smart enough to persuade enough donors to contribute. So far I have been especially impressed with the efforts by the Wisconsin contingent. Rob Zerban and Kelly Westlund are in it to win it. Rob's donors have already given him around $3,000. Patrick Hope is our newest endorsee and his team is tenacious and formidable-- and coming up strong. And over night, Stanley Chang's team made him a contender with a grassroots onslaught of small donors. Here's the baseline from when we started the contest, so you can follow along yourself on this page. You'll know who the winners are as soon as I do (except I have to go through the contributions and make sure we just count one donation from each e-mail address).

• Stanley Chang (HI-01)- 96
• Paul Clements (MI-06)- 228
• Alan Grayson (FL-09)- 504
• Tom Guild (OK-05)- 233
• Patrick Hope (VA-08)- 6
• Greg Howard (OH-06)- 29
• Daylin Leach (PA-13)- 344
• Mike Obermueller (MN-02)- 106
• Pat Murphy (IA-01)- 156
• Eloise Reyes (CA-31)- 190
• Lee Rogers (CA-33)- 290
• Michael Wager (OH-14)- 58
• Kelly Westlund (WI-07)- 17
• Rob Zerban (WI-01)- 164

Here's where you "vote" and since yesterday we've brought in over $8,000 for our candidates from 283 contributors.