Less than a week before the first major fundraising period of the 2012 campaign comes to a close, the Obama campaign is making a final push for new grassroots donors.
“Of course we have a budget and financial goals,” said campaign manager Jim Messina in an email blast to supporters. “But we believe that the true strength of our campaign is the number of everyday people owning a piece of it.”
President Obama shakes hands at a fundraising event for the Obama Victory Fund 2012. (Gary I. Rothstein, European Pressphoto Agency / June 25, 2011)
Messina said the campaign has set a target of 450,000 individual donors by the June 30 deadline. A meter on the campaign website showed 377,151 donors as of this writing.Sources close to the campaign have previously said aides hoped to raise $60 million for the Obama Victory Fund during the second quarter –- a goal pegged to the amount raised jointly by President George W. Bush and the RNC for his reelection campaign during the same period in 2003.
A Democratic Party official said Friday that the Obama campaign is “close to the mark, but not there yet” on the fundraising goal. The fund is joint effort of the campaign and the DNC.
The campaign has courted deep-pocket donors at more than 30 fundraising events across the country so far this year, with ticket prices at some events exceeding $35,000.
They have also promoted incentives for donors of $200 or less, including a matching program campaign that officials said netted more than 20,000 first-time donors and a sweepstakes for dinner with the president.
“A lot of people out there are wondering whether this campaign can inspire the kind of grassroots support that has been the foundation of our success. A lot of people out there are already saying we can't,” Messina said. “So we've got something to prove.”
Asked about the degree of enthusiasm and response rate to campaign appeals, a Democratic Party official said “everything we have seen online is pretty consistent with 2007.”
During the 2008 campaign, Obama raised a record $750 million from nearly 320,000 individual donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Roughly a quarter of that total came from donors of $200 or less –- a similar percentage to Bush’s campaign in 2004.
(via abcnews)