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You are here: Home / Archives for Political Fundraising / Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

It’s A Wrap!

by WaterGirl|  January 30, 202311:00 am| 20 Comments

This post is in: Political Action, Political Fundraising, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

This is part 6 of our look back on our fundraising and GOTV efforts in 2022. 

It’s A Wrap!  The Rest of Our Candidate Fundraising.

Let’s talk about the remaining candidate-related fundraising efforts.

A bit of background

We’ve already talked about our efforts to raise money in the five critical swing states where we directed the vast majority of our efforts:  Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.  We’ve also discussed the 19 winnable House races in purple districts covered in the previous post.

As you surely know, most of our fundraising this cycle (roughly 80%) was focused on boots on the ground organizations in critical swing states.  The comments on our “look back” fundraising threads reflect that we all seem to generally agree with the emphasis on boots on the ground, with a side order of strategic donations to candidates.  So, again, we’ve targeted traditionally overlooked races where we can make a difference, where a boost toward the end can help a candidate who is close, but struggling, and where that difference would have nationwide consequences.

This post will address the remaining fundraising – with, or course, some overlap with previous discussions.

U.S. Senate

We mostly stayed out of the big money, well-funded Senate races.  With a couple of exceptions.  Incumbent Senator Catherine Masto-Cortez in Nevada was in trouble.  And the national party appeared to be paying insufficient attention to this potential loss.  We did a flash fundraiser that quickly raised $5,963 for the Senator in the waning days of the campaign.  She won, but by only 1%.

In Georgia, we mostly focused our efforts on turnout organizations (Worker Power and Four Directions), but we also put up a thermometer for people who wanted to donate directly to the candidate for the runoff.  We raised $7,400 directly for Senator Warnock’s campaign. Did you hear that he won?

Secretaries of State

Historically, the Republicans have done local races better than we have.  This cycle, Trump supported election denying candidates in critical states, most of whom openly threatened to refuse to certify Democratic victories.  We raised $14,311, the bulk of which ($13,173) went to the critical races in Arizona and Nevada, including a flash fundraiser for Cisco Aguilar in NV.  Only one of Trump’s election-denying Secretary of State candidates – in Indiana –  survived the primaries or generals.  Thanks to those wins, no one is going to “find” a few thousand votes in AZ or NV in 2024!

Attorneys General

This is also a state-wide office with potential nation-wide importance.  AGs have the responsibility to enforce various laws, including election-related legislation and legislative assaults on reproductive freedom.  Plus, Republican AGs routinely join together to prosecute regressive and harmful litigation on environmental issues, Obamacare, voting rights, etc.  We raised $12,135 for AGs in four of our five target states: NV, GA, WI and AZ (the Michigan AG was in no real danger).

We also included Texas AG candidate Rochelle Garza in the thermometer.  This was an investment in a promising future candidate – and someone who was giving the odious Ken Paxton a run for his money.  Our candidates in AZ, NV and WI won.  In Arizona in particular, AG Kris Mayes won by the narrowest of margins.  Our $5,054 directed her way had to have helped!

Governors

We largely stayed out of the Governor’s races, even in our five targeted states.  Still, we raised $25,820 for the Governors.  We did a flash-fundraiser for Charlie Crist in Florida that raised over $9,000.  At the time, he had just won the primary, and we thought a boost right out of the gate might give him a fighting chance against DeSatan.  Alas, Democratic turnout ultimately cratered in Florida, especially among the young (a drop of 38% from the last midterm).  But I don’t think any of us felt we could stand by and let DeSantis coast to victory without at least trying to cut into his margins.  No regrets.

We also did a flash-fundraiser for Maine Governor Janet Mills.   Janet wasn’t on our watchlist until MomSense alerted us to a last-minute dark money dump by the Republicans, who used that money to spread vicious lies about Mills.  We raised over $8,000 for her in just a few hours.  She won.  She won by a big enough margin that she likely would have won without that.  I like to think that we made a difference anyway, because in those first few hours of grave worry that the hideous attacks with dark money might derail her chances, they could surely see our $8,250 rolling in, donation by donation, as an indication that not everyone was falling for the lies.  That surely added a spring in their step as they fought back against the lies.  I like to think so, anyway.

The rest of the money was spent in Arizona (we won) and Nevada (we lost, which was disappointing, but at least the Republican wasn’t an election denier).

State Supreme Courts

We raised $10,147 for State Supreme Court races in three states – Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina (with most of it going to three Ohio candidates).  Ohio is frustrating.  Coming into the election, the Republicans held a 4-3 majority on the State Supreme Court.  Three of the four Republican seats were up for election.  A Democratic majority could potentially strike down gerrymandered maps and prevent the worst of the anti-choice measures from being enforced.  Alas, the Republicans won all three.  Our modest contributions helped finance a Michigan blue wave (more on the “Michigan miracle” and the spike in turnout among women and younger voters in a future post).

Down-Ballot Races in Swing Districts in Swing States

This was perhaps our most creative and potentially impactful fundraising efforts: identifying local races with nationwide impact.  Blue Guitarist identified local races in swing districts in swing states that could potentially 1) prevent the Republicans from obtaining a super-majority in states with a Democratic Governor; 2) flip a swing state legislature from red to blue; and/or 3) drive turnout in a local purple district that would help state-wide candidates.  We raised $18,924 for a total of 22 down-ballot races in 6 states: PA (8), AZ (6), OH (3), NC (2), FL (2), and NV (1).

This strategy has the potential for long-term impact, but it’s challenging to evaluate whether and how our contributions may have made a difference.  I think we will want to try this again for 2024, with an eye toward how we can evaluate success.  Or, if evaluating success is really tough, we might want to view this as an investment in the future, even if we can’t measure tangible results.

Looking Ahead

In future posts, as we look ahead to the next cycle, we can talk about the swing district/swing state concept as well as the flash-fundraising concept, which in its purest form rescued Four Directions on election day during an unexpected snowstorm in Reno.

Overall, we did very well this cycle, and maybe we can do even better in 2024, with the experience from this cycle under our belt!

Again, great job everyone.

We want to say thank you to everyone who donated.  Thank you to every Balloon Juice Angel, and to our repeat Angels!   Thank you to MomSense who set the angels in motion with an offer to match ten $10 donations with her $100, and thank you to everyone who contributed in other ways.

Who says one person can’t make a difference?  All of us working together?  I think we made some pretty big waves!  Together.

It’s A Wrap!Post + Comments (20)

The Color Purple!

by WaterGirl|  January 25, 202311:42 am| 73 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

This is part 5 of our look back on our fundraising and GOTV efforts in 2022.  Up today?

The Color Purple: A Look Back at Winnable House Races in Purple Districts

Purple districts in (mostly) Purple States!

While most of our fundraising focused on organizations supporting voter protection and turnout, we also raised money for select candidates.  Sticking with our commitment to strategic fundraising, we targeted winnable Congressional races in purple districts in 2022.  We started with just 4 candidates, and with nominations from the comments, and followup research to confirm that more money  and a boost from us could make a difference, that expanded to 19!

A bit of background

You will recall that after the 2020 fundraising cycle, we made the decision to become more strategic with our fundraising, with much more focus on boots on the ground, particularly in under-served communities.  We also selectively targeted underfunded and overlooked races where: 1) polling was close, and 2) where our money could make a difference, and 3) where the difference would have nationwide consequences.

We resisted the urge to support Beto and Stacey and any other races where our funds would be like salt in the ocean.

Who did we support?

We will share a bit about each of our 19 candidates in the comments below, in descending order of funds raised.  So that the post itself isn’t too long, each of our “purple” candidates will get their own comment.

What do we have to show for our “Purple House” fundraising?

In total we raised $73,931 for 19 candidates.  Our win/loss record include 12 wins, 6 losses (and one additional loss we expected).  We helped flip three Republican seats, and put a Democrat in an open seat in Colorado.  Pretty good results, yes?  If we had won them all, I would question our choices.  Too many losses would have meant that our analytics were off.

We also helped the careers of promising younger candidates – an investment in the future.

What do we want to do in 2024, with regard to House candidates in purple districts?

Let’s have a conversation.

What are your thoughts about re-running the purple Congressional district concept in 2024?

Did we do it just right?  Should we support more Congressional candidates?  Concentrate on a smaller number of races?

Should we concentrate on candidates in swing states, and let the Blue States take care of their own?  Or should we stay flexible?

And finally, putting on our 20/20 hindsight glasses, were there any candidates that it was a mistake to support?  Who did we overlook?

As always, great job everyone!

Open thread.

The Color Purple!Post + Comments (73)

Georgia and Wisconsin

by WaterGirl|  January 19, 20234:30 pm| 53 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

This is part 4 of looking back at our fundraising and GOTV efforts in 2022.  Next up?

Balloon Juice efforts in Georgia and Wisconsin!

In both of these states, we focused almost entirely on boots on the ground organizations.

Balloon Juice Targeted Fundraising
Worker Power in the GA runoff!

Georgia on my mind!

Georgia may have had the most impactful election of this cycle, with a nail biter of a run-off and control of the Senate at stake.

A bit of background.

Georgia is (maybe) trending blue.  Would it be over the top to say that Georgia has twice saved Democracy by electing two awesome Democratic Senators?  I think not!  In spite of our love for Stacey Abrams and the strong desire to oust the awful governor and replace him with Stacey, who would have been great, we resisted the urge to respond to the siren call to fund Stacey Abrams.  She had plenty of funding without our help, and anything that might keep her out of office would not be funding-related.

Georgia has 16 electoral votes.  If we can keep GA in the blue column in 2024, it could offset Ohio’s 17 electoral votes, which, sadly, appear to be gone for good.  Or at least for a good long while.  As in the other states we’ve discussed this week, in Georgia we focused on boots on the ground and candidates with direct impact on voting rights.

So what did we do for Georgia?

Four Directions, was in GA for the runoff in Jan 2021, where the Native vote was more than the margin of victory.  We raised  money for Four Directions several times in 2021-22.  The first fundraising in May 2021 was just for Four Directions generally, with out a focus on a specific state, where we raised $24,287 + $30,000 match, that isn’t included in the GA total.  Then…
$26,910 + $50,000 (Aug 2021) + $40,285 (GA runoff Dec 2022) = $117,195

Worker Power, which was in GA for the runoff in Jan 2021, quickly moved to put boots on the ground again for the runoff on Dec 6.  Worker Power had the plan and the personnel; they just needed funds to pay volunteers and cover the travel and lodging expenses of out of state pre-trained staff.
$35,846 

Candidate: Rev. Warnock:  Reverend Warnock was not hurting for funds, which is why we focused more on organizations driving turnout.  Nevertheless, we put up a link for BJers who wanted to donate directly to the campaign.  As the whole world knows, he won.
$7,400

Candidate Bee Nyugen for Secretary of State, who was the first Asian-American to run for statewide office in Georgia, running against Brad Raffensperger of “I just want to find 11,780 votes” fame.  We went into this one with our eyes open.  She was unlikely to win.  But she deserved our support for challenging Raffensperger, who may have done the right thing in 2021 but then turned around and started purging voter rolls and reducing early voting to suppress Democratic turnout.  We don’t have the % for 2022, but Asian-American turnout was at amazingly high levels in 2020, with the percentage turning out for Dems something like 98%, if I recall correctly.

Candidate Jen Jordan for Attorney General, who lost her race for Attorney General.
$1,503

What do we have to show for our efforts?

Rafael Warnock won!   We kept the senate!  We are now 51-49, which changes the power dynamic significantly in our favor, and it gives us some breathing room.  Not to mention that a certain AZ senator can’t threaten to turn the senate leadership over to the other party, if she chose to switch.

Voter turnout was good.  GA is going to be a key state for the foreseeable future, and all the voter registrations and GOTV efforts clearly made a difference.  All the major groups need to catch their breath after an election like this, so we haven’t pressed for specific information.  But we’ll be talking with both Four Directions  and Worker Power in the next month or so to get more details on the measurable outcomes related to their efforts.

Unlike Arizona and Nevada, Trump’s hand-picked election-denying villains for state offices lost to more “mainstream” Republicans.  Sadly, the Republicans swept the top state-level races.

Closing thoughts?

Georgia is a cautionary tale.  We are not surprised that – with the extreme levels of Democratic voter suppression in GA – Republicans were able to take/keep all the top offices where they can continue to gerrymander in favor or Republicans and continue to suppress the Democratic vote.

An eminently qualified Senator won by a distressingly narrow margin, against a total loon who was absolutely unfit to hold public office, let alone be a senator in GA!

There is much work to be done in Georgia.


On Wisconsin!

We had high hopes for Wisconsin.  We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got enough.  For now.

A bit of background.

Wisconsin shocked the nation when it narrowly went for Donald Trump in 2016, the first Republican Presidential candidate to win the state since Reagan in 1984. Despite the Republicans’ best effort to suppress the vote, Biden narrowly won Wisconsin by a margin of only 20,000 votes in 2020. Is the state trending red? It’s hard to tell, because the Republicans have their fingers on the scale, as discussed below. But we did our part to keep Wisconsin on the list of sane states with its neighbors, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota (we won’t talk about Iowa).

So what did we do for Wisconsin?

Four Directions:  Once again, we helped underwrite the Four Directions expansion into Wisconsin, which has one of the largest Native American populations east of the Mississippi River.
$29,935 + $60,000 match = 89,935

Voces de la Frontera.  We raised funds in May 2022 for the first Voces field organizer, and then raised more funds for election efforts in 2022.
$27,500 $43,261 + $27,500 match (in 2021) + $15,761 (2022) = $70,761

Wisconsin Democratic Party:  The Wisconsin Democratic Party is well-organized and well-regarded nationally.
$7,801

Candidate: Josh Kaul, who was the incumbent Attorney General in Wisconsin.  Unlike most states, responsibility for election oversight rests with the AG and not the Secretary of State.  He won.
$1,074

Brad Pfaff, a Wisconsin State Senator, ran for an open Congressional seat.  He was narrowly defeated, but appears to be an up-and-comer in Wisconsin Democratic politics.  It was a close race, and as we got close to November and his campaign needed a funding boost, we supported him directly.
$2,435 

What do we have to show for our efforts?

We supported turnout in the Native American and Latino communities, which together make up over 8% of the population of the State.  While the loss of an open Democratic seat was disappointing, the ground was laid for a potential pick up in 2024.  And Governor Evers won big!   With the AG win we get protection of voting rights and reproductive freedom. Also huge!  But gerrymandering remains a huge hurdle, so the fight continues!

Closing thoughts?

Wisconsin could and should be a blue state, but for Republican chicanery.  Wisconsin is considered by many to be one of the most gerrymandered states in the country:

https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/wisconsins-assembly-maps-are-more-skewed-than-ever-what-happens-in-2023/

We’re not done with Wisconsin.  Not by a long shot!

As we mentioned in the first post, we hope that Wisconsin can go the way of Michigan, particularly by expanding voting rights and eliminating gerrymandering.  First up in the very near future is an election in April for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  There’s a five-four Republican majority, and one of the Republicans is stepping down.  Securing a Democratic majority will be a welcome first step in protecting voting rights and assisting Wisconsin Democrats in their efforts to redraw an unfair map!

There’s also another key election coming up on the same ballot as the WI Supreme Court race,  It’s much less well-known than  the supreme court battle, and I’ll put up a post next week to explain more about the race and why it matters so much.

Great work, everyone!

This completes the reporting on the 5 key states where we funded boots on the ground.  Michigan.  Arizona.  Nevada.  Georgia.  Wisconsin.

Open thread.

 

Georgia and WisconsinPost + Comments (53)

We Bet on Arizona and Beat the Odds!

by WaterGirl|  January 16, 20232:07 pm| 29 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

This is part 2 of looking back at our fundraising and GOTV efforts in 2022.  Next up?

Arizona and Nevada!

We bet on Nevada and Arizona, and we beat the odds!  For these two states, you’ll see that we placed a lot of bets, just as we did in Michigan!

A bit of background.

Nevada and Arizona share many similarities.  They are both mostly deserts.  They are both growing rapidly thanks to retirees, snow-weary Midwesterners, immigrants and priced-out Californians.  Both states went for Biden in 2020, but barely (especially Arizona).  Both these states matter immensely; we need both of them in 2024!

But the most important similarity is that state-wide offices in both AZ and NV were aggressively targeted by Trump and his merry band of election deniers.

Specifically, Trump sponsored extremist candidates for Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General in the Republican primaries in both states.  The Republican SoS candidates were a threat to election integrity and the AG candidates were a threat to election and reproductive rights.  The Gubernatorial candidates were a threat to – basically – everything.

We’ll talk about Nevada in the next post!

In Arizona, what we needed most of all was to keep the crazy election deniers out of office. Balloon Juice 2021-22 Targeted Fundraising Postmortem: Michigan EditionARIZONA

So what did we do for Arizona?

We funded Four Directions to turn out the Native vote, and we funded other GOTV efforts.  We put our strategic focus on turnout and election access into overdrive, in support of state-wide candidates who could protect election access and the right to control our own bodies.  

show full post on front page

Four Directions, an organization that needs no introductions with the BJ crowd!
$25,570 + $50,000 match  = $75,570

Worker Power, a project associated with Unite Here Labor Union, which has been active in registration and get out the vote efforts in multiple states.  Our money was used to compensate 27 people to hit the pavement once early voted started.
$27,000

Maricopa County Democratic Party, which we supported in May of 2021, hoping to give them a bit of an early boost for organizing Dems.
$830

Candidate: Adrian Fontes for Secretary of State, who explicitly ran on a platform of defending Arizona’s voting system – particularly its universal early mail-in voting laws – and who is next in line if the Governor is indicted or resigns (Arizona currently has no Lt. Governor position).
$4,755

Candidate: Kristine Mayes for Attorney General, who would be key in supporting voting rights and reproductive freedom in Arizona.
$5,054

Candidate: Katie Hobbs for Governor, who was running against the awful Kari Lake.  We are all aware of the ways that Kari Lake as governor would have meant disaster for Arizona, and for freedom itself.
$4,764

House Candidate: Jevin Hodge, who lost, but we’ll have our eye on Congressional candidate Jevin Hodge in 2024, a young, talented African American man who nearly defeated a Republican incumbent who only beat him by around 3,000 votes.
$3,842

Statehouse: 3 candidates in the AZ House and 3 candidates in the AZ Senate, in our down-ballot races on super-swing districts.  More on the results here in a future post.
$5,021

What do we have to show for our effort in Arizona?

Great turnout in November, a good deal of which was the result of efforts by Four Directions and Worker Action.

Democratic in the top offices: Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General.  Victories for democracy, voting rights, and reproductive freedom!

Kristine Mayes won by just 280 votes!   This had to have been one of the most impactful $5,000 we’ve ever raised.  It’s hard to imagine that our contribution to this campaign wasn’t extraordinarily significant for voting rights and reproductive freedom in Arizona.  Not to mention that with a 280 vote win, the money to the boots on the ground organizations was likely determinative, too.  This was the closest statewide election in any state in 2022. 

Katie Hobbs.  This race was way closer than it should have been, given how awful Kari Lake was.  Katie Hobbs only won by 17,000 votes, after running what a lot of us thought was a lackluster campaign by an excellent candidate.  We put money into the campaign when it was foundering, and our efforts had to have helped.

Closing thoughts?

In many ways, I think we did everything right, priority-wise, in Arizona.  We kept our strategic focus on turnout and election access, with protection of voter rights and abortion rights, and we were smart in our candidate efforts.

Great job, everyone!

Open thread.

We Bet on Arizona and Beat the Odds!Post + Comments (29)

We Placed a Bet on Michigan, and We Won Big

by WaterGirl|  January 13, 202312:07 pm| 97 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

Okay, it’s finally time to look back at our fundraising and GOTV efforts in 2022.  We’ll be documenting our investments, evaluating the results, celebrating our achievements, and discussing our strategy for the next cycle.  First up?

Michigan

We placed a bet on Michigan, and we won big.  Actually, as you’ll see below, we placed a lot of bets on Michigan!

A bit of background.

Trump won Michigan in 2016 by less than 11,000 votes.  With voter suppression and gerrymandering both at play, we lost by 1/4 of 1%.  Balloon Juice worked strategically to guarantee that Michigan voters’ voices would be heard going forward.  We had some good company, too – the Democratic party, activist organizations, and labor unions.

We needed to keep Big Gretch Gretchen Whitmer and the other top executive office holders in place. We needed to get voting rights enshrined in the Michigan constitution.  We wanted to put up a firewall for 2024.So what did we do for Michigan?

Four Directions, an organization that needs no introductions with the BJ crowd!
$30,000 + $60,000 match  = $90,000

Voting Access for All (VAAC), who spread the word among formerly incarcerated people to let them know they can vote, get them registered, and get them to the polls.
$27,000 + $25,000 match = $52,000

Promote the Vote, who created the ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to preserve and protect voting rights in Michigan, to spread the word about the initiative, and to get folks registered to vote and to sign the petition.  We funded 5 fellowships for underrepresented and undeserved populations to get signatures to get the voting provisions on the ballot.
$25,000 + they continued to fund those fellowships after signatures were collected = at least $50,000, maybe more.

Michigan Supreme Court, where we raised money for the 2 candidates.
$1,400

What do we have to show for our efforts?

Great turnout in November.  Voting rights enshrined into law in Michigan.  Abortion rights enshrined into law.  A blue Michigan Statehouse.  A blue brick back in the wall for Democrats!

Note: we didn’t directly fund any of the abortion rights activity, but the synergy between the voting rights initiative and the abortion rights initiative helped drive the outcome.  Each of those efforts indirectly supported the other – by getting folks registered and educated about one initiative, that gave us more registered, informed voters who could vote for the other initiative.  Along with VAAC and Four Directions, that helped give us a huge victory in Michigan.

We met multiple times with an organization in Michigan that was very involved in the abortion rights initiative in Michigan, promoting the youth vote through edgy videos and savvy viral strategy.  Ultimately, we didn’t fund them for this cycle, but we have our eyes on them for the 2024 cycle.

Is it premature to say that with all of these efforts, we don’t really have to worry that much about Michigan anymore?  Yes!   We’re not taking our eyes off the ball.  We have to continue to support what we helped build.

Closing thoughts?

In many ways, Michigan did everything right, including fixing gerrymandering, enshrining voting rights in the state Constitution, and running qualified candidates.  Michigan can be a model for other states with too-narrow Democratic majorities thwarted by Republican chicanery.  In particular, next door neighbor Wisconsin, a state we will be watching closely and likely be supporting more actively in 2024.

Great job, everyone!

Open thread.

We Placed a Bet on Michigan, and We Won BigPost + Comments (97)

Balloon Juice Targeted Fundraising for 2021-22: Postmortem / Celebration

by WaterGirl|  December 7, 20227:30 pm| 96 Comments

This post is in: Political Action, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

For everyone who said ignore the predictions, just work your ass off to get the results we want, we have been vindicated!  (Mostly!)

For the first time since 1934, the party in the White House retained every Senate seat – and in this cycle, we even picked up an open seat!

In the House, the red wave ended up being something of a reddish oozing trickle, leaving a narrow and fractious majority that will require Kevin McCarthy to continually chip off *little pieces of his soul to gain the Speakership and manage his caucus.

*Is it possible to chip off pieces of your soul if you don’t have a soul to begin with?

None of the swing state down-ballot election stealers championed by Trump for Secretary of State or Attorney General were elected,  though a few won in deep red states.  All in all, Trump and his election lies were the sloppy kiss of death for candidates he supported.

The democrats flipped some swing state legislatures and passed state-wide initiates protecting the right to vote and the right to choice.

And now last night… Reverend Warnock’s convincing victory was the cherry on top of the chocolate ganache on a very yummy chocolate cake.

It was a good cycle.

Is it crazy to believe that Balloon Juice helped get us to those victories by raising nearly $1,000,000 in strategically focused, targeted funding?  ($930,000!)

Since 2020, we have concentrated on strategic, targeted fundraising.

  1. Getting out the vote and protecting ballot access, particularly in communities of color in swing states.
  2. Identifying and funding vulnerable Congressional incumbents and promising challengers in swing states who were underfunded and overlooked (or severely outspent by dark money).  We believed in Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez and others when the Democratic Party didn’t.  Go us!
  3. Identifying and funding down-ballot candidates in swing states with election oversight responsibilities.
  4. Occasional “flash fundraising” for candidates and organizations with an immediate need.
  5. We also experimented with a new category of swing districts in swing states (more on this later).

Starting this coming Monday, we’ll begin a series of posts looking back on our efforts.

First up will be a summary of our multi-faceted efforts in Michigan – with our victories on several fronts, Dems have surely set up a firewall there!  Then we’ll focus on Arizona and Nevada, two other states where we supported organizations, GOTV efforts and down-ballot and Congressional candidates.  After that, Georgia and Wisconsin.  What all these states have in common is that Balloon Juice funded boots on the ground in every one of them, as well as supporting candidates at various levels.

After that, we’ll review our Winnable House Races in Purple Districts thermometer and take stock of our success – spoiler alert, we had some losses, but our success rate was quite good!   And we will highlight candidates we supported who narrowly lost but are worthy of our continued attention (i.e., Jevin Hodge in Arizona).  Then, we’ll take a look at our “flash-fundraising” and talk a bit more about the swing districts in swing states proof-of-concept experiment.  Finally, we’ll end with a post on our non-monetary efforts, including phone-banking and post-card writing.

After the holidays, we’ll also reach out to the organizations we supported for individual postmortems, focusing especially on how they used the Balloon Juice money, whether/how that fundraising made a difference, and what they are contemplating doing in 2023 and 2024. We’re considering doing Zooms, or perhaps videotaped interviews you can watch at your convenience.

Great, great job, Bj peeps!

Overall, I’d say our experiment in targeted, strategic fundraising was a grand success.  What say you?

Let’s look back on our efforts, enjoy the victories, figure out what we want to keep doing and what else we might consider.  Not to mention keeping special elections and 2024 in our sights.  I’m ready to take back the House, one special election at a time!

Balloon Juice Targeted Fundraising for 2021-22: Postmortem / CelebrationPost + Comments (96)

Balloon Juice Targeted Fundraising

by WaterGirl|  November 22, 20224:35 pm| 66 Comments

This post is in: Targeted Political Fundraising Fall 2022

Hey awesome BJ peeps!

For the GA Runoff, we have now raised $35,000+ for Worker Power, $35,000+ for Four Directions, and have given $6,000+ directly to Raphael Warnock.

Four Directions says they are in good shape, and we funded two canvass teams for Worker Power. That’s 2 canvass leaders and 25-30 pairs of boots on the ground.  We couldn’t have done that without all the Balloon Juice angels and everyone else who donated.

The three thermometers for the GA runoff will remain in the sidebar, but unless something unexpected comes up, we are done with targeted fundraising posts until the time is right in the new year.

Once we know the results of the GA runoff, we’ll have a series of posts where we take a look at what we were able to do for AZ, GA, MI, NV, and WI, and all the various ways we supported each state – and we’ll take a look at outcomes in each of those states.  We’ll also have posts for the Purple House Races, the Election Protection effort, and the proof-of-concept down ballot fundraising for Super Swing districts – and we’ll take a look at outcomes related to those.

For now, I’ll just say that Balloon Juice is responsible for having raised $925,000 for our targeted political fundraising, and I don’t think we’re giving away too much in advance of our analysis posts if I say that I think we did good!

Open thread.

Update:  I had asked if we could get photos of at least one of “our” Worker Power teams, and it just arrived.

Balloon Juice Targeted Fundraising

Balloon Juice Targeted FundraisingPost + Comments (66)

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