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Early 2009 sees three great opportunities for Republican candidates in Virginia.
January 6th: Barry Knight for 81st House Of Delegates - website - donate
January 13th: Joe Murray for 46th House Of Delegates - website - donate
February 3rd: Patrick Herrity for Fairfax County Chairman - website - donate
Please take the time to visit each of these candidate’s websites to find out more about them and consider a contribution to help score some early wins for Republicans in 2009.
Barry Knight won the Republican canvass this past Saturday to represent the Republican Party in the January 6, 2009 special election to replace outgoing Delegate Terrie Suit. You can show your support for Knight and help out by adding a RedStormPAC widget to your website.
Barack Obama raised half a billion dollars online in his 21-month campaign for the White House, dramatically ushering in a new digital era in presidential fundraising.
In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama’s online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.
By using online means and turning netroots activists into online bundlers and coupling this with a solid showing through more traditional fundraising means, Obama was able to rake in a record amout of cash for his campaign.
Too Conservative has a good round-up of Pat Herrity’s kick off for his campaign to become Chairman of Fairfax County.
RedStormPAC is proud to support Herrity for Chairman and you can help too by adding a contribution widget to your website or blog.
As you can see, RedStormPAC has tweaked its look. Not only that, but you can now easily find and access donation widgets for all statewide candidates and every sitting Republican Delegate in the House of Delegates.
We’re currently working on a couple programs to further help candidates in 2009 so be sure to be on the look out for that and sign on up for our mailing list to keep up to date on RedStormPAC news and happenings.
Late into the 2008 election cycles some people are finding that Barack Obama’s online contribution system has very lax security standards, inviting not only donor fraud not just against the FEC but credit card fraud as well:
The issue centers around the Address Verification Service (or AVS) that credit card processors use to sniff out phony transactions. I was able to contribute money using an address other than the one on file with my bank account (I used an address I control, just not the one on my account), showing that the Obama campaign deliberately disabled AVS for its online donors.
AVS is generally the first line of defense against credit card fraud online. AVS ensures that not only is your credit card number accurate, but the street address you’ve submitted with a transaction matches the one on file with your bank.
As more and more operations expand online, security for the contributor is going to be a huge issue and it’s one that we here at RedStormPAC take very seriously. We aim for the most secure transactions Authorise.net can deliver. This is both to ensure that all contributions are following the letter of election law but also to protect contributors from credit card fraud. Your information is safe with us, and we do everything we can to make sure it is YOU using your information.
You can now get RedStormPAC information and updates via Twitter. Twitter is a handy service one can use to quickly update people on the small things happening. A great tool for candidates or organizations looking to keep supporters and interested parties up to date on what is going on in 140 characters or less. Find out more about Twitter at their site or you can get a good feel for it through this video:
You can now add widgets to your Facebook profile and pages to help visitors donate to the 2009 GOP Executive Ticket for Virginia:
McDonnell For Governor:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=10206369372
Bolling for Lieutenant Governor:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=10818577778
Brownlee For Attorney General:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=23820228759
Cuccinelli for Attorney General:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=10907202741
UPDATE: Facebook’s new look has made our past applications no longer work on profile pages, though they still work on groups and fan pages (see RedStormPAC’s page for an example). We are looking into fixing the problems and hope to have a solution in time for 2009. Sorry for any issues.
Ft. Hard Knox is working on creating some online workshops for conservative activists and would like your input through a brief survey.
Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke and Soren Dayton have joined forces to give to Republicans The Next Right:
This site is the product of literally hundreds of offline conversations with some of the brightest young minds in the conservative movement. It grows out of a recognition that the road back can’t be about a series of disjointed technologies, blogs, and pundits. It begins with telling a story about why we should lead. With advancing majoritarian ideas with real buy-in from the grassroots, not diktats from Washington policy shops. With revitalizing the Republican Party with real participation from the bottom up. The right needed a place online where these discussions could flourish, where a narrative about revitalizing the movement could congeal, and where smart new voices could assert a leadership role in a party at a crossroads. We hope The Next Right can be a small part of this ongoing dialogue.
I’ve described the thinking behind this in further detail here, as have Soren and Jon.
It looks good and it’s something a lot of folks would like to see do very well. The question is, can the Right pull it off? Here’s hoping…
RedStormPAC has created donation widgets for all Republican candidates who have announced for statewide office in Virginia for 2009.
Bob McDonnell For Governor:
http://contribute.redstormpac.org/campaigns/36
Bill Bolling for Lt. Gov.:
http://contribute.redstormpac.org/campaigns/37
Ken Cuccinelli for AG:
http://contribute.redstormpac.org/campaigns/38
John Brownlee for AG:
http://contribute.redstormpac.org/campaigns/40
And we’ll be sure to add others if they announce.
Let’s start helping Virginia Republicans sweep statewide in ‘09!
Politico and Compete.com analyzed how political interested individuals used the Internet for political information:
The study, performed for Politico, is simply a snapshot of online activity; it followed only those readers projected to have visited an official candidate website at least once in September.
But the results reveal interesting online habits among the politically attuned. A significant number get their news from mainstream media versus political blogs. YouTube, meanwhile, is one of the most reliable ways for candidates to communicate directly to voters. But the candidates’ official Meetup, Facebook and MySpace pages appear less effective at that.
Despite their seemingly small numbers, these social networking sites still offer candidates big potential audiences. “There are roughly 80 different Facebook groups” dedicated to Romney, said his online communications director, Stephen Smith. “They have dozens or hundreds or tens of thousands of members alone. They’re not even necessarily touching [former Massachusetts] Gov. Romney’s official Facebook page.”
Readers like social networking websites in general. Half of those tracked by Compete visited MySpace in September, and 54 percent visited YouTube. Nearly two-thirds went to Wikipedia, a quarter logged on to Facebook and 7 percent visited Meetup.
But candidates’ specific pages on social networking sites were considerably less popular. Meetup, the darling of the 2004 election cycle, barely registers with any candidate other than Internet phenom Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Overall, only 1 percent of readers who visited an official campaign website last month also visited a candidate’s Meetup page. Two percent checked out the candidates’ MySpace pages, and 1 percent hit his or her Facebook page.
While only one to two percent of respondents checked out candidates MySpace or Facebook pages, this doesn’t necessarily make them useless.
Though the number of people visiting the candidates’ social networking sites may be small by percentage, campaigns still see value even in low numbers. “Even if you’re reaching 1 or 2 percent — and I think it’s more than that — it’s a no-brainer,” Finn said. “When you’re reaching someone who has 500 friends on Facebook, they have a lot of influence. Maybe through that 1 or 2 percent you’re reaching 20 percent.”
The notion that (presumed) voters who check the candidates’ social networking sites are more active is supported by the data. There’s the obvious example of Paul, who enjoys an enormous amount of online buzz. But it’s also true that the more popular a candidate is in general, the smaller proportion of his followers — if indeed they can be called that — visited the personalized sites.
Traditionally the candidate’s website has been the hub for their online activities. Such sites work for traditional voters, who were the target of this study. But for nontraditional (ie - younger or new) voters, social networking sites may be the first or only way they find out about some candidates. The no cost set up and easy upkeep make these sites very worthwhile to a campaign, not just as a gateway but as a source of viral campaigning.
Justin Hart at TechRepublican writes about the Lighted Candle Society’s e-mail campaign in response to a recent Oprah episode. The story shows an effective method of soliciting activist response and building a sense of community.
E-mail is just one of many areas where Republicans still lag behind the Democrats in fully harnessing. A lot of attention has been focused on Web 2.0 but we can’t ignore the Web 1.0 battle. Organizations like MoveOn.org works in a large part due to e-mail networking to keep their activists informed and energized. Republicans have yet to respond despite mailing lists being fairly standard with any hosting package or as easy to set up as an e-mail account at Yahoo or GMail.
Bloggers would gain more rights under a bill approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday:
Anyone regularly engaged in “journalism,” which would seem to include some bloggers, wouldn’t generally be forced to divulge confidential sources in federal cases under a bill approved Thursday by a U.S. Senate committee.
By a 15-2 vote, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee backed an amended version of the so-called Free Flow of Information Act. Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) cast the “no” votes.
Some form of “reporter’s privilege,” either through laws or court decisions, already exists in 49 states and the District of Columbia. This bill would extend that protection to federal cases, shielding anyone engaged in the practice of “journalism”–with a number of exceptions, naturally–from being forced to give up confidential information or provide testimony.
Now there is a Facebook group where individuals can commit to contributing what they can to help Jeff Evans take the 20th Senate District for Virginia. You can even add a Facebook widget to help spread the word.
Admittedly, the idea is not original to RedStormPAC. This morning I discovered At Least $25 (Rudy’s Small Donors)on Facebook and I was hooked. It’s a brilliant way to engage folks and not only start harnessing the long tail donations but create a community of folks who get it and are willing to sign on for what they can.
So please do what you can for Jeff Evans down in Virginia’s 20th Senate District. He’s running a great campaign down there against a strong incumbant and anything you can do to help will go a long way to keeping Virginia in the right hands.
