I’ll just post this one “as is” and note only, with great relief, that Tom is once again acting de facto campaign manager, aka HMFIC, which totally gets me off the hook. Whew!
by Tom Knapp
via Kn@ppster
The good news: Steve Kubby’s presidential campaign is “in the black.” It has money in the bank.
The bad news: Almost all of that money was raised for, and donated by people expecting it to be used for, a specific purpose — producing the campaign’s first television commercial — and we’re not touching it for any other purpose.
The worse news: The Oregon Libertarian Party’s state convention at Sunriver Resort (near Bend) is this weekend.
That last bit may not sound like bad news, and in the normal course of things it wouldn’t be. But here’s how it is:
Steve Kubby’s car is an older vehicle that we’d really rather not see him driving over mountain passes in March. As a matter of fact, we’d really rather not see him driving over mountain passes at all in March.
Right now, that looks like it’s the only way he’s going to get to Oregon … and he is going to get to Oregon if I have to throw him over my shoulders and carry him. That’s something you don’t want to see.
We’d prefer to rent a more suitable vehicle — or, better yet, put him on a plane.
I’m going to explain why you should help us do that in a minute, but first I’m going to issue my little “matching challenge.”
I just contributed $10 to the Kubby campaign. That may not sound like much to you. If it doesn’t, good — go ahead and get out your credit card, because I’m asking you to kick in a picture of Al Hamilton, too.
Look — I even made it easy for you (PayPal is the quickest way to get money directly to the campaign; checks or contributions via our “regular” credit card processor are welcome too, of course, but they take time to get from hither to yon).
One more bit of disclosure for you: Yes, I’m Steve’s communications director and, for all intents and purposes his acting de facto campaign manager at the moment. What I’m not is a paid employee of, or commission fundraiser for, the campaign. If you contribute right now, not so much as one thin dime of that money will end up in my pocket. I’m a continuing donor to, not a financial beneficiary of, this campaign. I’ve added a code to the PayPal button above so that we know your contribution came via this site, but that’s purely for data-gathering purposes. If you don’t believe me, feel free to use the button on the campaign site instead.
Now … why should you care whether or not Steve gets to Oregon this weekend? You’re not from Oregon, are you? Maybe you don’t even think that Steve is the best candidate for the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. Maybe you support one of those other guys.
However, I’m assuming that you want there to be candidates for the LP’s presidential nomination … and that you want the race for that nomination to be competitive.
As of their 2006 year-end FEC reports, Steve Kubby and George Phillies had raised a combined total of less than $20,000. George raised more than Steve; Steve raised more from contributors than George (i.e. most of George’s contributions came from George — laudable, but not valuable as an indicator of support from others).
Meanwhile, the pundits are saying that the “major” candidates plan to spend about $500 million each trying to get elected.
People … if you want competitive LP presidential campaigns, you have to pay for them.
What, did you think that airline tickets grew on trees or something? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
We can do a lot of things with not much money, but that only goes so far.
We can do a web site on the cheap if we have to (and as you can tell, we have).
We can produce the weekly podcast for the cost of the phone call.
We can get Steve on every radio show that will agree to have a third party candidate.
We can blog and Digg and Slashdot and LTE all day long.
But if you want Libertarian candidates out there on the trail, live and in color, ya gotta pony up.
Your ten bucks helps Steve get to Oregon, but there’s more to it than that. It doesn’t just get Steve to Oregon, it helps you observe, compare and contrast the candidates who are asking for your support.
Even if you’ve already chosen “your” candidate, do you want him or her to just take the nomination in a walk? This should be the time when we’re putting our candidates to the test, bashing them up against each other to see what falls off.
And please, don’t give me any guff about “waiting to support the party’s candidate after the nomination.” Bullshit. What’s the use of “supporting the party’s candidate after the nomination” if we aren’t willing to fund a process that gets us the best candidate possible to support?
Or maybe you’re supporting Ron Paul. If so, then you shouldn’t give ten bucks to Steve. You should give TWENTY. In order for Paul to get a real shot at the GOP nomination, he needs to be able to point to a Libertarian Party that’s prepared to fight the GOP for the libertarian vote — and that might TAKE that vote if the GOP nominates Mitt McGiuliani.
Raising a few hundred — or better yet, a few thousand — dollars this week is important in so many ways I can’t count them all. Not just to Steve Kubby and his presidential campaign, but to the party and the movement. As George Phillies likes to say, 2008 is too late. If we don’t start financing our candidates now, doing so later will just be a useless gesture.
All right, shoot me down in comments. But first, make that contribution.
Less
aynrkey
bostonteapartygoer
Kenn Jacobine
mattdharris
Mike Seebeck
Miche
paulie
Jim Davidson
ponggod
Stuart Richards
Steven Greffenius
Todd Andrew Barnett
I begin to wonder if this process wouldn’t be smoothed out if all remaining campaign funds for all potential nominees weren’t donated to the *actual* LP nominee for purposes of the election.
It would say a great deal about the process of voluntary cooperation within the party if this were done.
Just thinking aloud here.
IanC,
Trying to understand what you mean here.
All campaign funds that remain at the time of the nomination?
Ian,
If I understand what you’re suggesting, it’s something like this:
1) The candidates raise money;
2) The candidates who lose give whatever money they have left in their campaign funds to the nominee.
If that’s the correct understanding, then it’s a great idea, except for one thing.
It’s, um, illegal.
According to the FEC, there’s a $2,000 limit on contributions from one campaign/candidate committee to another, at least if I’m reading their stuff correctly.
When Tamara (Millay) ran for the VP nomination in 2004, she promised to give any remaining funds in her campaign treasury to the presidential campaign if she wasn’t nominated (if she had been nominated, the presidential and vice-presidential committees, and their funds, would have merged). She wasn’t nominated, but the Badnarik campaign wasn’t sure if it was legal for her to that, even though it was within the $2,000 limit (it turned out it was, but we only found that out later).
So, the last act of Tamara’s campaign committee before closing its books was to present her with a signed copy of Badnarik’s book, which it purchased from his campaign committee at a cost of, if I remember correctly, $522 (which, happy coincidence, just happened to be the exact amount of money left in her committee’s treasury).
HOWEVER … there’s no limit on contributions from the candidate/campaign committees to the PARTY, which generally runs its own operation to support the presidential campaign.
It’s certainly important to get money into the post-nomination effort. But a certain amount of money is also needed to either make the nomination race competitive, or to demonstrate that it isn’t (because one candidate out-raises the others by such a substantial amount that he or she thereby implicitly demonstrates that he or she has the vast majority of support as so expressed).
I was feeling pretty bad about our fundraising performance so far until I looked at the FEC reports in detail.
I’m STILL feeling pretty bad about it, but at least now I know that we’re not alone in the boat. It’s a general situation, not a “problem of Kubby’s.” As a matter of fact, unless some of the candidates aren’t reporting when they’re supposed to be, Kubby’s raised more money from contributors other than himself than any of the other declared candidates. It’s just that the amounts all around are so small that they don’t tell us much of anything except that Libertarians aren’t writing checks to anyone.
Now to the specific situation vis a vis Kubby:
I’m not the treasurer, but offhand I can tell you that the Kubby campaign has somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 on hand. $3,500 or so of that is in internal escrow to produce the first TV commercial as promised, and much of the rest will be going as fundraising commission to an external contractor (we don’t have any paid staff — this was essentially list rental on commission, to someone not working for the campaign).
As I said in the post reproduced above, Steve WILL be going to Oregon this weekend — but being in a personal transition period himself, it’s not easy on him to front money for travel, etc., and hope the campaign can afford to reimburse him.
Why should Steve going to Oregon be important to anyone except Oregon LPers and Steve Kubby supporters? For the simple reason that we all owe it to ourselves to see how the candidates stack up against each other, live and in color. Christine Smith will be in Oregon. So will a new candidate to whom most of us have not yet been introduced, Mike Jingozian. We’ll hear from convention attendees how these candidates looked, sounded, etc. versus each other.
To put it a different way, I probably wouldn’t make a large contribution to Christine Smith, because I’ve already decided which candidate I support. But if I saw a plea for her that said “I need to get to Oregon and the piggy bank is empty,” I’d throw her $10. Not because I support her, but because I support the process of competitively choosing our nominee
Sooner or later, if things take their course, one or more candidates will “break out of the pack” in various ways, including fundraising.
Right now, though, things AREN’T taking their course. NO candidate is making any kind of real headway in fundraising, and therefore things are proceeding at a low enough tempo that their strengths and weaknesses aren’t getting sufficient play to give us clear and visible differentiation so that we can make good decisions. If I had six grand lying around growing mold on it, I might max out to Steve, George and Christine just to try to get things moving. It’s that bad, and by bad I don’t mean bad for Kubby, I mean bad for the party.
Regards,
Tom Knapp
Wasn’t aware of the illegality. (I had assumed that the reason major party candidates didn’t do this was simply greed on their part.) Perhaps the LNC could be convinced to set up a “Candidate Fund” which couldn’t be touched for other finances — and the non-nominated candidates after all is said and done could donate to that fund.
Either way… should I have cash to spare I’ll fling a little. Won’t be much, though — new mortgage payment on a house that’s probably a bit big for the britches.
Small contributions are cool. Every little bit helps.
I’ll be making some myself when I get a job.
Ian,
We LOVE small contributions.
Although you’re on the more sophisticated level of potential contributors (i.e. you’re aware of all the candidates and following the campaigns closely) and thus can’t be counted on in the same way as the following implies, one of the first rules of politics that a mentor taught me, paraphrased, was:
“Get a contribution. Doesn’t matter if it’s one dollar. Once the average person has given money to your campaign, he feels like he has an investment, or like he’s plunked down a bet at the racetrack. And if he feels like that, then he’ll damn sure to go vote for you. He’ll be happy to put out a yard sign. If his friends at work start talking politics, he’ll tell them you’re the guy.”
Ditto for the party. Unless somebody has a conscientous objector thing against voting and is just supporting the party for “message” activity purposes, they’re going to “follow their investment” and “cheer on their horse” if they’ve contributed to the LP.
I wouldn’t call myself sophisticated. Just a guy with slow work days.
Quick note: I may have zapped a legitimate comment or two while deleting spam.
If that was you, my apologies, it was inadvertant.
For an example of the less expensive campaigning approach:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=12085
Angela Keaton hosts a debate between Mr. Kubby and I.
George, good job in the debate.
The folks who say your public speaking is getting better are not lying!
Keep up the good work on that.