Labor Day has a special magic all of its own, like every other holiday, shaking up my charts and making candidates forget they want my money…
| Emails | Campaigns | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 35 | 13 |
| Non-Donor | 18 | 13 |
| Donor | 17 | 12 |
Cory Booker reclaimed the busiest emailer on Monday with 3 emails sent out. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Marianne Williamson only managed 2 each.
Holidays are abnormal political email days, because many candidates feel a bit awkward asking for money while everyone else in the country is celebrating.
Holidays are some of the few days when the Donate slice shrinks to less than a quarter of all the emails received. All of the donate emails from Monday came in at the end of the day: 2 from Cory Booker (on 2 accounts), 1 from Joe Biden (on 2 accounts), and 2 from Marianne Williamson (on 2 accounts).
To be fair to Williamson, her second email was her first email with a corrected link to an article.
Both Booker and Biden asked for donations in context of their contests, as this was my LAST CHANCE to enter. For Booker, he gave me a LAST CHANCE to join him in New York for the climate change town hall, and then emailed again a couple hours later with a LAST last chance. Biden was the only emailer to include donation buttons with suggested donations for his debate ticket contest.
Julian Castro did email about his debate contest too, but his was just signing a petition instead of giving money.
Marianne Williamson’s email was about the Odessa shooting, informing me that America doesn’t just have a gun crisis; it has a cultural crisis. She linked me to an article she wrote in The Washington Post about this, and then relinked me to the correct article. Williamson asked me to read her writings and then donate to her.
This is not the first time she’s asked for campaign donations in an email about recent gun violence.
As with any holiday, the bulk of the emails focused on that holiday. Many candidates took this opportunity to inform me about their labor policies: Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, and Steve Bullock all gave me some variation of their plans, whether watered down or in great detail. Almost all of them phrased it as “when I’m President, I will…”
Joe Biden asked me to do just one thing for him that had nothing to do with money.
Today, I’m asking you to do one thing, and it has nothing to do with donating money to this campaign.
When you cross paths with someone working a job that makes your day-to-day life better—and I promise you, it will happen many times today—tell them “thank you.”
Joe Biden
The joke’s on Biden: I almost never leave my house on Labor Day. A day to relax at home with my cats? Why bother even getting dressed!?
(I did have dinner with my parents, and I did thank them. They were the only people I saw on Monday. Sorry, Biden, your promise fell flat.)
Pete Buttigieg also had a simple ask of me: which new sticker design should he go with?
Buttigieg’s ask was much more likely to happen, though again, I don’t interact with these emails.
And finally, Tom Steyer started by talking about how we needed to tackle massive wealth inequality and pivoted to his climate change town hall. I’m not entirely sure how he got from one to the other, but he seemed satisfied with his delivery.
But their emails! 