Day 233: 1/8/20

Wednesday brought with it some foreign policy talk from Marianne Williamson and some foreign aid requests from Tom Steyer, but what I really noticed was the comparison of spending between Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bennet, and Amy Klobuchar.

	Emails	Campaigns
Total	49	12
Non-Donor	26	12
Donor	23	10

Pete Buttigieg was back in the lead with 5 emails in a day, while Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and Bernie Sanders all sent 3. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang sent only 2 emails each on Wednesday.

It’s been a bit over a week into the new year, and campaigns are still trying to get my opinions. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden wanted me to give my opinion (Sanders was doing a live poll to encourage me to repeatedly open the email to check the results). Sanders also sent me an email asking me to answer some questions about myself so he could connect me with coalitions that matched my demographics.

Marianne Williamson wanted to talk to me a bit more about the situation with Iran. She pointed me to her blog posts in case I wanted more details and suggested I read up on her Department of Peace policy.

Tom Steyer asked me to help Australia. He gave me a couple links to organizations I could donate to and pointed me to a New York Times article with more sources.

Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bennet, and Amy Klobuchar all wanted to tell me how my donated dollars would be spent. Compare their messages:

We know that it can be unclear how contributions are used to build campaigns. And since we’re committed to transparency here at Pete for America, we want to give you a breakdown of where we spend our donations:

Organizing: Having a robust ground game means hiring organizing staff in key states and ensuring they have all the resources they need to execute our field strategy. Our organizers are the backbone of this campaign: they persuade, recruit, and mobilize supporters by building relationships with folks in their communities.

Paid media: We pay to run our ads on cable TV and across a lot of online platforms — social media, news sites, search engines, video streaming services. This is how we reach voters where they are, and it’s a big part of the reason we’re still here today. The more people hear Pete’s message, the more they like him — so if we want to win, we need to keep saturating the airwaves and the internet with our ads.

Operations: This is essential. We need to keep the lights on in our offices. From our South Bend Headquarters to each and every field office across the country, we need to pay rent and make sure we have everything we need from chairs to clipboards.

Advance: We host a lot of events with Pete — since we announced, we’ve put on hundreds of town halls, rallies, house parties, and meet and greets all over the country. These events are some of our best tools for building excitement and momentum on the ground where it matters most, and they require transportation, staff, production, and venues — none of which are cheap. But if you’ve attended a rally with Pete, you know that the energy on the ground is worth more than the price tag.

We think of each line-item in our budget as an investment in the future of our campaign — and, most importantly, in the future of our country. Every dollar we spend furthers our goal of reaching, engaging, and mobilizing voters.

And now, we need your help to hit our $50,000 goal by Friday. With just 26 days until the Iowa Caucuses, we need to ramp up these programs more than ever. We can’t afford to leave a single caucusgoer undecided. Will you make a contribution now to ensure we’re able to scale up our operations across the board and reach as many Americans as possible over the next 26 days?

Pete for America

In a moment, we’re going to ask you to chip in for the first time, but first, we want to tell you how your contribution will be used:

Keeping our ads on the air

Opening new field offices

Hiring staffers to train volunteers, knock doors, and make phone calls

Supporting Michael’s drive to hold 50 town halls in New Hampshire in the final weeks before primary day

Recent polls show that up to 67% of New Hampshire voters are undecided, and the more voters hear from Michael, the more they like him!

So, team, now that you know how your money will be spent, can we ask you to make your first contribution to this campaign? No amount is too small – even $1 goes a long way!

Bennet HQ

As we get closer to the start of primary and caucus season, I want to explain exactly how your generous contributions help us build momentum for Amy’s candidacy.

Thanks to supporters like you, we’ve already:

➔ Doubled our Iowa campaign offices
➔ Doubled our staff in New Hampshire
➔ Hired staff in Nevada and South Carolina
➔ Built a Super Tuesday team
➔ Made every debate so far
➔ Risen in the polls — a national poll has Amy in the double digits!

Keep the momentum growing!

But it’s going to take a lot more to win the nomination. I’m asking for your donation today to help us:

➔ Keep Amy’s message on the airwaves and online
➔ Hold momentum-building campaign events
➔ Support our field teams on the ground
➔ Keep reaching voters in key early states
➔ And defeat Donald Trump in November.

Your donation could make the difference between achieving all of that and falling short. Will you donate today to help us SURGE before primary and caucus season begins?

Elise Convy for Amy for America

It’s interesting how they all basically list the same things, but in different orders, and Buttigieg actually explains each one.

For Buttigieg, priorities are:

1. Organizing
2. Media
3. Operations
4. Advance

For Bennet:

1. Media
2. Operations
3. Organizing
4. Advance

For Klobuchar:

1. Media
2. Advance
3. Operations
4. Organizing
5. Winning

I used Buttigieg’s terminology because he was kind enough to spell it out in one word for me, and he emailed me first. I will say this, though: all four of the front runners have put a huge emphasis on needing to out-organize the others. I find it very telling how high Buttigieg mentions organization compared to Bennet and Klobuchar.

That is not to say that the order they actually listed these are their actual priority list. All three were written by campaign staffers. However, it does point to what the talk internally in the campaign may be focused on.

Klobuchar also included a graphic that made me smile. Her momentum is SURGING!

Cory Booker wants to grab dinner with me again. I’m so tempted. I’d love to have a chat with him. But I don’t know if I’ll have time between all my emails if the FEC deadlines are now monthly!

Andrew Yang has been concerned about slow fundraising. This feels like a problem for every campaign right now.

Yang, Joe Biden, and Michael Bennet are the three candidates fretting on Wednesday about their fundraising. Out of those three, Bennet has been fundraising since mid-December for his mid-January goal. Yang and Biden are both looking at current numbers and being worried about not hitting their deadlines. Biden pointed out that despite being tied for first in the most recent Iowa poll, he’s not looking good for hitting his goal.

Elizabeth Warren has mentioned that she was outraised by several candidates, but she didn’t specifically say she was behind on a current fundraising goal. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders also aren’t saying they’re behind, but they do emphasize that the money they raise now can determine if they’re going to win in Iowa.

And Mike Bloomberg just wanted me to retweet his tweet about his All-In Economy Agenda.