Well sure, but running a campaign – be it for Congress or just the local school board – is a massive, draining effort. There’s the fund-raising, the door-knocking, the creation of ads, the interviews, the fishing for endorsements, the websites, the campaign literature, the convincing of quality staff to work for peanuts, the wrangling of volunteers… it’s endless.
If you are an incumbent in a safe district, maybe you can half-ass that and win.
But if you are a challenger in a toss-up or leans-towards-the-other-guy district, it is NOT something that you are going to do only on nights and weekends. You’re quitting your job, putting you life on hold, and asking your family to sacrifice along with you.
And losing sucks. It’s one thing to come close, but to run in a district that if heavily against you, it’s demoralizing to lose by 10 points. There are plenty of retirees that might do that simply to wave the flag, but a “strong candidate” isn’t going to want to go through all that just to be humiliated, the Republic be damned.
Holy crap, that is one HELLLLUVA ad.
That’s an amazing ad. One of my favorite Rolling Stones tune too.
It’s a district fairly near Austin, so I kinda wonder if they found someone who’s a graduate of that UT film school to direct and edit.
Oghier
3590
That’s one of the best ads of any type I have ever seen. Wow.
Watch, one of the folks she rescued from Afghanistan is now an editor/director or some such.
Lantz
3593
Holy hell, that’s an amazing ad.
A December PPP Poll (they’re an A+ pollster) had the race 46-40 for the incumbent, Carter over Hegar.
But when PPP gave them biographical background on both candidates, it flipped to 46-44 Hegar.
She’s got one hell of a biography, and clearly the DCCC sees an opportunity worth taking if they can get her known in her district. An ad like that helps nationally to boost the signal, but it’s a national boost. Hopefully that helps her fundraising though, and allows her to do local work on that as well.
Oghier
3595
And Cook has changed their rating for that race (TX 31):
I love the new push to emphasize veterans and women as candidates. It’s very strange to see the Democratic Party being smart.
Tman
3596
So, on the MJ Hegar, I was set to donate, but then notice it’s being managed by the actblue site, and I can’t help but think that I’m going to be put on a mailing list & get inundated with other requests.
I just want to give money. I don’t want to be associated with ActBlue…(an arm of the DCCC). They don’t even have terms & conditions that I can find on how they will use my information.
Timex
3597
Virtually any political donation gets you put onto a billion lists.
Nesrie
3598
This really sucks. The aggressive nature of any place that solicits a donation is a huge turn-off, and it usually results in me spending 2-4 weeks telling people to remove me from various lists.
Tman
3599
I’m just going to mail in a check
Heh. Nice.
Presumably there’s no issue with accepting out-of-state/district monies? I have no idea how these things work.
Nesrie
3601
I don’t how this works either. I know people get pissed about it but when we had the GMO label thing here, most the money came from out of state. I assume it’s an okay thing to do as long as it is not a foreign donation.
I get ActBlue stuff and it’s not too bad. Occasionally a direct text.
I visited - visited - Wayfair.com, just to see what it was. A month later i get snailmail from them, addressed to me.
Yep, ActBlue is fairly painless to opt out of, but I don’t know how much mailing list sharing they do.
Timex
3604
The check might be ok, but they’re ultimately going to have to know who you are (which presumably will be on your check), since they need to report where the money came from for campaign finance law compliance.
A lot.
Fortunately, Google makes routing that stuff to the bitbucket fairly painless.
