Ruffini, Beutler and ABC PAC
Patrick Ruffini is taking Bill Beutler to task for his shot at ABC PAC. Bill, it seems, is touting John Edwards fundraising success on ActBlue and using it to claim the ActBlue guys “draft” pages are more successful than ABC PACs.
I could do this the easy way and just take credit for Mitt Romney’s $6.5 million in the same way bill is giving ActBlue credit for John Edwards’, but that might be a bit disingenuous. Instead I’ll simply reiterate my point from last year.
ActBlue has been in development for two years, and already raised north of six million dollars. To compare the functionality of a site that has been online for less than two full days, and which publicly states it is trying to put together funds for further development to a site like the one ActBlue is today is a bit disingenuous. … Given full funding, full functionality and a full catalog of candidates, ABC PAC has the potential to meet and exceed what ActBlue has done Рand we plan to do so.
Bill makes the point that we should have started with full functionality. Probably true. Unlike ActBlue, however, we are actually driving this from the grassroots FROM THE START. ActBlue was begun with a whole bunch of $5,000 checks from individuals to the PAC. We didn’t go that route. We built a site with limited functionality, worked with a tremendous group of bloggers led by John Hawkins, and drove donations first and foremost to candidates. In the process we raised a chunk of change and are using it to build more. When we’re done, we’ll roll it out and keep building.
We put up the POTUS fundraising page to see if it would get traction. As you can see, and as Patrick pointed out, it isn’t getting any, but neither is ActBlue. They have far more traffic than we, but have raised only $6000 outside of the Edwards camp. That’s pretty dismal, honestly.
The trouble with “draft” movements is a) they rarely catch on, b) if a candidate is inclined to run, they will be in the race a month from now, so why kick in to another group before they do, and c) I might not want to give to a potential Condi rice campaign if it’s never going to happen, and the money ends up going somewhere I don’t control.
The power of the prospective fundraising lies in the ability to create an account for the Republican who runs against Hillary or Bill Casey in 6 years. If we can constantly beat the drum against these guys and raise funds against them, our candidates will be in a better cash position when they jump in the race.
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