Obama's $750 Million Juggernaut
In the beginning was Walter, now the two Davids
Vol. 4, Issue No. 69 | December 16, 2008 By Denny Hatch
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IN THE NEWS
Final Fundraising Figure: Obama's $750MM
Obama's Money Was Three Times as Much as McCain in General Election
He was not quite the first $1 billion president — but he was three quarters of the way there. In 21-plus months, Barack Obama raised roughly $750 million from donors, surpassing all of his White House opponents this year and also eclipsing the total amount of money raised by all of the presidential candidates combined in 2004. ... The Obama campaign finished the reporting period sitting on $30 million. It's not clear how that money will be used. Plus, the Obama campaign advises it expects its total amount of money to increase when cash from the Obama Victory Fund comes in. The campaign reports more than $770 million in total receipts.
—Tahman Bradley, ABC News, Dec. 5, 2008
The two Davids—Axlerod and Plouffe—are marketing geniuses. They propelled Barack Obama to the presidency by running textbook campaigns in the primaries and general election.
In the course of their work, they raised three-quarters of a billion dollars, upended the entire business of political fundraising and scotched forever the Holy American Empire’s concept of taxpayer-funded elections.
How’d they do it?
I have in my archive 187 e-mails from the Obama campaign to me (from 3/5/08 – 12/9/08) and 207 messages from the Hillary Clinton press office to me (from 3/11/08 – 5/9/08).
This is grist for a book or white paper on what Obama did right and Clinton did wrong—especially since the presumptive secretary of state is in the hole for $30 million and is whining and begging, while the president-elect is sitting on a $30 million surplus.
As readers of this e-zine know, history fascinates me. And for three and a half years, I had the enormous privilege of working for Walter Weintz, the father of direct mail political fundraising.
What follows is the story of how it all began. The pioneering work in political fundraising by Walter Weintz in the 1950s is directly applicable to the world of fundraising today—more than a half-century later—whether you use snail mail, e-mail, off-the-page advertising or the telephone.
How the National Republican Party's Winning Fund-Raising Program Was Built — By Walter H. Weintz (Former circulation director, Reader’s Digest)
From “The Solid Gold Mailbox” by Walter Weintz (John Wiley & Sons, 1987). Reprinted by permission of Todd Weintz.
Once the basic principles and techniques of mail-order promotion are understood, they can be applied in the most unlikely places, and for unexpected products. Although my own initial mail-order experience happened to do with magazines and books, the same rules would have applied had I been working on a correspondence course in accounting, the mail-order sale of Christmas hams or Chesapeake crabmeat, securing leads for Ford cars, or, indeed, getting political candidates elected or fund raising for a political organization like the Republican National Committee.
As it happens, I discovered through personal experience how effectively mail-order procedures can be applied to politics. So, in this chapter I'll go through the story of the development of the National Republican Party's elective and fund raising program, which I helped develop and execute. I believe that the procedures we set up for the Republicans can be applied to any good mail-order product.
Takeaway Points to Consider
- There were several important lessons to be learned from our experiences with the tests and mailings for Sen. Taft, for Gen. Eisenhower, and for the Republican Party itself in the years while Eisenhower was President.
- We proved that political appeals can be tested—just like sales appeals for any other product. And we substituted test results for opinions, in the cases of both Sen. Taft and Gen. Eisenhower.
- We discovered that we could make such tests, and subsequent rollout mailings, self-financing.
- We had found a way (in the guise of fund-raising) to influence millions of voters through self-financing mail order appeals.
- We had evolved a method of getting many voters to "bet on a horse"—that is, contribute money to a candidate—which made it much more likely that those voters would indeed get out and vote for the candidate of their choice.
- And, finally, we'd established a way to secure the names of hundreds of thousands of supporters—people who could be counted upon to contribute to our cause in response to future appeals. We had that most precious of all mail order possessions: a list of customers!
- The final Eisenhower letter, which I wrote, put all these elements together, and produced the desired effect: $1 million in contributions. With established mail order basics at our service, raising that $1 million was a simple matter. It took only one letter!
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition
Walter Weintz Obituary, New York Times, Dec. 25, 1996
http://tinyurl.com/63yavs
“The Solid Gold Mailbox” by Walter H. Weintz
http://tinyurl.com/69pquf
Companies Mentioned:
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