No Fundraising

The rest of the story…

In my March 11 launch I expressed my intention to “raise no campaign funds”, and I meant it. Later, I was persuaded to consider accepting small contributions, in particular because it turns out a lot of people want to help with a few dollars. I learned this in a touching way while talking with a nice lady named Mary and her daughter at the Chico No Kings rally on March 28. They liked what I had to say and before I knew what was happening Mary handed me twenty $1 bills.

Around the same time, I also found that some people want to “show their support” with yard signs and the like. Such things cost a bit more than I want to spend of my own money, so taken together I decided to go ahead and set things up to accept small donations.

But then I had a strange and wonderful experience in Quincy, on my April 23 visit to the Sierra, and it reminded me that there are so many connections in life. I decided then and there to follow my instincts, and I remembered that I’ve been joking for years: “The only way to get the money out of politics is to take the money out of politics.” I have specific ideas about how we might actually do this more broadly, and it’s way beyond the usual “campaign finance reform” talk. For now, I’m taking the money out of my campaign.

The three major partisan candidates in this race are raising and spending millions of dollars (FEC here, here, here), as I knew they would. I also knew from the start that I could never compete on that battlefield. Fortunately, I believe in fighting fire with water, so we’ll see how this goes — my campaign has always been “go viral or go home”. If a few yard signs would make the difference, then it wasn’t meant to be.

I’m not naive, and I fully recognize that it’s a gamble to rely on catching the imagination of enough citizens to simply spread the word, rather than spend significant money to broadcast my message in traditional ways. But I like the idea of taking people’s natural instinct to help my campaign and redirecting it towards actual immediate help in the district. Maybe this will trigger more of those magical connections I know are out there — and make this whole adventure a much better gamble.