You may have noticed how desperate some politicians’ fundraising appeals sound. That’s because it’s more important than ever for campaigns to raise money from the public. But sometimes it goes too far and veers into the realm of outright fraud.
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If you’re at all involved in politics, from the most seasoned operatives to the average observer, you’re no doubt familiar with the desperate fundraising appeals uttered in the voices of politicians. You’re probably a little annoyed.
It could be an email purportedly sent from a candidate’s iPhone, a text with a smiling Nancy Pelosi on it, or a Notes app screenshot from a Senate candidate on their social media feed.
These emergency political donation requests come in many forms, but they often carry an unseemly whiff of desperation unbecoming of our nation’s elected leaders.
This is not a Democratic or Republican issue either. Campaigns of both parties often seem downright foolish when trying to raise additional funds.
Fundraising goals for the most recent re-election campaign were not met.
It will take a little more time to close this gap. Will you hurry up and donate now to help us get back on track?
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) August 2, 2024
So how did we get to a situation where politicians are willing to stoop to this level?
Going down the “rabbit hole”
In recent decades, changes in both technology and law have made small-dollar fundraising, which collects large donations of less than $200, an increasingly important way to fund campaigns, rather than large donations from a small number of people. It has become.
The Internet has made it possible to conduct campaigns that cheaply solicit donations on a scale and frequency that would never have been possible with letters dropped into mailboxes. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision also dramatically increased the importance of money in politics, as campaigns now have to deal with an endless stream of spending from outside groups and corporations. Ta.
This has created a political environment in which campaigns that don’t want to rely solely on wealthy donors, whether out of sincere conviction or for optical purposes, have to find ways to raise large amounts of money from large groups of people. Ta.
Mike Nellis, founder and CEO of Democratic campaign firm Authentic, said “there’s a lot of urgency” in fundraising messages because of the importance of small donors to campaigns. He said it was due to gender.
President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign is considered a pioneer in emergency fundraising appeals. According to Bloomberg, one email with the simple title “I’m going to get wasted” generated more than $2.6 million that year.
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However, over time, some campaigns have taken on an apocalyptic feel and increasingly employ guilt-based tactics.
Now we’re at the point where a campaign may be telling you that the fate of the campaign and the country depends on your $20.
It will be deleted!
Big Tech is going to delete Ted Cruz’s messages in under 7 minutes! See below before it’s too late >>
— Senate Republicans (@NRSC) June 12, 2024
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has adopted this strategy. The emails ranged from “Biden’s political firing squad is lined up” to run-of-the-mill gimmicks like “The most important email I’ve ever sent.”
Just this week, people on the campaign’s distribution list received a message that read, “All hell will break loose at 11:59 p.m.!”
One of the key elements here is message testing, campaigners told BI.
Professional firms hired to implement political campaigns and fundraising strategies say they have real-time data on which messages raise the most money and which don’t.
“You can test things quickly, but it can lead you down the rabbit hole,” said Kenneth Pennington, a partner at the progressive campaign firm Middlesheet. “Thus, if incremental increases in hopelessness bring in more revenue than less hopeless versions of content, we might be led to believe that increasing hopelessness is always a good thing. yeah.”
There is also the dynamic of an arms race. From presidential candidates to city council candidates, nearly everyone is fundraising through email, text messages, and social media. Campaigns are forced to compete for a limited amount of people’s attention and funds.
“It’s a race to the bottom that gets attention, and that’s making people feel increasingly hopeless,” Nellis said.
“You have to make some choices,” Pennington said. “Do we send more messages to counter the amount of messages that are already out there, or do we ratchet up the nature of the messages to make them more desperate or more alarming? Either something that catches your eye or something that is urgent.”
“How to get attention when people don’t think you’re very proud.”
If you were hoping for a real decline in the volume and urgency of political fundraising messages, you’re out of luck. The only way to change the situation is to reduce the importance of money in politics through campaign finance reform. It’s more fantastical than ever, operatives said.
In the meantime, the campaign has no intention of unilateral disarmament.
“There’s nothing morally wrong with sending you a mass email to elect another Democratic senator,” Pennington said. “Exercise is a huge part of American life, and if we want to change that, we need to change some laws.”
But there is a huge internal debate among campaign experts in both parties about how far is too far and how to avoid the long-term effects of scorched-earth fundraising.
“There are ways to get noticed and get noticed, and then I think you can hold your head high and feel pretty good about the job,” Nellis said. “And there are ways to get attention, but I don’t think you’re very proud of them. For example, ‘The sky is falling. If you don’t donate $10, we’re all going to die.’ It’s about sending an email.”
Currently, there are completely fraudulent practices such as claiming that donations will be made over and over again when this is not the case, or inducing people to make regular donations without being fully aware of it. An increasing number of campaigns are drawing a line between tactics. .
Some simply want to avoid manipulating people’s emotions while being realistic about what individual donors’ contributions mean for their campaigns.
John Hall, a leading Republican fundraising and communications expert, called for honesty with donors in a Medium post last year, saying that failure to adhere to that principle will ultimately lead to donor burnout. insisted.
“What raises the most money is often the most extreme messages, the most aggressive tactics, and the willingness to guilt-trip individuals into donating,” Hall wrote. “This strategy is effective for getting initial donations right away, but over time, donors become desensitized to or begin to resist this ‘strategy.’”
As The Washington Post reported in April, donor burnout is a serious problem for the Republican Party. President Trump and the RNC received less money from small donors than expected compared to 2020.
But this is a difficult issue to tackle as a political party or as an industry, in part because of the structure of the movement itself.
These often appear when candidates run and disappear when they lose, leading to a lack of long-term thinking about the impact of their appeals on the public.
One way to avoid seeming too embarrassed or resorting to manipulative tactics is to simply rely on the talent politicians already have, campaign officials argue.
If the candidates themselves are inspiring voters, there is less need to scare people into sending money.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, has raised record-breaking amounts of money since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, while also raising money that has come to define much of the politics on both sides of the aisle. and generally avoids more manipulative fundraising tactics.
“There’s an assumption that the more urgent the appeal, the better the fundraising will be,” Pennington said. “It’s a non-controversial concept, and I don’t really agree with it.”
