WA-08: An Early Look At Q1 Fundraising Numbers

Q1 fundraising is over and while no official numbers have been released yet (and likely won't for a couple of weeks still), we can take a look at the ActBlue fundraising for Darcy Burner for the past couple of weeks.

I took a snapshot of the numbers just before the plan to responsibly end the Iraq war was unveiled on March 17th, and that's enabled me to compare them with where they are now.

In the past two weeks 1236 donors contributed $28,341 (that's an average of only $22 per donor), putting her totals at 6,160 supporters for $184,884. To put that in perspective, her totals for the entire 2006 campaign at ActBlue were 6,584 supporters for $223,553. At her current pace Burner will top those number sometime during the next three months, and she was already a half million dollars ahead of her total 2006 election fundraising pace starting out the year.

Meanwhile, over the past five days the Burner campaign raised over $60,000 (some of which will have included late donations via ActBlue). Even though much of her time this first quarter was spent on developing and unveiling the Iraq plan, indications are that she will still report healthy fundraising totals for the quarter.

Meanwhile, no word of any equivalent grassroots fundraising effort from the Reichert camp, which has filed significantly delayed reports this election cycle, and trails Burner's cash on hand totals by $144,000 as of three months ago. Two years ago he received $236,626 in contributions for Q1, so he'll definitely be wanting to do better than that this time to close the gap. However, Darcy Burner's 2006 Q1 contributions totaled $334,181, so Reichert will have his work cut out for him if Burner is also able to improve her totals this year.

Speaking of Reichert, Ken over at The View From The Left has got a new name for him: "Do Nothin' Dave". It's an apropos name, and a good read.