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The Democrats’ Queer $3 Campaign-Contribution Pitch — Mystery Solved!

A National Strategy Developed by Obama Campaign is Deployed in Washington's Gubernatorial Contest

OLYMPIA, June 9.–Those who are on the Democratic-party mailing lists have noticed an interesting phenomenon this election season, as the campaign season heats up and the fund-raising requests have started showing up in emails every single day.

Seems like an awful lot of them ask for a queer amount — $3.

That’s right, $3.

As in this email blast May 16 from the campaign for Jay Inslee, Democratic candidate for governor:

“You can bet Republican Rob McKenna and his campaign aren’t resting, and if we want to win, we can’t either.

“Will you contribute $3 to help us keep up our momentum today and every day until election day?“

And this was far from the only case. Seemed like most of the fund-raising appeals that went out from the Inslee campaign during the months of April and May were seeking that same $3 donation. We here at the oak-paneled offices of Washington State Wire have been forwarded perhaps a dozen of these email fund-raising appeals, all asking that same odd amount. And we have to think this is just the tip of the iceberg. It might strike you as strange as it did to us. Three dollars just doesn’t seem like the kind of amount that can move anyone’s needle.

Why not $5? Why not $6.37? Why not $6.37 and a half?

Well, it seems there is a point to it after all. $3 may not seem like much – and that is precisely the point.

An article on the Politico website today gives kudos to the national Dems for figuring out an advanced tech strategy that has left the Rs in the dust – iPhone apps, data mining, online organizing. There are 150 people on the sixth floor of an office building in Chicago, the story says, who are using every bit and byte of data they can lay their hands on to figure out who needs to be targeted in the runup to the general election in November. It makes the Democrats’ much-celebrated 2008 online effort “look like cavemen with stone tablets,” the story says.

And part of this cutting-edge gee-whiz strategy, it says, is the $3 donation.

“They have found $3 to be a magic number,” the article says. “Asking supporters for that paltry donation, to win a chance to attend a fund-raiser with the president and George Clooney or Sarah Jessica Parker, has generated tens of thousands of responses – people from whom the campaign can collect highly valuable data and then go back to.”

It’s part of a national “micro-targeting” strategy with a level of precision never witnessed before, and it has been implemented under the radar during the Republican presidential primary season. Apparently what we’re seeing in Washington’s gubernatorial race is an Evergreen-state version of the same strategy, designed to leverage big bucks eventually through the use of advanced databases. Those who respond to one appeal will get others later, pitched in the same way. Sure, $3 is about enough for a Happy Meal. But it might pay off bigger in the long run.

We’ll likely never know how successful it is. Three dollars is below the $25 threshold for the reporting of individual campaign contributions in Washington-state races. So we’ll never be able to do our own database checking to see how many $3 contributors eventually come back with more.

But if you send that $3 check today, the odds are it won’t be the last time you’re asked. Of course, you’ll be asked time and again no matter what you do. But that $3 will pay the administrative cost of cross-checking your name with every big database in the country to see what particular fund-raising pitch might work best with you. With any luck you’ll start getting appeals crafted precisely to your personal tastes and interests. You’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth.

Nope. There’s nothing queer about this $3 bill.


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