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All is Vanity See other All is Vanity Articles Title: WSJ article about a friend of mine running for office Local Politics, Web Money ActBlue Reshapes How Smaller Races Get Financed By AMY SCHATZ September 28, 2007; Page A6 CHICAGO -- Presidential candidate John Edwards has long been one of the top money-raisers at Democratic fund-raising site ActBlue.com. But, for a short time recently, he was almost surpassed by Daniel Biss, a 30-year-old mathematics professor running for the Illinois state legislature. Watch John Green drink a liquefied Happy Meal as part of a political-fundraising stunt. The Biss phenomenon illustrates another way the Internet is shaking up politics and changing the way races are run this year: online fund raising is now filtering down to low-dollar state and local races, where a little bit of extra money goes further than it would in a national race. "It just seemed like a natural choice. You set up a site and two hours later you're there," says Mr. Biss, who teaches at the University of Chicago. "The opportunity is so much greater at the local level where the impact is so much greater." So far, Mr. Biss has raised $37,148 online for his bid to win a Republican-held seat representing the north Chicago suburbs -- a figure pumped up in part by an appeal from one of Mr. Biss's friends, who vowed to subject himself to various cyberspace humiliations if viewers met certain donating targets. The resulting video has been watched more than 16,000 times on YouTube. ActBlue was created as a political action committee in June 2004 by two Democratic activists from Cambridge, Mass., shortly after the presidential campaign of Howard Dean showed the power of online fund raising. The idea was to transfer that force to Democrats more broadly. Since its inception, ActBlue has raised more than $28 million for Democratic candidates, mostly by making it easy for supporters to bundle together small-dollar donations made via credit card. Mr. Edwards, for example, has raised more than $4 million online via ActBlue. ActBlue started by focusing on presidential and congressional races. Last year, the site began making its services available for local races in some states. Local candidates have collected more than $750,000 so far this year, up 20% from the total local candidates raised through ActBlue last year, according to ActBlue. Much of the money in the 2006 campaign, about $500,000, was raised by liberal bloggers and their readers on behalf of Democratic secretary of state candidates in seven states. Five of them won. ActBlue runs on donations from users and provides its services free to candidates. Republicans have tried setting up similar sites but none have taken off so far. Some campaigns, like Mr. Biss's, also use ActBlue as a low-cost way of processing donations from local fund-raisers. FOR THE RECORD See Democratic fundraising site ActBlue.com, and visit Mr. Biss's campaign site. "Money that comes in online is not just money that was recruited by bloggers or people making YouTube videos," says Benjamin Rahn, an ActBlue cofounder and long-time friend of Mr. Biss's. They met at a mathematics "geek camp" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology one summer during high school. A native of Bloomington, Ind., Mr. Biss isn't the most obvious political candidate. He has no staff and his campaign headquarters is located in the basement of the condo he shares with his wife. Maps of the district adorn the walls and an upright piano sits along one wall, underneath a photo of his late grandmother, a concert cellist. Both of Mr. Biss's parents are professional violinists and his younger brother Jonathan is a rising concert pianist. Mr. Biss played piano when he was younger, too, but says he stopped when he was a teen after his brother began receiving acclaim. "I'm the black sheep of the family," jokes Mr. Biss, who turned to mathematics and focused on topology, a form of advanced geometry. He only became politically active after 9/11 and the Iraq war began, posting on liberal blogs and volunteering for other Democratic candidates. "It didn't make sense to be a disappointed observer. I no longer thought it was enough to work on math problems," he says. The north Chicago suburbs where Mr. Biss lives has been represented for 10 years by moderate Republican Elizabeth Colson, a physical therapist. [Daniel Biss] Last year, members of the Illinois House of Representatives raised an average of $95,085 each in campaign contributions, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a non-profit watchdog group. Ms. Colson had $146,000 in the bank by mid-year with a mix of contributions from individuals and PACs, including teachers unions and corporate PACs. Mr. Biss believes he needs to raise anywhere from $400,000 to $500,000 to run a competitive race with Ms. Colson, who doesn't raise money online. Ms. Colson declined to comment for this story. Recently, Mr. Biss's wife raised about $1,200 for his campaign via an email solicitation that asked supporters to give $30 via ActBlue in honor of his 30th birthday. About half of the $70,000 he raised in the first half of the year came from online donations. The rest has come from more traditional campaigning. Mr. Biss spends most weekends collecting signatures so he can get on the ballot. But non-traditional campaigning is providing a boost. On an August afternoon, one of Mr. Biss's friends, writer John Green, stood at the kitchen counter of his Indianapolis home and grimaced at a blender. Inside, a small portion of McDonald's french fries, a plain hamburger and half a cup of orange drink whizzed into a goopy orange slop. "It's like all the best parts of food and all the best parts of liquid," he half-joked to his wife, who stood nearby, her camcorder shaking slightly as she giggled. He sniffed inside. "It just doesn't smell like something you should be eating." But he ate the chunky gunk anyway, spoon by spoon, washing it down with the rest of the orange drink. "It was the least happy Happy Meal in history," Mr. Green said later. [Biss] The award-winning author of books for teens had vowed to eat a liquefied Happy Meal -- and wax the hair off one leg -- if at least 200 people donated money online to Mr. Biss. Mr. Green, also 30, promoted the effort on a video blog, Brotherhood 2.0, which he does with his brother Hank; the brothers have agreed to only communicate with each other through Internet videos (and the occasional phone call) this year. So far, Mr. Green has raised more than $3,200 for his friend's campaign online. (Visit the brothers' site.) In Mr. Green's second novel, "An Abundance of Katherines," he received help from Mr. Biss's to devise a mathematical formula for the book, which tells the story of a child prodigy who struggles to understand why he has been dumped 19 times by girls named Katherine. "To be honest, I never thought I would have to [eat the Happy Meal] or I would have picked something else," says Mr. Green, who figured he would only collect enough donations to be forced to eat a dozen or so Peeps, the sugar-encrusted Easter candy. Mr. Biss still hasn't watched the Happy Meal video that has become a YouTube hit. At his campaign's kickoff recently, the video was shown to supporters. Mr. Biss put a hand over his eyes. "I don't think I'll ever be able to watch it," Mr. Biss says. Listening to Mr. Green drink the Happy Meal on video "was bad enough," he says. Write to Amy Schatz at Amy.Schatz@wsj.com Yummy Video at the Link. IF you dare.
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#1. To: Mekons4 (#0)
Good stuff - thanks.
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