Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made history Sunday by raising $6 million in online contributions in 24 hours, breaking the record for the most money raised by a national candidate in a single day, and potentially putting Paul on track to surpass the fourth quarter fund raising of all of his competitors in both parties.
"I just think it’s extraordinary," says Anthony J. Corrado, a campaign finance expert and professor of government at Colby College in Maine. "In my view, I expect that Ron Paul will raise more money than any other candidate this quarter. At this point, his main competition will be (Mitt) Romney’s checkbook."
The effort was organized entirely by volunteers online.
The figure catapults Paul’s presidential campaign over its $12 million fourth quarter fund raising goal to $18 million. Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign spokesman, says that the money will be spent buying more television advertising in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The cash will also pay for advertising in Florida and California, and hire hundreds of people to canvas and organize supporters on the ground in Iowa. "We need to keep going, we have limited time," Benton says.
The $6 million number beats the 2004 record set by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who raised $5.7 million after he gave his nomination speech. The fund raising is all the more impressive because Paul is relatively unknown among rank-and-file Republicans, trailing in offline polls, while Kerry’s record was set after he became the official Democratic nominee.
Paul’s grassroots fund-raising boost now gives him a leg up and pulls him out of the ranks of lower-tier candidates by giving him the ability to spread his message across more traditional media, says Corrado.
"What he has done is establish himself as a major candidate, and he’s no longer a fringe voice," says Corrado.
The record fundraising boost, as well as an associated blimp advertising project, has in addition earned the candidate attention at a time when the media is focusing on newspaper editorial endorsements. Republican rival John McCain this week-end won endorsements from the Des Moines Register as well as the Boston Globe.
The mass-donation day was spearheaded by Paul supporter and Florida music promoter Trevor Lyman, who also organized a November 5th drive that brought in $4.3 million in 24 hours. Both efforts underscore the increasingly powerful role of the internet as an organizational force and communications medium for grassroots political supporters.
The Paul campaign reports that more than 58,000 people contributed on Sunday, December 16th, which was the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
Of those 58,000 people, almost 25,000 were first-time donors, the campaign says. The 58,000 makes up a base of individuals of 118,000 people who contributed to the Paul campaign in the fourth quarter.
The median donation was $50, Benton says.
"One of the most important things Ron Paul does, which I think is a service to all of us, is to bring back on the table a lot of ideas that the MSM and most candidates treat as off the table," says Zephyr Teachout, a visiting assistant law professor at Duke University who directed internet organizing for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign.
Corrado says that Paul’s message has spread virally through people e-mailing their friends, and that message defies traditional party boundaries. He predicts that Paul will have more days like this as the election goes on, because the funding will force the media and the public to pay more attention to Paul’s message.
"It’s a message of fiscal conservatism combined with his opposition to the war that has allowed him to traverse the middle ground between the two parties," Corrado says.
Update: Trevor Lyman explains in a YouTube video how the "money bomb" concept came together on a Manchester, New Hampshir street corner.
