Heckenlively Running a People's Campaign

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John Heckenlively, the presumed Democratic candidate for the 1st CD of Wisconsin, has announced he will be running a people's funded campaign limiting individual contributions to a maximum of $100.

Journal Times Excerpt:
"We want to make sure people understand this is a campaign from the bottom up, not from the top down," he said. "Campaigns like Paul Ryan's are run by corporate dollars - our campaign is going to be funded on the backs of people."

The Give Congress Heck campaign is not accepting any corporate contributions, campaign manager Mitch Surell said. They expect to see significant contributions in the next few weeks.

As noted in the previous post, the heavily corporate sponsored Paul Ryan has attracted $2,613,651 in this election cycle, according to Opensecrets.

Ryan's campaign issued this response to their challenger's grassroots campaign.

Journal Times Excerpt:
The Ryan for Congress campaign has 7,667 donors who have given $100 or less just this election cycle. Each month, we average 349 donations of $100 or less. The small donor, grassroots support for the campaign has been overwhelming," said Susan Jacobson, Ryan's campaign coordinator and finance director, in response. "The campaign will continue to respectfully receive contributions from supporters who wish to donate within their legal limits."

We "respectfully" receive contributions implies they won't "disrespect" corporate donations by refusing them. How's that for a slick play on words from the Ryan campaign?

But lets look at the numbers. Assuming that statement is accurate, Ryan picked up a maximum of $766,700 from $100-or-less donors, a significant amount of money. But that means 71% of Ryan's campaign support come from big-moneyed sponsors and the last time I checked on the $100 donors, most of even those modest contributors came from outside the district.

97% of Ryan's $100 Contributors Don't Live In District

Rock Netroots Excerpt: (From July 21, 2009)
After flipping through the report and checking a map, it turns out approximately $4,625 or 2.7% of the $167,975 were $100 donations from within his district - and that figure included $100 donors from the city of Milwaukee. 97.3% were donations of either more than $100 OR from outside his district.

Now, those percentages might have changed a few points since last year, but considering Ryan has been running a national fund-raising campaign, chances are even greater that most of his $100 contributors don't even live in the district.

We know what Ryan's corporate donors have bought, but what is it that these folks are buying since most don't live in the district?

You can contribute to Heckenlively's campaign here

Related: If district constituents refuse to fund Ryan's campaign - outsiders will.