Daily Kos - Campaign Fundraising

Campaign Fundraising

During the 2004 U.S. election campaign, Daily Kos readers gave approximately $500,000 in user donations to fifteen Democratic candidates denoted as most needing funds. The candidates were Tony Miller, Ben Konop, Daniel Mongiardo, Richard Romero, Samara Barend, Jeff Seemann, Nancy Farmer, Ginny Schrader, Jan Schneider, Lois Murphy, Jim Newberry, Brad Carson, Tony Knowles, Stan Matsunaka and Richard Morrison. All of these candidates lost. However, Moulitsas had stated that he was deliberately selecting candidates who were not receiving significant financial support from other sources; candidates who were expected to win — or even be competitive — were, by and large, already being funded by the DNC, DCCC, and other national and regional organizations.

He also argued that the campaign was successful in that it forced several Republican incumbents to spend time and money defending "safe" seats that they had never had to defend before. For example, between Tom DeLay in Texas and Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado, Moulitsas calculates that the seed money provided by the blog's fundraising tied up well over ten times as much GOP money in return, and kept two of the GOP's most prolific fundraisers back home campaigning in their own districts for several weeks each, rather than roaming the country raising money for other candidates, as they had in past elections. At least two of his candidates came exceptionally close to winning what would have been significant upsets.

Daily Kos led a fundraising campaign again in the 2006 midterm election campaign in conjunction with MyDD and State Project. This time around, they raised over $1.4 million for 17 "Netroots Candidates," of which 8 were victorious: Jim Webb (VA-Sen), Jon Tester (MT-Sen), Tim Walz (MN-01), Joe Sestak (PA-07), Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23), Patrick Murphy (PA-08), Jerry McNerney (CA-11), Paul Hodes (NH-02). Several other Kos-endorsed candidates came within 3 percentage points of winning: Larry Kissell (NC-08), Gary Trauner (WY-AL), Linda Stender (NJ-07) and Darcy Burner (WA-08). The success of these candidates can be simultaneously considered a cause and effect of the Democratic wave in the 2006 election: fundraising on Daily Kos and other progressive/liberal blogs/websites contributed heavily to this and other races, boosting recognition of Democratic candidates across the board; on the other hand, the general anti-Bush, anti-incumbency sentiment across the country helped boost these candidates and many others on the Democratic side.