----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Badnarik for Congress <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 1:30:46 PM
Subject: Help us surpass our goal!
Dear Marc,
Allen Hacker here, campaign manager for Badnarik for Congress. I want to thank you, update you, and make a further request of you! That's a lot and I know you're busy, so I'll try to make it quick.
You are among a very special group of Libertarians and other Freedom-Lovers and Defenders: to date, we've received over $168,000.00 for the campaign! THANKS! Here we are, only a few days before the nominating convention when we will become an official candidate, and you've already broken all the records for Libertarian candidates short of Presidential. Definitely, Thank You!
What have we done with that money? Well, held onto some of it, of course! And we've built an organization, established offices, gotten a boatload of research into the planning of a strategy that gives us every reason to believe we will win, and we have begun to implement that strategy.
For example, Monday evening we began a four-day follow-up tour across our 147-mile-wide district. We're giving feedback to the voters in response to their input given during our January/February Listening Tour. We'll be telling them what they told us were the most important issues, and what their priorities are as a group. And of course, we'll tell them what we will do to resolve those issues.
In fact, last night at the first of those meetings, we not only got an earful of upset about the current inhabitants of congress (Ron Paul excepted), we were told that we could count on the attendees' unanimous support and votes! It was a small group, but an important one, in that it included the secretary of the local Chamber of Commerce and the leader of a group fighting the move to force the radio-chipping of every farm animal in Texas and then the country. This insidious plan costs about $14 per animal (read that as EACH CHICKEN), and requires federal forms to be filed every time an animal is moved, including if you just ride your horse across the road to compete in a neighbor's barrel race!
So where is our campaign now? The megaparty has had its primary, and it was a fizzle. The incumbent republican is unopposed, so there wasn't even a primary on his side. (I'll tell you in a minute why that is so bad a thing for him!) There were four Democrats, and the top two ended up in a runoff that will happen April 11th, about 3 weeks from now. Not that it was, or will be, much of a fight. Neither of them raised or spent over $10,000, and only 10,061 voters even showed up!
So: Nobody cares who the Democrat is, because they've already written off the race to the incumbent. That would be freshman Michael McCaul. And yes, at first glance he does look invincible, but it's all smoke and mirrors. He's married to the daughter of the founder of Clear Channel, so it looks like he has family money in the billions. BUT, he pledged not to spend personal money when he filed his Declaration of Candidacy with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). So he can't spend more than $350,000 of his own or family money unless he gets a waver from the FEC; he can't get a waiver unless an opponent spends heavy personal money over that limit.
The incumbent is also, of course, the incumbent, and that's always an advantage, right? Usually. BUT this guy is unknown to the voters, and we actually have more name recognition across the district than he does! How can that be? Well, in small part because we've already been out there for six months while the incumbent has done next to nothing. We've gotten the UT Libertarian Longhorns reactivated, and another college group is coming back to life. We've got a very nice (and informative) issues-based (Family/Property/Security) 4-color glossy brochure that people love, and no one goes anywhere not wearing a Badnarik for Congress staff Polo and/or jacket, or volunteer T-shirt.
There's more to the name recognition factor. The incumbent was elected in a lopsided Republican vote without a Democrat on the ballot (a write-in got 7%). The Libertarian before us in that election spent next to nothing and did little more than the usual show-ups, and got 15% district-wide! AND, he got 25% in Travis County, where Austin is, one of the two population centers in the district!! He even won whole precincts!!!
Meanwhile, the incumbent has remained complacent, even overconfident, and the district is passing him by.
The population in our district has doubled or more in most parts. They can't build the houses fast enough, and they are giving them away with 110% financing. What does this mean? Half of the voters in the district weren't here last election, and have never seen his name on a ballot, or even really heard of him. And that's his own fault, because even though he has free postage and can do free congressional update mailings to keep his name out there, he hasn't bothered. I know, because five months ago I rented a house in the district to be here to run this campaign, and while I've gotten two or three letters from my congresscritter and senators back in California, I've gotten nothing from him.
Along the way, Michael Badnarik ran for President in 2004, as you know. His name was on the ballot all over the country--and was seen by the voters, not just here in TX10 but everywhere, so all these new voters in the district have seen Badnarik, Michael on their ballots. And it shows. Anywhere we go, people recognize Michael's name when he hands them a card or brochure. Even in California, were we recently attended the CA Convention.
This is why it was so bad for the incumbent to not have a primary opponent. Those new 50% of the voters in our district still haven't ever seen his name anywhere as a candidate.
We not releasing any official polling data, so I can't cite factual numbers at this point. But anecdotally, from the Listening Tour and just going out to eat, we have found ourselves to be in the weird position of having a Libertarian candidate who is better-known and more well-liked than his incumbent opponent--in what will very likely turn out to be a two-way race financially. (The Democrat will be the "third party" in this race!)
All of which (and much more that I can't tell you) brings me to the third thing I want to do in this message. I want to make a request of you: I need you to make another contribution right away, before the primary election deadline. You see, you can contribute up to $2100.00 per person ($4200.00 per couple) in each of the two election cycles of a campaign: before the primary, and afterward for the general election. Yes, the megaparty has already had its primary and we have a convention instead, but that's only a few days away on March 25th. There's still time to push us over the top for our Campaign Breakout.
You see, Michael is not actually a candidate for Congress until he gets the nomination on the 25th. Of course he will get it, but until then he's running for the nomination rather than for election, so we haven't done a lot of public stuff. No billboards, yard signs; only a few radio/cable/TV ads or blurbs in the newspaper...yet.
And Michael is not seen as a threat by the incumbent. So he won't even see us coming.
We're going to lay the public groundwork immediately after we get the nomination. We're going to make a really big splash doing a couple of unusual things, and they aren't going to realize what's hitting them. They're going to think we're crazy, and that we've raised all the money we can, and spent it all. They're going to laugh at us all the way through the summer, until it's too late.
No, we're not planning a clown act. We're not planning anything embarrassing at all. They're not going to laugh at us because we're silly, but because they simply won't believe that we can pull anything off. After all, we are Libertarians, and Libertarians can't get elected, Right? Some of our own people say so, Right?
What better thing could we have going for us? (I mean, besides having superior name recognition, having a far deeper contributor base than any Libertarian has ever had before, not having our noses tied to GW's backside?)
Add it all up, and your next contribution will help us lay a foundation that we'll be able to build on in the general election cycle that will astound even the unaware.
I have played our strategy pretty close to the chest, and I intend to keep most of it, the tactical stuff, just as secret in the future as it has been already. (In fact, there are things absolutely no one else knows!) I realize that there are those among you who just aren't used to Libertarians having secrets from each other, but this isn't real life among friends after all--it's politics and there's a war going on against your liberty, so please bear with me. Trust me, I know how to do this, I was part of a team in the old days that elected 34 minority-party candidates taking both houses of a state legislature in one cycle.
Be all that as it may, I do have a thing or two I'll share with you.
We're going to do polling, then commit a public relations coup, then poll gain. And then we're going to hit the streets talking to the voters and non-voters alike. We're going to put up yard signs and window signs and billboards. We're going to have house parties and megaparties, radio spots, cable shows and concerts. We're planning to do something new, too. We're planning to create a new contract with the voters, one that means something, one that Michael will answer to every time he speaks or votes as a congressman. We're going to promise a new level of integrity, and then we're going to deliver it.
Like you, Michael understands that the people own this country. In a September '05 national survey, 69% percent of the voters said they consider their elected officials to be "employees of the people." That's sixty-eight percent who thought that legally binding employment contracts with the voters stating that a candidate, if elected, will make good on specific campaign promises within a defined length of time - or not run again - was a "good idea." With your help we are going to give the people what they want.
This is a revolutionary idea whose time has come and our sources tell us Michael will not be alone. In the coming months you will begin to hear about a few other candidates coast-to-coast, for Governor, US Senate and US Congress incorporating Candidate Employment Contracts into their respective campaigns - including Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Michael Badnarik - Libertarian. Michael's bid for the TX10 seat is bigger than just getting elected to Congress - Michael will be standing with a handful of other courageous candidates in launching a national movement with a clear sense of mission to shift power back into the hands of it rightful owners - the people of this great country. Because Badnarik will be re-empowering the people of the TX10 district in a way they have not been empowered in more than a century - they will respond - and we will win.
We are going to sell freedom like it has never been sold before; we are going to put Michael Badnarik's face and name on that sale, and we are going to give the voters hope that it really isn't too late.
Texans have sort of closed in emotionally in recent years, watching their once-servant government become their vicious masters, and like Americans everywhere, they don't like it. But they, like Americans everywhere, haven't known what to do about it.
The answer, everywhere, is to put Michael Badnarik into Congress. This campaign is a referendum on congress, and it affects everyone in the country. We need you to make sure we can take a bite out of fascism now, before it truly is too late. If we don't wing the beast today, tomorrow it will be stronger.
So now I ask you to make another investment in the future of Liberty and help us to finally launch a revolutionary movement in this country.
You are part of an elite group of supporters. 19 of you have given $1000 or more; 532 of you have given less. The average of the over-$100 contributions is about $1100.00; of the below-$100 contributions, about $120 on average. Overall, your average contribution so far is about $155.00.
Our goal is to raise $100,000.00 this week, which will pay for those polls, billboards and signs over the next few months. It would be nice to say that we could do that just by asking each of you for that extra $155.00. But there are sad realities involved. Not all of you will get this email because of an email address change since we last communicated. That's about a 10% dropoff, from 551 to 496. Then, not everyone will respond quickly and positively. Maybe the timing just isn't right, or circumstances have changed, or who knows what. On a good day we get a 15% response to our fundraising appeals. So that 496 drops again, to 75. To raise $100K from 75 people works out to an average contribution of $1350.00 each.
Wow. But then, you are just one-half of the contributing power we're appealing to in this email push. So we can cut that in half: an average contribution of $675.00 from every one of you who really wants to set this campaign up right. Truth is, I think there are more such among you than only 75, while I also realize that a short-notice request for hundreds of dollars might seem a shock. So, even though we get $1,000.00-plus contributions nearly every day from truck drivers, waitresses and carpenters, I'm willing to applaud you for anything you send, particularly $500 and up. And Michael will personally call and thank every one of you who sends in $500 or more on or before the 25th. Even so, if you're one of those whose circumstances just don't permit such a generous investment, send what you can and it will be appreciated. It will buffer the result.
To date, we show you as having contributed $10.00, and being legally allowed to contribute the difference between that and $2100.00 before midnight, March 25th. The more of that you can afford to invest right now into this campaign, the better.
Also, please enter Response Code REM1 in the form, to help us refine our efforts.
Come now to <a href="" href="http://www.badnarik.org">http://www.badnarik.org">www.badnarik.org</a> www.badnarik.org and click through either the Make a Donation or the Contribute Today button.
Or just <a href="" href="https://www.completecampaigns.com/public.asp?name=Badnarik&page=1">https://www.completecampaigns.com/public.asp?name=Badnarik&page=1">click here</a> to go straight to our contribution page!
To mail a check, send it to...
Badnarik for Congress
PO Box 14443
Austin TX 78761
...and don't forget to include a note giving us your occupation and employer's name if your total contribution adds up to more than $200.00. And Response Code REM1.
Thank you!
Allen Hacker, campaign manager, Badnarik for Congress
PS: For more information about the national survey referenced above, please visit: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/aldrich_fabrizio200511290826.asp
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