NY-26: The Real Story About Jon Powers’ Fundraising
by Matt at Jul 29th, 2008
Jon Powers likes to claim that his campaign is funded by everyday Western New Yorkers giving small amounts of money. According to him, about 80 percent of his donors give less than $100.
Well, he’s not telling the whole story.
For one thing, we already know that left-wing activists from outside of his district are funding his campaign, but also, a closer look at his campaign contributions shows that the true source of his campaign coffers comes from big donations.
In terms of unitemized dollar amounts, here is a quarterly breakdown of Powers campaign contributions under $200, in terms of percentage of his total fundraising for that quarter:
- 2nd Quarter 2008 - 9.17%
- 1st Quarter 2008 - 18.52%
- 4th Quarter 2007 - 9.84%
- 3rd Quarter 2007 - 20.63%
- 2nd Quarter 2007 - 12.04%
…which means that overall, a mere 13.66% of his total dollars raised have actually come from contributions of $200 or less. So, despite Jon Powers‘ claims that his campaign is being funded by small donors and everyday Western New Yorkers, in truth, more than 86% of his campaign coffers came from large donations.
Matt,
I haven’t looked at the figures … and frankly, I’m not going to … but might you have used the wrong parameters in this equation? It would seem as that you figured out a percentage of DOLLARS … as opposed to a percentage of Donors.
If I get $1 from three people and $7 from one person, I have $10. I can accurately claim that 75 percent of my donors gave $1. But you could also accurately claim that 70% of my money came from people who donated $5 or more …
So … are you using his equation? Or yours?
Yes, I am talking about actual fundraising dollars, not number of donors. When it comes down it, one dollar from 10 people is worth the same as two dollars from 5, and when we talk about fundraising the total amount raised is considerably more important towards funding the campaign than the number of donors. The Powers spin on the fundraising numbers might play well into his “grassroots” campaign concept, but the bottom line a majority of his campaign contributions come from large donations.