Field Report: Fundraiser for Jamie McLeod-Skinner

People turned out in the heat. 

Jamie McLeod-Skinner

They visited. They listened. They wrote checks. They think Jamie McLeod-Skinner can win because she is a strong candidate and Walden has changed for the worse. 

Schedule: Fundraisers for candidates begin with a date and time. The candidate would be in Medford on the evening of Sunday, July 15. She had other events meeting people in the morning and afternoon, but would be free from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Can you do an event?

Yes.

Dessert: Given the event time of day, we decided to call it a Dessert Reception. No heavy food. The campaign created the adjacent invitation and circulated it to their rapidly growing list of supporters and volunteers. Donations above $100 are reported to the Federal Election Commission and are public record. The campaign told me they had 140 such people locally. Surely those people would be invited, plus others.  

Fundraiser. The invitation made no secret of the purpose to raise funds, not just visit with the candidate. The invitation asked people to bring "a friend or two who wants to meet Jamie and will match your support with a minimum gift of $100." It did not set a price, but it stated an intention. This is always a delicate matter for campaigns and this invitation did it well. Look closely at the wording and typeface. They need people with the capacity to donate to do so, which generally means asking them, especially in the presence of others. An event creates a group feeling of solidarity and a desire to do ones part.

The invitation, prepared by the campaign.

 Yet no campaign--especially not for a Democratic candidate--wants to appear to exclude someone from an event or to be improperly "exclusive." The campaign handled this well, placing the intention of inviting people who might donate $100 small script print, italicized, as a footnote to an asterisk for the word "success."

It was a soft way of saying "please" and that this event was for potential donors, but anyone was welcome. Well handled.

Who attends. This event has a special purpose: asking for money. Invitations were widely circulated and passed on to others, but in practice the fundraising attendees are primarily boomers, adults in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.  Same here. About sixty people attended.

Heat. There is potential for a party of 100-plus people, accommodated outside, on a patio deck. A problem emerged. Temperatures were scheduled to be 100 degrees at 6:30. We moved the event indoors.

Timetable: Campaign staff arrived at 6:00. Guests arrived from 6:20 to 6:40. McLeod-Skinner arrived early, at 6:20, People mingled and nibbled until 7:00. Beer, wine, soft drinks, and Pellegrino water were available, plus desserts. We serve Valley View Vineyards wines, in several varieties. The red wine was almost untouched. People drank white wine, a Vougnier, but mostly people drank Pellegrino water. It was hot out.

7:00.  Using a microphone and professional loudspeaker  I introduced McLeod-Skinner by saying I saw a pathway to victory. Greg Walden had changed. He has become, in his success, a representative of the GOP House leadership, which pushed policies in direct contradiction to the interests of his District and Walden's own speeches on the issue of health care. I said he had stopped doing Town Halls. He now fit the pattern of exactly those powerful incumbents who supposedly could not lose--but did--Eric Canter two years ago and Joe Crowley, the out of touch Democratic leader unseated by Alexandria Osekia Cortez. His big donations are less a sign of success than they are evidence for his having sunk into the swamp. He was vulnerable.

Photos with the candidate 

7:05. Jamie spoke for twenty minutes. She was more positive. She said she was meeting people and they liked her. She said the divide between red and blue was in large part an illusion. The big issue in Burns, she said, was the dropping water table, hardly a a Democratic or Republican matter. She said she related to rural people and that the Democratic Party, in its messaging and policies, had work to do. She said that her having a wife created less concern in eastern Oregon than did her saying she liked country music had in liberal Ashland. The line gets laugh. The quip has a serious undertone. Urban and college-town language sometimes gets communicated as condescending to rural people. She gets criticism for being a "carpetbagger" but she has married an old Oregon ranching family and, more importantly, she went to high school in Ashland, has lived and worked in Oregon, her mother lives in central Oregon, and her very manner and style comes across as thoroughly authentically rural Oregon, down to the high mileage Jeep she drives. 

The overall message of her talk was that she had politics that fit the District, that she fit the District, and Greg Walden no longer does.

7:45. Five minute "ask." McLeod-Skinner handed the microphone to her campaign finance volunteer, who referenced a story McLeod-Skinner had just told of a woman who cut, stacked, and sold a cord of wood to get the money to donate to her campaign. The chairman asked this audience to give as generously, with the same relative sacrifice as that woman. "Please give your cord of wood."

7:50. Back to mixing, mingling, and talking. The candidate worked her way around the crowded rooms, visiting. Everyone had a chance to visit, shake hands, get photos taken.

Donations

8:20  Event over. 

Summary: This is how "good, clean" campaign money is raised. There is no quid pro quo, and no expectation of any favor or benefit other than good government in the eyes of the donors--electing Jamie McLeod-Skinner. 

There is nothing special here. No secret formula. It is simply executing on the campaign finance portion of a local grassroots campaign, asking local people to give money to support a local campaign. It isn't easy, but it is simple and straightforward: Invitation. Meet and greet. Introduction of candidate. Candidate speaks. Someone asks people to donate. People write checks. More meet and greet. People leave.