| Ron Sparks has filed with the Secretary of State's office, appointing a Principal Campaign Committee, consisting only of himself, and the form (click here to download ) is dated July 29. Did he only just now raise or spend $25K for his gubernatorial campaign or did Danny's piece at the Political Parlor yesterday remind Sparks that he needed to file a form to keep this thing legal. The Ron Sparks gubernatorial campaign has not filed a statement with the Secretary of State office showing his candidacy’s principal campaign committee, according to the Secretary of State website. Alabama law requires a candidate to file the statement within 5 days of raising (or spending) $25,000 for the candidacy. Fundraising for this election cycle could begin on June 1.
Aside from the niceties of filing your forms on time -- and Sparks made a moderately big deal that Davis needed to file the same form back in April -- Danny makes a great point further down about how symbolism won't pay the campaign bills. In 2002, for instance, Bob Riley's successful campaign spent about $15 million and Don Siegelman's unsuccessful re-election campaign spent about $11 million. In 2006, Riley spent about $12 million to win re-election and Democrat Lucy Baxley spent about $3 million. I figure the successful candidate in 2010 will need to raise at least $12 to $15 million. I love campaigns that involve a lot of small donors, but the $10 to $200 folks can't carry the whole load. Let's look at what it would take to raise $12 million, $25 at a time: 480,000 contributors. That's over 10% of the population of Alabama, or one hell of a lot of fish fries. Heck, Barack Obama only had 2 million donors (which was unprecedented) and he was working with a population of 300 million. $50 a shot barbecue dinners aren't much more practical either -- you still need about a quarter of a million folks at that rate. None of us like the big money in politics, but until we change the Alabama law that allows virtually unlimited contributions we're going to have an obscene amount of money in our elections. Any Democrat who wants to win needs to get with the program and start asking supporters to give 'til it hurts and then give some more. $25 may be the hurt point for some folks; for others it may be $10,000 or even $25,000. Right now we know the Davis campaign is going after big donors as well as small ones -- and that's what it will take to win this thing. The only fundraising Sparks has publicized has been at the $25 or $50 per person level -- those are great for connecting with voters, but not nearly enough to carry a campaign to victory in 2010. |
