Advertisement

Opinion: The Barack Obama push in Arizona includes creative fundraising pitch

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The last-minute decision by Barack Obama’s campaign to air ads in John McCain’s home state of Arizona garnered a lot of attention.

More than likely, it spoke to the overflow of cash available to Obama rather than any real expectation among his aides that he can carry the state. But don’t tell that to Don Bivens, chairman of Arizona’s Democratic Party.

Bivens, via an e-mail that happened to come our way, on Saturday made an appeal for contributions to help fuel the state party’s final push on behalf of Obama. And he gave potential givers concrete ways to gauge how their money would be used:

Advertisement

$25 buys an hour of calls.

$50 hydrates 250 door-to-door canvassers. $250 feeds 60 people who’ve worked an eight-hour shift. $1,000 gets gas to transport 100 people to the polls. $5,000 rents vans to transport canvassers to knock thousands of doors all weekend long.

We remain skeptical that if Obama claims the presidency, his electoral vote count would include a poke-in-the-eye win in Arizona, the way George W. Bush stoll Al Gore’s Tennessee in 2000. But we know that English teachers everywhere will applaud Biven’s use of active verbs.

-- Don Frederick

To get automatic notices on each new Ticket item, go here and register.

Advertisement