I know it’s a Friday and you’re likely looking forward to the weekend, so I’ll try to keep this one relatively short.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the month, this Sunday is the first campaign finance reporting deadline of the General Election.
Now, if your inbox is anything like mine, you’re going to get a lot of emails from Democrats this weekend telling you the sky will fall if they don’t hit their goal for this report. I’m not going to tell you that—but we do need to take this reporting deadline very seriously.
See, after midnight Sunday night, the whole world will get to scrutinize what we’ve raised and spent through the end of June as a matter of public record—and because this is the first reporting deadline after the primary, they’ll be comparing me directly to my Republican opponent when they do so.
Posting a good number for this quarter will be our biggest test yet.
If we can show that we have the grassroots strength to go toe-to-toe with the GOP, that will get people’s attention. It’ll attract additional support for this campaign. It’ll mean that when my opponent starts attacking us this Fall, we’ll be able to respond in kind, make sure North Carolinians know that he’ll be a rubber stamp for extremism, and spread our own message of hope and opportunity.
But if we fall short? People have scarce resources. And if they don’t see that we have enough momentum while we’re up against an opponent who casually loaned himself $815,000 to win his primary, they might decide that their contributions will have more of an impact elsewhere. That won’t end this campaign by any means, but it will mean we have a much, much harder path to getting together the resources we need to win in November.
