Dear John, Since January 2019, I’ve had a knot in my stomach for the first week of every month. I’m almost used to it. By now, it’s a familiar feeling of fear, anticipation, hope and determination to raise funds one individual donor at a time to cover not only our basic operational needs like staffing, technology, and endless fees associated with fundraising but importantly, the larger amounts we are pouring into our mailers, digital ads, and radio. As I’m writing this on Sunday morning and looking at our first few days of what is supposed to be our best fundraising month yet, I’m incredibly worried. I’m not supposed to tell you how hard raising money is, how I spend 5-6 hours every single day — Saturdays and Sundays included — doing call time, which is campaign jargon for dialing prospective donors. I’m not supposed to tell you that it bothered me when my opponent’s staffer ridiculed our campaign for our end-of-the-year fundraising totals back in January. I’m not supposed to tell you that only in the last three months we are raising the kind of money a Democratic Party insider told me I needed to raise during the first quarter in 2019 to be relevant. I’m not supposed to share with you the struggles a grassroots campaign goes through while at the same time making you trust that we have what it takes to win. That knot in my stomach is a necessary reminder that we can’t stop pushing forward, that it’s our discipline, dedication, and superhuman effort of the entire team that brought us to this point. And this “point” for us means that we knocked on more than 17,000 doors before early March, that we dialed almost 160,000 phones, and that we actually raised more money than AOC heading into her first primary back in 2018. We are more than a viable campaign. We are a soon-to-be winning campaign. But right now, I really need you. This is it. Corporations are buying their politicians. Back us up so we can defeat what all of us know is legalized, institutionalized corruption. Go all out for us and on August 4, we will deliver and I will be your representative. Eva
Our first mailer:
|
