It’s September 30th, the final day of the final fundraising period before election day, and candidates for Congress, U.S. Senate and President are begging their online supporters for a last minute boost.
The 3rd quarter reports, due by Oct. 15, are their last chance to demonstrate strength and avoid a place on the bottom half of PoliticsPA’s Winners and Losers list.
Here’s a look at some of the lamest pleas.
Editor’s note: this list is offered with sympathy from someone who has written more than his share of fundraising emails.
Bob Casey for U.S. Senate:
I wish my record could speak for itself – but the game has changed.
Tom Smith for U.S. Senate:
We’ve raised more than $48,000 online from supporters like you, and we are SO CLOSE to our end of quarter goal of $60,000.
Rep. Jim Gerlach, PA-6
As expected, my opponent has unleashed hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads that are false, over-the-top and ridiculous.
Manan Trivedi, Dem for PA-6
Back when I played soccer at Fleetwood High School, the mission was very simple: Play as a team and get the ball in the goal. Somebody should write that on a wall in Congress because they never seem to work towards an end goal that truly serves the American people.
George Badey, Dem for PA-7:
But we’ve just found out that a shadowy Republican SuperPAC is going up on TV right here, and targeting our race. Right now, they’re just putting $35,000 in, but there could be much more coming if we don’t stand up right now and fight back.
Rep. Allyson Schwartz, Dem for PA-13:
To end the ideological gridlock in Washington, we must work together to ensure that I am reelected to Congress, that we re-elect President Obama and elect Democrats up and down the ticket.
Larry Maggi, Dem for PA-18:
With only 10 hours left until this final fundraising quarter is over, my finance director Kathleen tells me that we’re only $2,089 away from meeting our goal.
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4 Responses
Gerlach seems to have a typo.
He wrote: “my opponent has unleashed hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads that are false”
I wasn’t aware that Trivedi has unleashed even hundreds of dollars in attack ads.
What I think Gerlach meant to write was: “I already have hundreds of thousands dollars more than my opponent, but I still want to run lots of false and misleading attack ads against him to cover up for my own poor record in Congress. Please send me money I don’t need.”
What is the “shadowy GOP Super PAC” George Badey is talking about? Is that the labor PAC helping out Meehan? Union money is hardly a “shadowy GOP Super PAC”…
Radical kathy Kookvar was using the Mumia attack to fundraise.
Just one more time she profitted off of a cop killer.
The most annoying of all those pleas was Jim Gerlach’s. “my opponent has unleashed hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads that are false, over-the-top and ridiculous.” Gerlach is accusing his opponent of what he is more guilty of than any congressional candidate I can think of which is really saying something. He’s been doing this for a decade. In his debate with Trivedi in 2010 he accused Trivedi of endangering Medicare by supporting the ACA which would “cut” Medicare by over $500 million (Gerlach of course didn’t mention that most of those cuts would be to Medicare Advantage which cost 14% more per recipient than regular Medicare at the time.) Back in 2003 when Gerlach was part of the power-play that got Medicare Advantage enacted those guys all said that Medicare Advantage would cost LESS than regular Medicare since the private sector HAD to be more efficient. Wrong. But what really got me was just a couple months later in 2011 Gerlach is saying that significant changes have to be made to Medicare (that is cuts) to preserve it. Of course Gerlach was in the process of swooning over his friend Paul Ryan’s voucher proposal (which Ryan insists is premium support. it is really a hybrid of a voucher and premium support plan, at least how premium support is defined in the Brookings paper by Aaron in 1995. In any event the two aren’t really that much different from each other) will entail significant future cuts since the voucher, as proposed by Ryan, would not keep pace with health care inflation, shifting costs to consumers. In other words, Gerlach is a total hypocrite. He accused Trivedi of cutting Medicare (when really it was mainly the over-subsidies to Medicare Advantage) which after the election Gerlach is excited to do (while protecting Medicare Advantage as much as he can). Then Gerlach sent out using franked mail accusing Democrats of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it.” Medicare as we know it is not a voucher program and Medicare Advantage which didn’t even exist until 2003. Gerlach cannot reinvent history no matter how much he bloviates. The Democrats, of course, were trying to shore up traditional Medicare (which has existed since 1965 and is far more popular than Gerlach’s passion with pseudo-Medicare), That was a point in the ACA which Gerlach has hysterically attacked.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of how Gerlach operates. Gerlach is one of the most dishonest brokers of the truth who is now in Congress. And it has worked very well for him which is a sad commentary on American politics. He is some mixture of a thug and a somnolent party hack. He then runs for governor for a year and when that is a dead-end he deigns to come back to the 6th district pushing out the new announced candidates. I don’t agree with Curt Schroder on policy but I believe he is at least a genuine human being with a heart. He was treated shabbily by Gerlach (no surprise there).