July 19, 2011

GOP Candidate Fred Karger Raises a Few Bucks

Fred Karger is the first openly gay Republican to run for president.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredkarger/4923880973/sizes/m/in/set-72157624314164101/">Fred Karger</a>/Flickr

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Upstart GOP presidential candidate Fred Karger, the first gay Republican ever to run for the nomination, is not exactly raising the big bucks. Gay Republicans are either few and far between, or they’re putting their money on, well, Barack Obama. But given his unusual niche, Karger isn’t doing all that badly either. Lost in all the news coverage of presidential fundraising is this little tidbit: Karger reported raising $264,000 in the last quarter, more than pot-promoter and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, who raised $180,000, and not that far behind former Pennsylvania senator and arch anti-gay candidate Rick Santorum, who raised $581,000. Of course, $230,000 of Karger’s haul came from a single donor: Fred Karger.

Still, Karger seems highly skilled at getting his media coverage for free. He’s made good use of all the indignities heaped on him by anti-gay Republican gatekeepers, who’ve refused to let him participate in any major televised debates. He’s used his years of experience in the opposition research field to win coverage for his attacks on fellow candidate Mitt Romney. Then, last week, he made headlines after he challenged Rep. Michele Bachmann’s husband to a debate over his support of “reparative therapy,” a discredited form of psychological counseling that supposedly helps gays become straight. Karger urged Bachmann to “come out of the closet” to defend his Christian counseling clinics, which reportedly offer the therapy. Karger used the ensuing media coverage to take a few shots at Michele Bachmann as well, calling her a bigot for her anti-gay views.

Karger is certainly adding some extra color to GOP primary this year. This week, he’ll campaign in New Hampshire for a few days before traveling to San Francisco, where “Real World” hottie Mike Manning will headline a big fundraiser on Thursday that could bring in a few more donors to keep Karger’s show on the road.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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