November 8, 2022

This Is My Last Chance to Give Mike Pompeo My Money

The former secretary of state didn't want me to miss out on a 13X match!Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

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I got an email yesterday from Mike Pompeo. He was writing on behalf of the NRCC—the House Republican campaign arm—with some troubling news. “I’ll level with you,” the former secretary of state told me. “This isn’t going well, we didn’t get any donations last night.”

But all was not lost! Pompeo said that after some begging, anonymous GOP donors agreed to offer—for one day only!—a “13X MATCH” on any contributions I sent their way. Time was of the essence. “Tomorrow, I predict we will go back to 12x match, so act now,” he urged. “This is our last chance to save our country.”

I didn’t write back right away, which was a good thing, because 90 minutes later I got another email from the NRCC, with an even better offer. “RARE 14x MATCH,” the message read.

So, what happened? “We were SUPPOSED to go back to 1200% or 1300% matching today,” the GOP fundraiser explained, “but we’ve convinced our generous donors to extend their match because…YOU STILL HAVEN’T JOINED! We need you.”

Ah.

It went on like this.

4:31 pm: “Emergency 14X Match.”

7:34 pm: “FINAL 15X MATCH.” (“I’m giving my bosses 1 more grassroots fundraising update in the morning and I want to make sure your name was included on my report,” wrote “Taylor from House Republicans HQ.”)

1:01 am: “FINAL 14X MATCH…ONE. LAST. CHANCE.”

By 8:30 this morning, the news was increasingly dire. House Republicans HQ sent an “Urgent Update” to inform me that “House Republicans are BEHIND in many battleground races” and that “conservative voter turnout is LOWER than normal in key regions.”

Fortunately, the solution to this crisis was clear: “A group of top patriots has decided to 1400% EMERGENCY MATCH all donations for the next 14 minutes.” And no pressure or anything, but “victory or defeat and the future of our country rest on your shoulders.”

But wait! you are no doubt wondering. Didn’t Mike Pompeo predict that by today, we would “go back to 12x match”?

Hmmm. This is all a bit disconcerting. If I can’t rely on the GOP to tell me the truth about 13X contribution matching programs, can I even believe that House Republicans are really losing all those races?

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.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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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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.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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.

payment methods

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