September/October 2010 Issue

2010’s Self-Financed Candidates

It’s their election and they’ll buy if they want to.

Paul Kitagaki Jr./Zumapress.com

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Will these self-financed House and Senate challengers crash the party?

Senate

AMOUNT SELF-FINANCED / % OF TOTAL FUNDRAISING

Linda McMahon (R)
Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO, grappling for Connecticut’s open seat
$22.1 million/99.9%

Jeff Greene
Forbes 400 member, one of two Dems in the race for Florida
Sen. Mel Martinez’s old seat
$5.9 million/99.9%

Carly Fiorina (R)
Former HP CEO taking on Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
$5.5 million/52%

William Binnie
Head of Carlisle Capital, up against “mama grizzly“
Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire GOP primary
$3.6 million/75%

David Malpass
GOPer hoping to challenge
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)
$2.5 million/89%

 

House

AMOUNT SELF-FINANCED / % OF TOTAL RAISED

Tom Ganley (R)
CEO of Ohio’s largest chain of car dealerships, running against Rep. Betty Sutton (D)
$3.5 million/94%

George Flinn
Owner of Flinn Broadcasting, Tennesee Republican
$2.9 million/93%

Randy Altschuler (R)
Electronics recycler hopes to challenge New York Rep. Timothy Bishop (D)
$2 million/71%

Wink Hartman (R)
Owner of Hartman Oil, running in Kansas’ open 4th district
$1.6 million/92%

Rudolph Moise
Doctor and 1 of 11 Dems competing for Florida’s 17th
$1 million/70%

As of July 23

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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.

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