In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Roy W. Bailey, a Dallas businessman, received a flood of text messages from Donald J. Trump’s re-election campaign asking for money in persistent, almost desperate terms.
“Did you forget me?” the messages read, Mr. Bailey recalled. “Have you failed us?”
Mr. Bailey was familiar with the Trump campaign: he co-chaired the finance committee and helped raise millions for the effort and personally contributed several thousand dollars.
“Think about that,” Mr Bailey recently said of the frequency of the messages and the pleading tone. “That’s how out of control and crazy part of this fundraiser has become.”
Ultimately, he abandoned Mr. Trump: He is now raising money for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose campaign has pledged to avoid the kind of online fundraising tactics that irked Mr. Bailey and which have spread to both sides. particularly the Republican Party, as candidates have attempted to solicit small donors in recent years.
No false deadlines, Mr. DeSantis promised donors. No hugely implausible commitments that significant contributions will be matched by committees affiliated with the campaign. And don’t mislead donors into recurring donations.
This strategy is one of the subtle ways Mr. DeSantis tries to contrast him with Mr. Trump, who has often coaxed, guilt-ridden, and occasionally misled small donors. While his campaign has not directly denounced Mr Trump’s methods, the day Mr DeSantis announced he would run for president, his website promised “smoke and mirrors”, “fake matches” and avoid “lies” in his funds. to increase.
For the DeSantis campaign, the no cheating vow is risky. Mr. Trump, the most successful online Republican fundraiser ever, has shown that such tactics work. But Generra Peck, Mr. DeSantis’ campaign manager, said that approach harmed the long-term financial health of the Republican Party because it risked alienating small donors.
“We are building a movement,” Ms. Peck said in an interview last month at DeSantis campaign headquarters in Tallahassee.
So far, it’s hard to say whether Mr. DeSantis’ approach is working. His fundraising slowed after his campaign began in late May, and campaign officials did not provide numbers that would have shed light on its success with small donors.
The struggle to raise money from the average American may seem strange in the age of billionaires and super-PACs, who have played an outrageous role in US elections. But direct campaign money is in many ways still the lifeblood of a campaign and a powerful measure of a candidate’s strength. For example, GOP presidential candidates must meet an individual donor threshold set by the Republican National Committee to qualify for the debate phase, a barrier that is already leading some candidates to engage in gimmicky contortions.
To emphasize what it considers a more ethical approach to fundraising, the DeSantis campaign has dedicated a giant wall in its humble office to scribbling the names — first name, last initial — of every campaign donor, tens of thousands. so far.
It is an intensive effort. During working hours, campaign workers—and in one case Mr. DeSantis himself—are constantly writing names on the wall with red, blue, and black markers.
“We want our staff to look at that wall, remember who’s supporting us, to remember why we’re here,” Ms Peck said.
Mr. DeSantis’ advisers argue that being more transparent with donors could be a long-term way for Republicans to counter the clear advantage Democrats have built in raising money over the Internet, thanks in large part to their online platform ActBlue, founded in 2004. A Republican alternative, WinRed, did not get off the ground until 15 years later. A higher proportion of Democrats than Republicans said they had donated to a political campaign in the past two years, according to a recent NBC News poll, meaning the GOP has a less robust pool of donors to draw from.
“One of the biggest challenges for Republicans, across the board, is building out the small dollar universe,” said Kristin Davison, the chief operating officer of Never Back Down, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis.
The truthful approach to deadlines and goals has been tested by other campaigns, including that of Senator Bernie Sanders, who built an enduring network of grassroots donors during his two presidential elections.
Mr. DeSantis’ campaign said last week it had raised $20 million in his first six weeks as an official presidential candidate, but the amount that came from small donors won’t become clear until later this month, when campaigns begin to review the second-quarter revelations. submit.
The campaign did not answer a question about how many small donors had contributed to date. It had set a goal of recruiting 100,000 backers by July 1, but by the end of June the wall had only about 50,000 names, according to a fundraising email.
And while the team of Mr. DeSantis has pledged to act transparently when it comes to small donors, accusing senior aides in the governor’s office of improperly pressuring lobbyists to donate to his campaign.
Eric Wilson, the director of the Center for Campaign Innovation, a conservative nonprofit focused on digital politics, said the DeSantis campaign was wise to avoid online pressure tactics, which he likened to a “dopamine arms race” that burns out donors and voters off.
“They can be effective, but voters say they don’t like them,” said Mr. Wilson. “You can’t make the entire meal around sugar.”
Mr Wilson said he had also seen other campaigns attempt more honest communication: “You’re starting to see a recalibration.”
For example, the campaign of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said in May that Mr. DeSantis had imitated the language used in Ms. Haley’s fundraising emails.
The ways campaigns reach potential small donors online grew out of old-fashioned telemarketing and mail-in fundraising. Before email, campaigns sent bogus telegrams, letters stamped to show they were hand-addressed, surveys, and other gimmicks to attract donations.
In the age of email and smartphones, it’s easier to reach a large number of potential donors, but the risk of bombarding and overwhelming them is greater. It can also be more difficult to get people to open posts, let alone contribute. The subject line must be attractive and the offers must stand out – which can lead, for example, to dubious promises that campaigns will somehow ‘match’ all contributions made, a practice that has been widely criticized.
Mr. Trump’s campaign sends about 10 emails a day in addition to text messages. His campaign has escalated bogus matching promises to the point of absurdity, telling donors that their contributions will be matched by “1500%”.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The tactic is not limited to Republicans. Democratic groups have also been criticized and mocked for vague promises of “300 percent matches” in their fundraising pitches.
For its part, the DeSantis campaign said its strategy was designed to build long-term relationships with small donors, rather than drain them as quickly as possible.
The DeSantis campaign has adopted a “subscriber-exclusive” model, allowing donors to join so-called tele-municipal houses with Mr. DeSantis (“You’re part of the team,” the governor told listeners on a June 12 call), profit early access to merchandise and receive weekly ‘insider’ updates. It’s the carrot, not the stick, a blueprint that campaign officials said was partially adopted from the corporate world.
Mr. Trump’s campaign has clearly attracted attention.
On Friday, in an apparent fundraising round, the Trump campaign announced a new donor initiative, saying it would build a “big, beautiful donor wall” at its New Hampshire headquarters.
“And I don’t mean chalked on the wall like some other campaigns do,” said the campaign email, which was written in Mr. Trump’s voice, “but a heavy, respectable plaque with the names of our great donors. finely etched inside.
All for a $75 donation.
Patricia Mazzie contributed reporting from Miami.
