Congressman John Sarbanes was frustrated with the state of political fundraising in the wake of Citizens United, and looking for another way. He’d heard about systems that increase the value of small contributions by matching them with public dollars-turning a $25 contribution into $150 or $175, for example. This way, candidates could run a viable race by reaching out to the grassroots–$10, $20, $50 at a time-rather than constantly dialing for $2,500 checks (and therefore spending time and effort reaching out to a very narrow class of donors, many of whom don’t even live in the districts they seek to represent).
Congressman John Sarbanes
But, before he placed his eggs in that basket, and before he could convince his colleagues on Capitol Hill to try a different path, he felt he needed to answer one important question: would it work in practice? Could a modern candidate for Congress-who wouldn’t benefit from the high profile of a presidential race-actually go out and raise hundreds or even thousands of small contributions? Or was small-dollar fundraising a romantic holdout of a bygone era, a quaint anachronism like making a mix tape for a high school crush?
So, he set out to do it himself, and quite literally put his money where is mouth is. In October 2011, Congressman Sarbanes launched a Grassroots Donor Project. He set aside $500,000 in campaign funds that he would not touch until he could raise 1,000 contributions of $100 or less. On July 9, 2012 his campaign announced he’d reached his goal.
And, today Congressman Sarbanes is announcing the introduction of legislation to create a system that will harness the power of grassroots donors and help ordinary citizens counteract the increasing influence of the tiny minority of wealthy donors that currently dominate the process.
