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Can Small Donors Power a GOP Presidential Campaign?


Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president on Monday.
AFP/Getty Images
Can small donors power a presidential candidate through the primaries?

With Sen. Ted Cruz‘s entrance into the presidential race this week, the 2016 cash dash is on in earnest. Mr. Cruz took in more than $500,000 in his first 24 hours as a candidate, with much of it coming in online.

But the big question for the 2016 presidential campaign is whether small-donor fundraising — particularly email solicitations — can counterbalance the vast sums of money being raised through outside groups and at high-dollar fundraising events.

While former Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Chris Christie all have major finance networks of big donors, other candidates are looking at a more grass roots approach to fundraising. Ben Carson‘s campaign manager, in an interview with GQ, predicted his campaign could raise $150 million for the Republican primaries by asking for $100 from 1.5 million supporters.

Mr. Carson already has a two million-strong email list that he can tap, and an independent effort to draft him into the race has already brought in more than $13 million from small donors.

But veteran digital strategists warn that unlike holding $10,000 per-plate dinners, building a campaign email program is tough, time-consuming work with much lower margins. But it can reap huge rewards if done correctly.

“Digital fundraising is hard work, there’s no doubt about — but it but it can be done. And President Obama and others have shown that it can be done and it can be done well,” said Peter Pasi, a veteran Republican digital strategist.

Mr. Pasi said Democrats have simply done a better job of using email to wring money out of their grass roots base than have Republicans.

“It’s in their DNA to build fundraising and digital fundraising plans early in the cycle and execute on them,” he said of the Democrats. But Republicans can easily use the same technologies and practices to tap donor energy.

In the last cycle, President Barack Obama — who twice shattered campaign fundraising records and who assembled the largest known campaign email list — still relied heavily on his major donors to keep his campaign running.

Though Mr. Obama ultimately raised $525 million online during his 2012 re-election effort, it wasn’t until a few months before election day that the amount raised online surpassed the amount raised from big donors.

And in the end, the high-dollar national finance committee donors donated or helped raise $286 million of his $1.1 billion total haul.

Mitt Romney‘s 2012 campaign showed a similar pattern of donor engagement. Together with the Republican National Committee, the Romney campaign brought in $100 million online in the last 60 days of the campaign. October was their best month.

“It is the major donors who sustain you early because it’s a lot easier to collect max-out checks, or $1,000 checks than it is to collect at volume $25, $50, $100 checks,” said Zac Moffatt, who served as Mr. Romney’s digital director and co-founded the firm Targeted Victory.

That could spell trouble for any candidate relying on grass roots donors during the primary. Unlike high dollar donations, it takes time to assemble a high-quality email list, and train staff to write emails and get them in front of willing donors.

“It’s a long-term investment in the success of the program,” Mr. Moffatt said.