Looks like some Republicans are taking a page from grass-roots Democrats, and have started their own website to help small donors pool political contributions to candidates for office. A group of high-profile GOP activists, including PDF contributing editor Michael Turk and lobbyist Frank Donatelli (hubby of Becky Donatelli, den mother of all Republican online mavens) have launched RightRoots, a project of ABC PAC.
On their site, they say:
ABC PAC is a one-stop shop for donations that makes it easy for donors to help in multiple campaigns by simply visiting one place on the Internet. ABC PAC is the answer for those in the conservative community online who have been clamoring for such a site to answer the Democrats who have, so far, out raised Republicans on the internet.
ABC PAC is an independent, federally registered political action committee (PAC) whose primary mission is to act as a “conduit” to raise money over the internet to help Republican candidates for federal office. Every contribution a donor designates through our website for a particular candidate is passed directly to the recipient candidate (with the candidate paying a small percent to cover the credit card processing fee). Operating expenses (bank processing and accounting fees) are withdrawn from the contributions you make to candidates.
Mike Turk describes this as a counter to ActBlue, the highly successful grassroots Democratic donation engine, which has enabled many activists and bloggers to in effect create their own mini-PACs. It’s probably fairer to see RightRoots as a mirror of the “Netroots” fundraising pages on ActBlue, which focus attention on a handful of “netroots-endorsed” candidates that have been hand-picked by a few key bloggers.
That very selectivity is raising hackles among some conservatives, at least over at RedState, where the involvement of a McCain employee in the RightRoots team is questioned. But Turk says his ultimate goal is “to list every GOP candidate, and to provide a lot of tools for bloggers – things like tracking IDs, widgets for your site, and some competitions between bloggers to drive donations for key races, special elections, etc.”
It will be interesting to see if RightRoots can catch fire, though clearly more is involved than just creating a simple way for small-donors and bloggers to pool contributions (and deal with FEC reporting requirements). As liberal blogger Taylor Marsh commented to me:
“What Republicans don’t understand about Act Blue is that it’s a grass roots organization fueled by real passion for Democratic political candidates. No one is excited about the Republican candidates, especially with the likes of Rick Santorum, Curt Weldon and George W. Bush in everyone’s mind. The only way they’ll raise money is if John O’Neill of swiftboating fame does a fundraiser for them.”
We shall see.