Yarbro Bags 50K On Act Blue

25 Responses to “Yarbro Bags 50K On Act Blue”

1. JoeFriday writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:23 pm

   Care to revise your prediction, Hobbs?

   From a comment to a previous post…

   Bill Hobbs writes
   September 29th, 2009 10:05 am
   “Remember When” writes, “I think Yarbro’s got a really strong chance, assuming he can raise some cash.”

   That’s a big assumption.

   1. Henry’s Republican supporters happen to be a whole lot of wealthy people who will ensure he has the funds he needs to win. None of them will be writing checks to Yarbro.

   2. Progressives didn’t fund Jeff Wilson, what makes you think they’ll fund Yarbro? Even liberals know better than to make a bad investment, and until there’s a credible poll showing Yarbro beating Henry, the money isn’t going to flow in to Yarbro. With no money, he won’t make a dent in Henry’s support.

   Prediction: Yarbro will raise less than $50,000, spend it all, and get no more than 40 percent of the primary vote.

   3. Henry is wealthy. Really wealthy. He can not be outspent if he chooses to not be outspent.

2. The OG Ben writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:24 pm

   Nice first day. Keep working hard.

3. Bill Hobbs writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:31 pm

   I’ll change my prediction on the $ raised, but not the final result.

4. JoeFriday writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:35 pm

   Fair enough. I’ll check back in with you on August 6.

5. Anonymous writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:40 pm

   Doug Henry just sneezed, and $300k fell out of his nose. Yarbro will need some more impressive days. Considering this was his “coming out” party, he will need a better hook than this.

6. Bill Hobbs writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:41 pm

   I bet most of the ActBlue money isn’t local or Tennessee money. If I’m Doug Henry, I make lots of noise about how outsiders are trying to buy the senate seat.

   Actually, I looked at the numbers. Dividing the total by the number of donors, you get $390 average donation. That’s huge - almost double what Andy Berke has raised per donor via Act Blue, and Berke is an incumbent. I bet Yarbro got a bunch of large donations from family-and-friends, and as more donations come in, his average will drop sharply.

   Henry has the financial capacity to match Yarbro’s first-day total from his own checkbook, so it hardly matters.

   Both Berke and Yarbro are likely to raise a lot of money from trial lawyers, who like to elect liberal lawyers to protect themselves against tort reform.

7. The OG DG writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:45 pm

   Hobbs, I live in Henry’s district and there isn’t a majority of native Nashvillians in my neighborhood, norin my parents’ much fancier neighborhood. A lot of my neighbors have lived here less than 10 years. Now, that’s anecdotal, but I bet the numbers would bear me out.

   That outside agitators line doesn’t work as well in Nashville as it used to.

8. Bill Hobbs writes
   September 30th, 2009 3:47 pm

   People should know that a lot of first-day fund-raising hauls are orchestrated, not organic. People all over Tennessee didn’t just happen to read about Yarbro and decide to send him money even though they never met him.

   Likely, his campaign had pre-raised that money, and orchestrated it so that every pledged donor would give on day one, so it would look impressive.

   What you are seeing is not a campaign to beat Henry at the polls, but a campaign to convince Henry not to run. Yarbro’s team hopes an impressive start out of the gate will help nudge Henry out of the race.

   Their problem is that while $50,000 sounds impressive to you and me, it is chump change to Sen. Henry - and Yarbro likely can not repeat his first-day haul each day for the next 8 or 10 days.

9. Sean Braisted writes
   September 30th, 2009 4:04 pm

   Even if Henry “can” self-fund with no limitation, there is always the question of will he? He secured a $50K loan from Suntrust in his 2006 campaign, which he gave back because he didn’t need it. What we don’t know yet is how badly he wants to stay in office, whether he’s willing to fight, or whether this will give him an excuse he’s been looking for to relax in his retirement.

10. GoldnI writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:05 pm

    Hobbs, you sure seem very concerned over someone whom you believe has no chance. If he has no chance, why do you even need to spend any energy worrying about it?

11. Hate to say it writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:11 pm

    Likely, his campaign had pre-raised that money, and orchestrated it so that every pledged donor would give on day one, so it would look impressive.

    What you are seeing is not a campaign to beat Henry at the polls, but a campaign to convince Henry not to run. Yarbro’s team hopes an impressive start out of the gate will help nudge Henry out of the race.

    Their problem is that while $50,000 sounds impressive to you and me, it is chump change to Sen. Henry - and Yarbro likely can not repeat his first-day haul each day for the next 8 or 10 days.

    But Hobbs is right.

12. Freddie O'Connell writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:12 pm

    Hobbs must be concerned that Yarbro is looking strong enough that the Republican he’s consulting for in the district (who would’ve challenged Henry anyway) might have trouble.

13. GoldnI writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:14 pm

    Also, Hobbs, you do understand the difference between trial lawyers and corporate litigators, yes?

14. GoldnI writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:16 pm

    That’s true Freddie. A civil Democratic primary resulting in a strong candidate is not what they expected–they were hoping for Henry to go unchallenged to make it easier for the Republicans to whisper around about his age.

15. Amber Adams writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:20 pm

    I live in the 21st district. Today was the first day I heard of Yarbro, but after looking at his record and his positions I liked what I saw and contributed $25 to his campaign. I’ll probably be volunteering for his campaign. It’s not that I don’t like Doug Henry; I’ve voted for him in nearly every election since I turned 18, and although I don’t always agree with him, he seems a decent man and has provided endless entertainment during Senate meetings and debates. However, he’s also seriously aging (and sometimes showing his age in his response to certain issues), and I think it’s important to bring in some new blood that will take the Tennessee Senate in a positive direction after he’s gone. It’s better to make that transition smoothly now through the electoral process than to wait until he dies or is incapacitated in office. If I could afford to donate another $25 to Yarbro’s campaign every day for the next ten days I would, not just because I think it’s a good investment, but because I love it when Bill Hobbs is proven wrong not just in principle but by cold hard cash.

16. Steve Steffens (LWC) writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:29 pm

    A more cynical man than I might think that the GOP hand-wringing (allegedly) on behalf of Senator Henry might have more to do with the fact that he is 83, and might leave us unexpectedly at any time, resulting in an open seat that they think they might pick up.

    Naw, that’s WAY too cynical, isn’t it?

    

17. Bill Hobbs writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:31 pm

    Freddie, I’m not consulting for any GOP candidates in that Senate district. I don’t even know of any GOP candidates planning to make the run in that district.

    Goldnl, I’m not “worrying” about it - I’m writing about it, because it is interesting. As for the corporate litigator/trial lawyer thing, trial lawyers give money to corporate litigator candidates in order to influence them on tort reform. Democrat trial lawyers oppose tort reform, and they make sure that lawyers who get elected to public office know that, no matter what part of the legal industry they come out of, tort reform is not permissible because it threatens the gravy train of absurdly high damages which enrich trial lawyers and give them the ability to lavishly fund the Democratic Party.

    And a liberal lawyer running for office can’t push tort reform even if he/she supports it from their perspective as a corporate litigator, because it destroys their credibility as a liberal.

    It’s a shame, really, because tort reform and capping non-medical damages in med-mal cases would do wonders for lowering health care and health insurance costs, which would help a whole lot of people who can’t afford to give the max to liberal lawyers running for office.

18. Bill Hobbs writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:32 pm

    Steve, the first person to bring up Henry’s age and possible imminent sudden exit from office in mid-term was Sean Braisted, a liberal blogger, not a conservative or Republican.

19. Sean Braisted writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:33 pm

    Yeah, as if age wasn’t the first thing on everyone’s mind when Henry announced he was seeking re-election.

20. Johnsonville Brats writes
    September 30th, 2009 4:38 pm

    The Republicans can’t win that district in a special election or general election. Don’t let the GOP spin you.

21. The OG DG writes
    September 30th, 2009 5:00 pm

    I don’t think in his wildest dreams Hobbs thinks that it could be a GOP seat. Rather, I think he wants to put a stop to any candidacy of a young liberal office-seeker whose intelligence and credentials dwarf those of the collection of weirdos, zealots, and cranks who make up the bulk of elected Republicans in the state.

    That said, his analysis day one fundraising and the subtext of easing Senator Henry out of office was absolutely correct.

22. Johnsonville Brats writes
    September 30th, 2009 5:08 pm

    Are we sure Jeff Yarbro is a progressive? I see a lot of progressive bloggers claiming that he is, but I haven’t seen his stand on the issues yet.

23. Filo Betto writes
    September 30th, 2009 7:29 pm

    You

    all make me sick

    When you have no respect left no dignity

    When a douche like Hobbs.

    is involved in this conversation what have you democrats become ?

    You should be ashamed of yourselfs.

    Love

    Filo;

24. greatspeckledbird writes
    October 1st, 2009 6:01 pm

    Oh Tennessee
    Oh Tennessee
    It now belongs to the GOP
    I asked a Democrat what he could do for me
    He said move to Milwaukee.

25. Bill Hobbs writes
    October 2nd, 2009 10:55 am

    Two days later… We check ActBlue and it looks like I was right: Yarbro’s $50,000 on day one was an orchestrated money bomb, not just the first day of a sustained surge in gra$$root$ $upport.

    As of right now, his total has climbed to $54,067. So, he raised more than $50,000 “in one day,” we’re told, but very little on day two or three.

    The $50,000 “in one day” was, without a doubt, pre-raised over the previous few weeks or even months, with the pledge-ees all agreeing to submit their donations on the same day.

    A really smart campaign would even have collected credit/debit card numbers with the pledges, and then run them all on ActBlue on the “first” day.

    Yarbro’s campaign was being tactically smart - it needed to look like it was coming out of the gate fast and attracting surging grassroots support, in order to accomplish its real goal: convincing Sen. Henry not to run.

    Prediction: $50,000 isn’t going to accomplish that goal.

    So, assuming Yarbro is in it for the long-haul, they now move on to the fall-back goal: raising real money for a real campaign.

    That’s when the orchestrated first-day moneybomb becomes a problem for Yarbro. It failed to accomplish its real goal of driving Henry out of the race - and probably motivated Henry and his supporters to get busy sooner with raising money for Henry’s campaign. But it also set an unrealistically high expectation for Yarbro’s campaign. Each day that the total on ActBlue doesn’t climb significantly is another day underlining just how limited Yarbro’s support really is.

    And nothing kills fund-raising more for a challenger to a beloved incumbent but the perception that he can’t raise money.

    I previously predicted - a day before his ActBlue moneybomb - that Yarbro wouldn’t raise more than $50,000. Obviously he will - he already has.

    He might raise $100,000 or even $150,000, but it’s going to trickle in. And what is he going to spend it on? Yard signs? Henry’s supporters have them in their garages already from the last 47 campaigns.

    TV?

    Yarbro can’t go negative on Henry, so he’ll make positive ads, and the voters will think “What a nice young man - but SenatorDougHenry is nice - and experienced! And we know him!”

    Besides, you just KNOW that at some point in the race, the local TV news will do a story showing Henry going door-to-door in the district, and the Yarbro camp’s whispering campaign about Henry’s age will be rendered impotent - if it hasn’t been already by the fact that a huge number of voters in the district are closer to Henry’s age than to Yarbro’s, and they NEVER miss an election.

    Yarbro loses this race by 20 points.