January 30, 2006

Vets for Congress

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Eric Massa is an interesting character. He’s a naval veteran running for Congress as a Democrat in New York’s 29th district. He was profiled at Mother Jones, along with other vets running for Congress, back in October and since then the meme has really taken off. Yesterday Massa posted at TPMCafe (where he’s a regular contributor) in an effort to let the world know the vets-for-congress movement has now reached 53 Democrats. Massa is extremely bright and his campaign website has lots of content on tough issues, all thought through and written by the candidate himself. (He even has a blog.) He’s running against an incumbent who barely won his last race—this puts Massa in a different position than most of his fellow veterans. A lot of the Democratic veterans are running in solidly Republican districts, where they hope their military background will make voters comfortable with voting for a Democrat.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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