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Obama for America
Obama for America
"Jim
Messina:
April
Fundraising
& Paths to 270 Update"
+
4:44 web video from May 16, 2012.
[Music]
Jim Messina: Hey
everybody. I'm Jim Messina, the President's campaign
manager. I
want to give you a quick update on what we've been up to this month,
and what that's going to mean between now and November.
We had
169,500 first-time donors in April—putting us within reach of 2 million
donors this election cycle. And here's my favorite part: our average
donation was $50.23, with 98 percent of those donations $250 or less.
That makes our campaign different, and it's how we're going to build a
winning organization across the country.
One of the most
important things we can do is get our arms around that fact this
election is going to be close given the historic challenges the nation
faced when the President first came into office. Oil company executives
and other special interests are dumping millions of dollars in Super
Pac attack ads.
In fact as this chart shows, we got almost $60
million in spending against the President and his policies so far in
this campaign by the other side. The last two weeks have shown this
clearly. The Koch-brothers funded Super Pac spent $6 million dollars on
TV ads attacking the President. Mitt Romney's Super Pac put another $4
million on the air. That's $10 million in ads from two outside groups
who can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.
While
Governor Romney has run an almost solely negative campaign tearing down
the President, we started this campaign with a series of positive ads.
These ads talked about where we started and what the President is doing
to move this country forward. This is the kind of campaign we are
running, and it's the reason your contributions are so important.
A
few months ago, I walked folks through the different pathways we could
take to get to 270 electoral votes. Now that we're in the general
election, let's take a look at how we're doing on a few of those
pathways.
As you can see, the "West Path" includes states like
Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Some of these are states that
Democrats hadn't won in years until 2008. This month, we put 12 new
staff members in Colorado and signed up 51 new Neighborhood Team
Leaders. We opened brand new offices in New Mexico and Nevada. We can
win there in 2012, but only if we can keep building great teams and
opening up offices.
We can't count on Florida alone to take
us to 270—but it is the easiest way to get there. That's why we're
building a massive operation on the ground—opening up five new field
offices in April alone and signing up 56 new Neighborhood Team Leaders.
Now let's take a look at our "South Path", which counts on
some places we won big in local races in 2011. We hired 22 new staff
members in North Carolina this April because we believe so strongly
that we can win the south this time around. Just this month in North
Carolina we registered over 15,000 voters. That's a big deal because we
won the state by less than that last time. And we opened four new field
offices in Virginia, which has become a major trendsetter in national
politics.
The "Midwest Path" leans on Ohio—one of the places
where we're doing the most work on the ground—and Iowa. And thanks to
six new field offices in Ohio and 61 new team leaders and a batch of
new team members in Iowa, we're well on our way to victory. And while
Governor Romney's declaration that he would let Detroit go bankrupt has
led to much criticism across the state of Michigan, we need to organize
our way to victory through hard work every day in the Upper Midwest.
And
finally, if 2008 taught us anything, it's that we can't count on
anyone's old map—even ours. We need new ways to put every state into
play. That's why we hired new staff in Arizona this April—it wasn't a
swing state last time around, but if we can help register the hundreds
of thousands of eligible voters who missed out in 2008, we can put it
on the table this November.
So thanks to everyone who stepped
up to support the campaign. Together, we raised more than $43 million
from 437,323 grassroots supporters in April alone—helping us to open up
42 new field offices around the country. Those offices, plus the 120
new team members we were able to hire, means that we can be out there
every day training volunteers, knocking on doors, making phone calls,
and registering new voters.
I am sure you are as proud of the
President as I am. Just in the last weeks he has laid out a plan to end
the war in Afghanistan, made a historic statement on gay marriage, and
kept the pressure up on Congress to take steps to improve this economy.
There's no question he is the President we need.
It's going to be an exciting six months—let's go win this.
Notes: A dual purpose video
covering both fundraising and electoral possibilities.