We Plan To Increase Our Campaign Contributions By 20x

Friends – For this year’s elections, we've decided to “put our money where our mouths are” and we'd love your thoughts on our (currently draft) thinking about campaign donations.

In past elections, and for certain issues, we've occasionally made small $25, $50 or $100 political donations here-or-there, but mostly we've stayed away from donating to politics, because what can one family's small donation really do? According to the Pew Research Center only 12% of Americans donate to political candidates, and we're in that group, but only just barely. We know we're small donors.

But this year’s election feels way too important for us to just make a few Facebook posts, volunteer a little time, or make a couple small donations. This year feels *extremely* important to send a message to the world that -- dinosaurs are extinct and America is *not* a nation of ignorant bigots. We are a nation of intelligent, thoughtful, respectful citizens who believe in democracy, science, civil rights and character.

As many of you know, I'm an innovation and solutions-oriented centrist, but for this November’s election, we've decided as a family that we will *only* vote for Democrats or Centrists, and we will not pull the lever for a single Republican candidate (despite having done so numerous times in the past). An extremely strong message needs to be sent to the Republican Party, and this is the way to send it -- with power.

In addition, we’ve decided that we're going to donate a *significant* amount of money (at least for us) to 20 Congressional candidates who we believe have the best chance of dethroning the worst Republicans, by which we mean those particular Republicans who've voted in lockstep with Donald Trump over the past year, and have supported his continuous degrading of the American Presidency.

Right now we're thinking we actually might donate 20x more to this election than all the previous campaigns we've donated to in the past (which would be *a lot* of money for our family). We thought about sharing the exact amount here on Facebook, but decided that would be too gauche, because our friends vary in income level -- and the main idea here is that we want to encourage all of you to also think beyond the $5, $50, $500 or $5,000 you might normally consider donating, and consider how much the future of American democracy is really worth to you.

Here’s the formula we're thinking about using for each candidate:

First – Does the insurgent candidate have a *realistic chance* of winning against the Republican incumbent? Do you know any new Democratic candidates running in Republican districts we should consider donating to? (We plan to focus 80% of our donations on Congressional Districts either won by Hillary in 2016 or where she lost by less than 5%. These districts are most likely to flip in 2018 – and there are around 50 of these winnable Republican seats according to the Cook Political Report). 

Second – Is the Democratic candidate someone we’d be proud to say we donated to? (Anyone with a significant character scandal will be eliminated; anyone with significant prior public service or business success will be elevated; if the candidate displays an evidence-based, non-ideological, solutions-oriented approach that will also get them extra credit).

Third – We will focus 10% of our donations on two districts where the worst Republicans need to be removed but it’s a long-shot. The worst Congressional Republicans (in our opinion) are those behaving like “Trump’s Toadies”, preventing real checks-and-balances from operating effectively, specifically Devin Nunes and Steve King.

Finally – We will use 10% of our donations to support Centrist candidates. Third parties are growing in strength as the Republicans charge right and the Democrats pull left and we want to help the most viable, most solutions-oriented, balanced budget pragmatic candidates we can find (regardless of whether at the local, State or Federal level). We will be looking closely for viable, sensible Centrist, Independent or Libertarian candidates and we'd love to hear your nominations.

This is just a draft of our thinking. We're very open to feedback -- and candidate recommendations. Any thoughts? (There will be more posts on this subject as we do our research, hear suggestions form you, and announce which candidates we plan to support.)