On Saturday, the Obama campaign sent an email to supporters mentioning Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who has donated millions to Republican super PACs. Politico noticed the email and noted that Adelson is becoming a useful fundraising pitch to the Obama reelection team.
This isn’t the first time Adelson’s name has been used to rally support — the Democratic Party sent out an email a few weeks ago that mentioned Adelson, and the Obama campaign quoted a Politico story about Adelson in an email they sent in late May.
In Saturday’s email, the campaign asked its supporters to donate between $3 and $250, depending on how much the supporter had donated before. One email sent mostly to women — in ProPublica’s sample — warned “Every time a billionaire like Sheldon Adelson drops $10 million into our opponent’s lap like it’s nothing, it becomes even clearer that we can only win by building the strongest grassroots organization in history.” Another message focussed much less on Adelson and instead leveled an attack on Romney: “Romney is out of touch — he doesn’t understand the problems middle-class Americans face, and you can’t fix problems you don’t understand.”
Monday, the Romney campaign sent an email aimed at Barack Obama: “What would a second term under President Obama look like?” it asked, and then answered: “stifled economic growth, unacceptably high levels of unemployment, and an unstable economy.”
We only know of one version of the Romney campaign email. But that’s not necessarily because his campaign is any less sophisticated. The fact is, we aren’t yet getting enough Romney emails to be able to say much decisively about how the campaign is targetting supporters — and there’s something you can do about that.
Are you a Republican who gets campaign emails? Forward them to us! Do you have a Republican friend who gets campaign emails? Recruit them to forward the emails to us! All they have to do is forward any messages to [email protected] and we’ll take care of the rest.
Neither campaign responded to our requests for comment.
