Update: We broke through $50,000. Amazing. THANK YOU! Can you help get to $70K?
So I'm back on the ground in Maine helping the online team. Things are a little intense, so a few quick bullet points:
The latest polling from Public Policy Polling came out at midnight, showing us down 51-47%. Their methodology has a few problems with it, but they've consistently shown our opponents trending upward.
The field team is firing on all cylinders. Biggest concern is youth turnout in off-year. In 2005, an anti-discrimination ballot initiative went our way and we had one campus field organizer for the whole state. This year we have nine. But the numbers are tight as hell, and if turnout is like a normal election year, we'll lose. Everyone is saying we have to execute a flawless program.
A fun chunk of the progressive and LGBT blogosphere has come to Maine for the final push. John and Joe from AMERICABlog are both here, Julia Rosen from Courage/Calitics/C&L, Jeremy Hooper from Good As You, a number of others. We're all spread out in field, online, video.
Our opponents just pushed out a $25,000 fundraising push yesterday and used it to buy this radio ad that just came out:
They also jumped their online ad buy (it's really fun being here in Maine and now ads are geo-targeted to me, so I see them a lot more).
The campaign needs to increase its own buy to respond, but we need to raise to do it- we've put a lot of money into field. We put up a red alert this morning. $15,000 has come in the last hour. The campaign is calling it a "red alert" because we literally could be swamped on radio, online, and TV today and tomorrow- and as I wrote here, their last two ads are the most effective of the cycle. $25,000 buys a LOT of time in Maine.
If you could give just one more time for the campaign, it would go a very, very long way. Tomorrow is the big day. Thanks for this one last bit of help.
Last last night I heard that Stand For Marriage Maine's latest ads was pulled on YouTube due to an NPR copyright violation. In the ad, the actress (if you can call her that, as she's awful) used an NPR clip, albeit with attribution.
National Public Radio is demanding that the Stand for Marriage Maine group stop using its content in television ads supporting a people's veto of a new same-sex marriage law.
[...]
"NPR did not license use of this story or its content, and would certainly not have licensed or permitted it if we had been asked," Rehm said in a statement. "NPR is a highly respected news organization and does not allow its content to be used by political or advocacy groups. Such use is harmful to the integrity and independence of NPR. NPR does allow - even encourage -- personal, non-commercial use of our content, so long as it is not modified, and not used in a manner that suggests NPR promotes or endorses a cause, idea, Web site, product or service. The use made by Stand for Marriage Maine violated all of these terms."
What is interesting to me is how NPR seems to stand out alone among news media in this regard- campaign attack ads use clips of opponents in debates, forums, etc. all the time. Even presidential campaigns do, and I don't hear about protests from the news media that aired the clip. And I'm a little wary of the restriction- if I did an interview to promote my new website on NPR, I can't use the clip in promotional activities?
It does all add up to a nice waste of money by SFMM, though. Whoops.
Update: Marc Mutty, who runs the Stand For Marriage Maine campaign (our opponents), said today on Maine Public Broadcasting Network "We've never said that schools will be mandated- or, actually, perhaps we did in one ad, or certainly led people to believe that, inadvertently." Wow.
The Yes On 1 campaign has gone more or less all on one message: that a change in Maine law would force local schools to teach marriage equality. It's been the focus of their last three advertisements and mentioned in a fourth. It's been debunked by all of the state's largest newspapers, the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, the Maine Department of Education, a coalition of former attorneys general and law experts, and most recently by the current Maine Attorney General. 61.6% of likely voters in last week's poll said they didn't believe the line.
Today I went to a press conference where Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree (the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree) and former Attorney General Jim Tierney spoke about the lies in the ads and Yes On 1's attacks on the current Maine Attorney General for her opinion.
It will be interesting to see if our opponents concentrate everything on this message through election day. Our side is hitting them senseless on the issue, and the over $1.15 million you chipped in last week helped put this ad on the air.
The buzz on the ground today is that the Bangor Daily News- a usually fairly conservative paper- said No on 1. Bangor is the 2nd-largest city in the state, with 34,000 people, and I'm told is a good deal more conservative than down here in southern Maine, so this matters. The piece hit especially on the religious aspect of it, which I wrote about yesterday around my interview with Bishop Gene Robinson. They said:
The repeal effort has been led by the Roman Catholic Diocese. Bishop Richard Malone called same-sex marriage "a dangerous sociological experiment." The fact that gay couples have existed for generations - many of them raising children - counters this argument. Worse, however, is the church's attempt to force its views on all Maine's residents, whether they are Catholic or not.
Not only is this a big and welcome surprise (the executive editor, Mark Woodward, worked for Sen. Collins, and his wife still does), but the editorial is very well-written. And talking to political folks on the ground, I've learned that newspapers and their editorials here are a much bigger deal than in many parts of the country. Editorials are discussed at the grocery store, over brunch, at work. One example of that is that the editorial got 360 501 (h/t Chico David RN) comments online- pretty amazing for a circulation of its size. I see lots of WaPo endorsements not nearly as discussed.
I'm usually meh about newspaper editorials, but as Joe Sudbay wrote, when they come as a surprise, and when they matter a great deal up in Maine, it's a huge boost to the campaign.
Today, the Maine Sunday Telegram/Portland Press Herald (the largest in the state) also said No on 1. Their take hits on different points than the BDN, principally, which I look at in the extended entry.
So the Hey Hey Ho Ho Equality Has Got to GoYes on 1 campaign in Maine came out with their first ad, and the good news is that, well, it's not so great.
Aside from being a classic fear ad, it strikes me as wholly inauthentic. I don't know what's with the Boston College expert walking around his office (did they just flip through their rolodex and pick a name at random?), freaky Thriller music and lots of words running across the screen all at once. Contrasted to the first two No On 1/Protect Maine Equality ads below with two authentic families, it's a dud.
Here's the bad news. The Break Up FamiliesYes on 1 campaign's ad buy is $700,000, enough for each voter to see that ad 20 times.
But there's also some more good news. The No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign just launched a peer-to-peer fundraising tool to use to hit up friends, family and colleagues you have. I've played with it a bit, and it's pretty easy to use.
I just thought about it, and I have plenty of LGBT friends who are not invested in this campaign because it's way up in Maine, but should be, the same way we all care who wins a random primary election somewhere else. I believe the Maine campaign- particularly in the wake of the Prop 8 loss- will be an important moment in progressive and LGBT politics. If they win, their side is batting 1.000 on marriage ballot votes since 2004. That's critical for the haters to keep receiving support and funding from the right-wing. Our side will also be severely demoralized after this and Prop 8. If we win, we preserve the rights of Mainer families and have an important victory to take to the bank. We have to win.
That's why I'm writing tonight, using this tool, to ask them to support a campaign that will affect us all. And you'll support quality ads and what I and many colleagues know to be a very good campaign staff. I hope you'll join me.
STATE BLOGS
So I'm back on the ground in Maine helping the online team. Things are a little intense, so a few quick bullet points:
