Grayson Money Bomb’ Raises $500,000
Outspoken freshman Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) raised more than $500,000 for his re-election effort during a one-day online “money bomb— event held Monday, one year before the 2010 elections.Grayson’s Web site, congressmanwithguts.com, broke the half-million-dollar fundraising mark early Tuesday morning, and in a press release Tuesday afternoon, the Congressman’s campaign announced that more than 13,000 people made contributions during the fundraising push. The average contribution was just less than $40 during the money bomb — a term used to describe a coordinated grass-roots fundraising effort over a specified period of time.“We have created a new paradigm for a Congressional campaign,— Grayson said in the release. “What we’ve demonstrated is that you can finance a campaign for a competitive district in an expensive media market through People Power. Not by sucking up to lobbyists, special interests or favor-seekers.—Grayson has quickly become a lightning rod since he took to the House floor to declare that the Republican plan for addressing the nation’s health care issues was to “don’t get sick— and, if you get sick, to “die quickly.— Conservatives are also looking to raise money from across the nation as they target the central-Florida Congressman for defeat in 2010.To push back against congressmanwithguts.com, conservatives in the 8th district started the Web site mycongressmanisnuts.com and registered it as a fundraising committee with the Federal Election Commission late last week. That site, which is built to look very similar to Grayson’s, had raised just less than $4,000 from 92 donors as of Tuesday afternoon.