Charles Gaba is not a Super PAC, but he and his site Blue24.org could be.
Since the founder of ACAsignups.net added political fundraising to his activism in 2018, he has raised over $8 million to back Democratic candidates.
That’s more than many PACs; the big difference between Charles and a PAC is that he takes nothing. You can support his efforts. But if you give at Blue24.org the money goes directly to the candidate or committee you’re backing minus any transaction fees. And that’s not what PACs do!
Charles epitomizes the earlyworm ethic that we think can help save democracy. He turned his passion for democracy into action. That helps other earlyworms take action and invite other earlybirds and normal people to do a little more to fight for our freedoms.
He’s even helping us raise money for State Supreme Court races, which will only become more money in the Dobbs era.
Not everyone can be Charles, and not everyone needs to be. Thanks to his efforts, he makes what we all want for democracy a little easier. He inspires us with his commitment and by revealing how many people out there want to do more if they’re just given a chance.
Catch up on all the episodes of “How are you feeling about democracy?” here.
If you want to back this podcast, please join the earlyworm society – free or paid, your support matters. You can also show your support with a one-time gift or by sharing this with anyone who cares about democracy.
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TRANSCRIPT
Charles Gaba: Oh, by the way, I want to shout out the website itself.
Jason Sattler: I will do that at the top.
Charles Gaba: It's Blue24.org, B L U E 2 4. org. I want to stress a couple of important things. I am not a PAC. It's just a repository of links to the individual ActBlue pages. The money goes directly to the various candidates listed.
Jason Sattler: Is there a legal reason you have to stress that you're not a PAC? Because I noticed that your catchy tagline is, "Not a PAC."
Charles Gaba: No, I'm not legally required to say that. I want people to understand that I don't take any of it. This is something that's become really important.
Like everybody else, I get flooded with fundraising emails. Many are from party organizations you've heard of and trust, but then you get them from PACs you've never heard of.
There are dozens of these: Make America Blue PAC, Take Our Country Back PAC, this PAC, that PAC, the other PAC. In some cases, they're fine. But some of them use very vague language. It'll have a picture of John Tester. John Tester needs our help. But when you actually click the link, it'll tell you. The money does not go to John Tester's campaign. It goes to this PAC.
How much of the money does the PAC give to him? Who knows? So I decided to look it up. I started looking at Open Secrets and the FEC, and I found that in some cases, only 30 percent or less of the money they raise is actually going to actual candidates.
The rest is going to amorphous overhead. I'm not saying that they're doing anything illegal. In fact, it probably all is perfectly legal, which in some ways is almost more of a problem. But the point is that all I'm doing is collecting candidates together, putting them on a page, and making it easy for people to donate.
The money goes directly to their campaigns. ActBlue does take their 4% because they're a credit card processor, and they have overhead for running their site and for running their services, but that's it. I don't get any of it. I do not take one dime.
Sure. I started back in, actually in 2018 was the first time that I dipped my toe into the fundraising cycle. Prior to that, obviously, I chipped in money myself, but it was the first time that I actually tried raising money myself. And really, it's all based on ActBlue has this wonderful toolset of features where anyone who has an ActBlue account, which you need to login and password and such, can create your own fundraising pages for whatever candidates you want, who have an account.
The nice thing is that it doesn't have to be a single candidate. It could be one, fifty, or just about any candidate.
You could pick any candidate who was named Nancy, for instance, and decide to make a page for that, for some reason.
Yeah, exactly. As long as they have an active ActBlue account. There are a couple of exceptions to that because, in some states...
Jason Sattler: But you've got to get pretty far to have that problem.
Charles Gaba: Yeah, like 90 percent of the time, if you can just slap together any whatever candidates, state Democratic party, a county party. If they have an account, you can put them all on the same page, and then you can have a slate page, and people can donate.
By default, whatever they donate is split evenly among those listed. But they also have a tool where you can pick and choose. If you have ten on a page, Donate $100. By default, it will be split $10 a piece, but you can also go in and say, "No, I want $50 to go to this one."
So I started doing that in 2018, but it was mostly for Michigan candidates for Michigan Legislative and then also, you know, Governor Whitmer and so on, and I think I raised something like $100,000 or something, which I, you know, I thought was, hey, that's pretty good for these candidates.
Jason Sattler: Amazing. Amazing.. I'm just telling you that right now because I'm experimenting with this... A hundred thousand dollars is amazing.
Charles Gaba: And so in, for the 2020 cycle, that was when I actually got serious about it, and I became more organized about how I was doing it. My initial target was $250,000 for the entire cycle for all candidates. It was really focused on federal races, House and Senate, and then I had one for Michigan, and then I had a couple for a couple of other state legislative pages, and that was about it.
I was hoping to raise a quarter million dollars, and somehow, it just turned—it really just went crazy. When the dust settled in November 2020, I found that I had raised almost $6 million total, which was just crazy.
Jason Sattler: Which is enough to lose to Marjorie Taylor Green by 30%.
Charles Gaba: I struggle because there are two schools of thought about fundraising.
One is the focus on the swings, the swing races only, focus on the races that you know we have a decent shot at. And don't waste, quote unquote waste money on anything else. The flip side of that is that the 50-state strategy is that you should leave no Dem behind. Don't cede any territory because if you abandon an area, you have no chance of winning it back down the line.
And so there are entire states and entire counties, entire sections of states that Democrats over the years have just given up on completely. And, of course, in a lot of cases, there's nobody, and there's no Democrat on the ballot, so you can't possibly hope to win back support.
So I tried, so I tried, I experimented, and I ended up trying to split the difference on that. What was really interesting about 2020 was that some key things were going on there. First of all, of course, you had COVID, right? Yes, if you recall, that, of course, made a lot of changes in how campaigning was done, and there was a lot less canvassing and that sort of thing.
The other big thing was that at the time, Democrats had flipped the House, but of course, the President of the White House and the Senate were in Republican hands. And then, of course, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, people absolutely panicked, with very good reason.
So, over 80 percent of that $6 million I raised was for the U.S. Senate. And people, especially after she passed away in mid-September—yeah, in mid-September 2020, it just went... People were pouring in unbelievable amounts. I was raising over $10,000 an hour at one point the first few days after she passed away, and it was like a vertical line, just shot straight up.
A lot of that was, in retrospect, wasted. I raised something like $350,000 for Jamie Harrison in South Carolina. And, great guy. Yeah. Yeah.
In the case of Maine, again, I'm not an expert on the race, but my understanding is that part of the problem there is was that was because, ironically, because there was so much outside money; Maine is, it's a small state, it's a quiet state, it's like the oldest average population you had just millions of dollars of outside funding coming in. I don't know how it was being spent. But there are only so many pamphlets you can print and mail, and there's only so much airtime you can buy.
Jason Sattler: I think that you walk that fine line. You want to bring people into the action and make sure that they're doing something about it without kind of. I've never seen you give anyone false hope. I think that's one impressive thing you do.
Charles Gaba: My general rule of thumb for how I place, and pick which races to cover, to include, is for statewide races, which is, Senate, U. S. Senate and then, Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and then, it's like State Supreme Court, anything that's statewide I list every Republican-held state, I list the swing states as well as any Republican-held state, no matter how ridiculously red it is. And my reasoning there is, first of all, because there are not many races; there are a few dozen of each, so I can fit them all on the page without becoming unwieldy. But mainly because I'm trying to trust the intelligence of the average donor. The average donor knows that if you're going to put and donate money at the state level, you should know that Oklahoma is a deep red state and Wyoming is a deep red state.
If you're doing that, I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me your reasons. It may be about party building, or maybe they're going to lose this one, but they're an up-and-comer. They look like rising stars or something like that. You could have any number of reasons why you're donating at the state level.
For district races, U. S. House and then all state legislatures state Senate state House races, that's where it's a different story. Again, for two reasons. First, because there's just too damn many of them. There are over 7,000 state legislative districts nationally, plus 435 in the House. So you're talking like 7,500 districts or more. I can't list or include them all. I would defeat the whole point. So I do, narrow it down. However, I do not limit myself to just the absolute core, dead evened toss-up districts either. I cast my net a bit wider. I try to go with a plus or minus nine, PVI, which basically means it's all else being equal you would expect this seat to, that the Democrat to be, to win by up to nine points, or the Republican to win by up to nine points. And so that's the range that I generally use. There are a few exceptions here and there, but I try to limit them. That usually brings it down to a couple dozen seats in each state for legislative and around 40 or 50 U. S. House seats. And that way, again it's a lot, it's more than most people would say I should focus on, but it's not all of them.
I'm shifting most of my attention to the state legislature this time around for a couple of reasons. First, because all of these are important. Obviously, the White House, as is the Senate, and flipping the House is also vitally important.
But, again, Governor, state-level races are very important. But the state legislature this time around, I'm really going all out. I've created pages for every single state. Some of which are basically, I'm not even expecting anyone to donate.
Jason Sattler: That's how Charles plays, and that's just, you have to be that to me, to feel good about what you're doing, and that's great.
Charles Gaba: At first, I had President Biden included on every one of these pages. You're going to have all these state legislative races, plus President Biden, us Senate plus president. I just threw him on everything. I actually just removed him from all of them simply because he's raising insane amounts of money without me.
Yeah, he's doing quite well. He, my, if I raise $50,000 for him, that's, he, that's a drop in the bucket. It's the same thing to a lesser degree for the Senate. I am raising money for Senate races very much, but they are raising tens of millions of, and most of them are raising plenty of money through their own campaigns. It really is that the further down the food chain you get, the further down the line in the ballot you get; that's where the money where small donations become more and more important.
Some state legislative races go into the millions of dollars, but there are also, hundreds of 'em where the race is just, the entire, both cam, both the Republican and Democrat combined, might be talking less than six figures in some, small districts and such in some states. Yeah, a couple thousand dollars for someone running for state house in Montana could make a difference. Also, the lower down you go... Some people are concerned about bail because they think, "Oh all, it's just going to go to a bunch of TV ads." Yeah, a lot of it will be, but that's part of the campaigning.
But for a local race, that same 20 bucks or so that might go to actually, pay for the phone line they need, for a burner phone, they need to do, telemarketing, that sort of thing. So it's about how the money is being used and so forth.
Jason Sattler: It gets them off the phone.
One thing they talk a lot about the States Project, which is working with the target legislatures is to get the candidates out of the business of fundraising full-time and make it and making knocking on the doors a priority.
Charles Gaba: I've got one for every state legislature. I've got one for the House, one for the Senate. I've got one for special elections, which is something I'm doing that's new.
Jason Sattler: Following Charles is one way to know that special elections are going on.
Charles Gaba: And by the way, I should absolutely give a shout to some of my data sources.
Ballotpedia, of course, is a vital resource for knowing who's running, when special elections are, and all sorts of other election data. Also, I use the Cook Political Report for the PVI data for the U.S. House. Then, for the state legislative districts, it's called Dave's Redistricting. And they basically do something similar to what Cook, Cook does, and, um, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, that sort of thing. But they do the same sort of thing, but they do it for all 7,000-plus state legislative races. They have all the data, and it is downloadable. I think it's not; I think it's like a non-profit. I'm not sure how they're structured. But I advise people to check them out. And, chip in a few bucks to them if they, if, you feel so inclined. Because that's where I get my data for the lien of various legislative seats. So I've got pages for all of those.
In fact, just today, I am launching one more page. I wasn't going to do this, but I decided to after all for State Supreme Court races. This is something that I dabbled in in 2022, and I wasn't going to do it this year simply because the rules for donations get a little wonky for judicial races in some states. After all, in a lot of states, they're considered nonpartisan races, so there are legal hurdles in terms of how they're allowed to raise money and who they can be on the page with and that sort of thing. Some candidates want to avoid being associated with partisan fundraising.
And so I have, I think, six candidates listed at the moment.
Jason Sattler: And there was a great article in Bolts that came out a couple of weeks ago about how important state Supreme Courts have been, and this is something that Sam Bagenstos was pointing out in 2018 when he was running for state Supreme Court, unfortunately did not win. But the reason he decided to run is because, given how bad this federal Supreme Court is, the state Supreme Court is basically the only bulwark against many constitutional rights.
For instance, you could see the bad version of this in Arizona, where the packed Supreme Court was the reason the 1864 ban came back.
Charles Gaba: It's the only reason why Wisconsin, which has been terribly gerrymandered For you know a solid decade now.
Jason Sattler: Worse than Michigan, which is saying something.
Charles Gaba: Yes, he is no longer gerrymandered for this this fall because of the redistricting which was ordered by the State Supreme Court.
So yes, they're vitally important for any number of reasons. As you said, they're like the last line of defense, given what's happened to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jason Sattler: So, just moving on to this, so you've already raised half a million dollars for 2024, focused on state legislative races.
Most people can't just start doing what Charles is doing because Charles has built up this network. He's been an active, vital contributor to Daily Kos for more than a decade. He's done these ACA signups, which were national news. Often, Charles's reporting was relied on by everyone. And it still is when it comes to health care. He also has a big social media presence. He had a blue check before you could buy one.
Yeah, this is where I'm going to get into the caveat: " Don't try to be Charles Gaba, in any sense of the word, because Charles is an unusual person." This is why I would call him an earlyworm Hall of Famer.
Charles Gaba: It's the one type of political activism that I seem to be really good at.
I'm trying to make a difference in any way I can. This is the one area I seem to be really good at. It also happens to dovetail nicely with what I do every day anyway: sitting in front of my computer. And frankly, I'm scared to death about democracy in the United States and globally.
We desperately need to keep the White House, keep the Senate, flip the U.S. House, and hold and flip as many state legislative seats and legislatures as we can. And so I am putting everything I can into it this year.
I know that money is not everything.
Of course it isn't, right? But it is, but it's not nothing either. It's a big part of allowing boots on the ground, knocking on doors, phone banking, getting the word out, and writing letters. All that stuff requires resources, so I'm doing what I can to help raise as many resources as possible.
Jason Sattler: Money is not the only thing. Activism is extremely important on any level that you can do it. Whatever, phone banking, whatever. If you're good at all the things that Charles and I aren't good at, and you can do all those things and you like doing those things or you don't like doing those things and you force yourself to do it and that's incredible. But, for a lot of people, money is the only thing they can do. They don't have the time. They don't have the ability.
What really impresses me most about that is that you give people a chance to channel their best instincts into the best possible way to do it. And I really appreciate that, Charles.
I just wanted to thank you personally for that. And thank you for your time.
Charles Gaba: I really appreciate being on the show and again: Blue24.org
Jason Sattler: Yes, that's a good plug. Thank you.
“Not a PAC” with Charles Gaba