Last week, the people-powered Howie Hawkins 2020 Green Party presidential campaign submitted its latest campaign finance filing to the FEC for the quarter ending September 30, 2019. Our filing is available on the FEC website.

As the campaign’s treasurer, I’m excited to share our promising numbers:

• We’ve raised more than $60,000 as of this writing.
• We have more than 850 individual donors.
• We have more than 1,400 donations.
• Our average donation is $44.

On Track to Federal Matching Funds

The best news is, our campaign is on track to qualify for the Federal Matching Funds program, where the government doubles donations to our campaign for the duration of the primary (including all the donations that have been made since we first launched), up to $250 per individual donor. In order to qualify, we need to raise $5,000 in each of 20 states (only the first $250 per donor counts). We’ve already done that in California and New York, and we’re more than a quarter of the way there in another dozen states, including Texas, which is at 85%, as well as Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina, which are all more than 40% of the way there.  You can see the progress of your own state at our Matching Funds Progress page.

Though our campaign is on track to qualify for federal matching funds, it’s important that we meet the goal sooner rather than later—because naturally, when our donations are doubled now, we can do the urgent work to build the party now instead of having to wait for months.

For one, with double the money coming into our campaign sooner, the Hawkins team will be able to mount a serious ballot-access drive to place the Green Party on the ballot in as many states as possible before the upcoming petitioning deadlines in those states. But we’re not waiting for that, because with our donors’ support, we have already hired signature gatherers in Arizona to help them meet their November 2019 deadline. It’s been reported by Stein/Baraka 2016 staff that their campaign spent over $800,000 on ballot access alone, and we need to be prepared to do the same. Stein/Baraka were on more ballots than even Nader’s 2000 campaign. And none of that would have been possible had the Stein campaign not qualified for federal primary matching funds early during the primary season. We hope to qualify even earlier. If you’re considering waiting until the primary is over before you donate, please reconsider and donate today, so you can help us achieve matching funds and have your donation doubled.

How to Read Our FEC Reports

The FEC requires that donations from donors who have contributed more than $200 to our campaign be itemized. Thus, all donors who have contributed more than $200 to our campaign have been listed on our FEC reports online. But the FEC does not require campaigns to itemize “small” donations of $200 or less, and thus the vast majority of our donations are not itemized in our FEC reports. So, most of our donors are not itemized in our FEC reports because they are small donors. Instead, the money they contribute is reflected in the line “unitemized individual contributions.” These unitemized contributions represent not only the majority of our donors but also the majority of the money we’ve raised—multiple retired librarians, multiple unemployed folks, service industry workers, janitors, and many teachers are stepping up to fund our working-class campaign. As a retired Teamster, Howie does not have thousands of dollars to self-fund this campaign; instead, we’re funded by people like you—our working-class base, which is what the Green Party is all about.

All in all, among the Green presidential candidates, the FEC reports indicate that Howie is far ahead of the rest of the candidates combined on every fundraising metric: number of donations, number of donors, number of small donors, and total money raised. These numbers and other campaign efforts clearly indicate that Howie Hawkins has the most support among Greens, and for that we are really excited and grateful.

Volunteers Needed

To that end, the Hawkins campaign is looking for Greens who are interested in phone or text banking other Greens and supporters in their state on our contact lists in order to meet our fundraising goals. We have lists, scripts, and other resources set up to get started now.

We are proud to demonstrate what a Green working-class campaign looks like, and we invite you to join us, whether as a volunteer or a donor. To volunteer, sign up at at the Volunteer page.

Solidarity!
Travis Christal, CPA
Treasurer
Howie Hawkins 2020

For finance-related questions, email travis@howiehawkins.us.