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Candidate Websites and the First Quarter Reporting Deadline

BY Spencer Overton | Wednesday, March 28 2007

The first quarter FEC reporting deadline is only a couple of days away (March 31). Some sites are making a big push for Internet contributions.

Hillary Clinton's site is perhaps the most prominent and explicit. It leads with a big statement "End-of-Quarter Deadline 3 Days Away," a red tab that says "Contribute," and includes a video of Bill asking for money by the deadline.

Edwards has a tab that says "$1,750,656 from 18,151 contributors, contribute by midnight Saturday. . . . .Contribute with ActBlue by the end of the quarter."

Obama has tab that says "You Count," and a goal of 75,000 people and 100,000 contributions, and has 70,865 people and 94,656 contributions so far, and another tab that references a community kickoff event on March 31, 2007 (Disclosure: I'm supporting Obama and I've raised money for him).

Bill Richardson has an alternating message board in which one of the three messages is "End of Quarter" and proclaims that the campaign's end of the quarter deadline is "six" days away (I last checked the site at 11:45 pm on March 28), and hopes to reach a goal of $500,000. A hot pepper on the right (which I assume is timely) suggests that Richardson is at $299,430.

On the Republican side, Duncan Hunter has a countdown clock of 3 days, 0 hours, 55 minutes, 21 seconds (when I visited) and an obscure link called Presidential March Madness.

John McCain has a tab that says "Deadline March 31—make your online donation—click here today."

None of the other candidate websites seem to mention the deadline on the first page. I don't know if that's because: 1) the candidates believe that explicit mention of the deadline is too "inside politics" or crass, 2) they don't envision the Internet as a significant source of support, or 3) they already have enough money.

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