Pete Hoekstra's Attack Ads Spur Campaign Donations For Senate Democratic Incumbent Debbie Stabenow

Michigan's Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow and her re-election campaign team have managed to raise more than $88,000 online in the past few days off of the furor over her Republican challenger's controversial television and online attack ad.

To be exact, the campaign reports on its web site that it's raised $88,620.00 as of Wednesday afternoon. The campaign says its goal is to reach $144,000, the amount that it says former Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra's campaign spent on a two-week television ad buy that attacks Stabenow for pushing the United States into increasing levels of indebtedness to China. The ad, which launched during the Super Bowl on cable television in Michigan, was controversial for the way it expressed that viewpoint -- by using outdated visual stereotypes to characterize the Chinese.

The Stabenow campaign sent out a fundraising e-mail on Tuesday soliciting donations for what it's calling the campaign's "first-ever" money bomb fundraising drive. A graphic in the e-mail showed that as of Tuesday mid-afternoon, the campaign had already raised $39,727.00.

That's probably because Stabenow's team and the Michigan Democratic Party were ready when Hoekstra launched his media campaign. They immediately posted notes up on Facebook on Sunday with links to an ActBlue fundraising page for Stabenow, which was enhanced with an embedded YouTube counter-attack ad against Hoekstra. The ad hit back at the former congressman, accusing him of being the the big spender during his tenure.

But the campaign didn't stop there. It continued to post appeals for money every few hours on Facebook both before and after it sent out the e-mail, and also launched an ad campaign on Google's ad network.

In addition to using ActBlue, campaign finance records also indicate that Stabenow's team uses Salsa Labs' platform to organize itself online.