Another kossack was responsible for bringing the issue of deer hunting to the attention of 2laneIA and me. His name is Magorn. He wrote about how Governor Scott Walker's appointee, Dr. James Kroll, had made these comments about public lands for deer hunters, and what he really thought about people who work hard to conserve land for all to enjoy it: hunters, fishers, bird-watchers, and hikers.
People who call for more public lands are “cocktail conservationists,” he says, who are really pining for socialism. He calls national parks “wildlife ghettos” and flatly accuses the government of gross mismanagement.That's what Dr. Kroll thought about Americans who support public lands for outdoor recreational activities. This guy is from Texas, and he's a major proponent of high-fence deer hunting, which basically treats deer like fish in a barrel. He even has his own line of deer hunting products, and is known as Dr. Deer. Governor Scott Walker hired this guy to the tune of $125,000 to advise on deer hunting management, and he produced a piss-poor excuse for a report that was called out by Dan Schmidt, the editor of the Deer & Deer Hunting magazine.
The deer hunting issue was already percolating in the community, and it was 2LaneIA who brought it to my attention. She had heard about the issue from Magorn, and was working hard to spread the story to as many hunters she knew in Wisconsin. I contacted her to see how we could move this issue forward, and make it more widely known in Wisconsin. We talked about running Facebook ads that would link to the stories about Dr. James Kroll and deer hunting in Wisconsin.
It turned out that I wasn't the only one to think of doing the same thing. Wmspringer posted a diary asking about running Facebook ads on this issue. He'd put up a quick website called Save WI Deerhunting, and asked the community about running Facebook ads.
2LaneIA and I contacted wmspringer, and we brainstormed for what felt like hours that day by e-mail. We'd later moved to Facebook chat since it was easier to keep track of the collaboration that was happening. Ideas were shot back and forth, and we were excited. We could make an impact in Wisconsin on the issue of deerhunting. We immediately got to work in researching regulations in Wisconsin for running political advertisements, and wmspringer started a PAC when he filed forms with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB). And I found NationBuilder as a vendor to help us fundraise and keep track of donors, since financial reporting was important to wmspringer's registration with the GAB. Baspringer re-designed the website that William had put up, and made it full of useful information that was easily understood by hunters, their colleagues, friends, and family.
The major difference that we found between NationBuilder and ActBlue was that NationBuilder was built to be more social, and donations could be processed quickly to help launch a political advertising campaign at what seemed like lightning speed to us, and ActBlue was kind of slow when it came to processing donations, and we needed to get our campaign up quickly. We had an idea, and we wanted to see it come to fruition quickly, and with the support of the Dailykos community, so NationBuilder was it.
We had a goal of $800 dollars for the online advertising campaign when 2laneIA launched the first fundraising diary. Then the second fundraising diary was launched. And our jaws all did a collective drop at the numbers that kept rising on the screen.
Our goal of $800 that night was quickly surpassed to over $1,400 dollars by morning because you saw our idea, and that we wanted to run Facebook ads on this issue, and you all helped us make that happen. By the end of the campaign, we had raised over $3,000 dollars to run our Facebook ad campaign. Here are the statistics on what happened from that Facebook advertising campaign:
The ads were shown to 437,318 Facebook users in Wisconsin, with the ads shown an average of 13.6 times, and the ads had 6,509 click-thrus, resulting in a CTR rate of 0.109%. We had 5,965,708 MILLION impressions made from these ads.
You made that happen.
It took reading our diaries, it took listening to us, and thinking about the implications about our idea. The thought that our idea could reach thousands of hunters in Wisconsin. You didn't think it was a fantastical idea. You thought it had merit. You thought it could be done. It took just 79 of you in this community to make the advertising campaign happen through your donations.And that's what gives me hope, even after we lost Wisconsin. You've made me think about citizen advocacy in a whole new light again. Working with wmspringer, baspringer, and 2LaneIA taught me that when people get together in a room, even though it may be online, that great things can happen.
We knew what we were doing had an impact. We were getting attacked by Scott Walker's drones, by a right-wing guy who ran a popular hunting blog, and Democratic state politicians were picking up our message and amplifying it by holding press conferences, demanding that Dr. Kroll come before them for a hearing. They hadn't picked it up before because they didn't think it would get traction.
I found that to be funny. It took just the four of us, a bunch of internet activists, to say that this was a workable issue, and that we could get traction on this issue to make a difference in Wisconsin. Even though the right-wing spent over $30 million in the Wisconsin campaign, we spent close to $3,000 and got our campaign picked up through the blogs, news articles, and on the radio stations.
People were talking about Dr. James Kroll, the issue of public lands, and deer hunting in Wisconsin. And it made me think. Even though the number of deer hunters may not have been enough to sway the election decisively in Barrett's favor, they still made an impact because they are an important section of the electorate.
You know how we have all of these political consultants in Washington, D.C., and in state parties? They're the ones that determine what kind of ads should be run online, on TV, and on radio. They say no to ideas that they think wouldn't get traction. Ideas like the deer hunting issue is one that they'd never say yes to.
And that's precisely the problem.
It's definitely a major problem that the Democratic party is suffering from. They listen to these political consultants that say that we should do x, we should do y, and they think within clearly prescribed lines. They don't think out of the box. I've known a lot of political consultants, and many of them are great, but their jobs are to get a candidate elected.
And focusing squarely on just elections, re-elections, defeats, elections, and re-elections has brought us to where we are today with a weak left in this country. We need to think big. We need to think out of the box. We need to focus on ideas.
And we need to campaign on them. That's the only way we can make issues get traction, is if a group of activists like us get together in each state and decide to make a campaign happen on issues that we care about.
That is entirely possible, and within the realm of possibility. After all, we made it happen in Wisconsin, and we can make it happen across the country. I have a lot of big ideas swirling around my head now, and I have you all in this community to thank.
And I want to express my deepest, most heartfelt thank-yous to wmspringer, baspringer, and 2LaneIA. You guys rock!
THANK YOU!
