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Direct Mail Letter Rails Against "So-Called 'Black Leaders'"
We've gotten our hands on an interesting mailer sent out by BMW Direct, the Washington political firm that raises campaign cash and spends most of the money on its own direct-mail efforts.
This one was sent out on behalf of Dr. Ada Fisher, a black Republican who ran for a North Carolina Congressional seat back in 2006.
It refers to the black leaders Al Sharpton and Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP, rallying opposition to their "liberal policies" that are "harming America."
With Fisher's photo in the top corner, the letter reads: "We need proud conservative Republicans to bring our message to the African American Community...Ada you're just what the Republicans need!"
Click on the letter to see a full-size version.
Comments (24)
So what?
July 8, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, is this what $400,000 looks like?
July 8, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, to be fair, that's just the response card. There was almost certainly another letter that went out with it. I'd love to see the rest of the piece, but no matter what it looks like, I can't imagine it would justify BMW Direct's fees.
July 8, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Master" Tim Webster?
Is Webster contemplating a master-slave like relationship, or is he claiming to be 15 years old? That's really weird.
July 8, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is the worst graphic design ever. It looks like a solicitation from a mysterious Nigerian general looking for partners to help him transfer his money.
July 8, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's an HPD?
The letter uses the term but does not explain it. Then they ask for you to give your credit card number, with the CVV, and sign it. Somehow the donor is signing for $1HPD, $1.5HPD, or $2HPD.
That's the equivalent of signing a blank check as nearly as I can tell.
July 8, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would assume HPD is 'his/her previous donation'.
July 8, 2008 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's almost certainly part of a MS Word mail merge, where HPD is a placeholder for a suggested donation and gets filled in (along with the name and address) based upon what's in the database.
I wouldn't be surprised if it stands for 'Highest Previous Donation' or 'Highest Possible Donation', and might even be tailored to an individual's past donations.
July 8, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. That makes more sense.
So the HPD is a number from the data base, and it is multiplied by the 1, 1.5 or 2 before being inserted in the letter.
Which raises another interesting question - how did Muckraker get the original template document instead of one of the finished copies that were mailed out? Someone inside BMW Direct?
July 8, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
HPD = Hey pathetic dupe.
July 8, 2008 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ding! That wins the kewpie doll!
July 8, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
So let me get this straight: after using poor Ada's campaign as a front to raise a pile of money which they turned around and kept for themselves while her campaign went begging, BMW Direct then produced this direct mailing to raise more money, in effect exploiting her one more time, this time the fact they had virtually strangled her campaign in the bathtub? Wow, that is really taking it to the limit and then beyond. I wonder if she got any of the money they raised from this mailing. I also wonder if poor little Ada has figured out that she's being drilled right in the keister by the party that does it to African Americans better than anyone else. Maybe that GOP membership isn't quite the deal she thought it was.
July 8, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me the "fraud" being committed is against the donors not the candidates.
Is it not possible to get a list of donors and ask them how they feel about being defrauded in this way?
Can someone give a rundown of the relevant laws, or if there are none, (because of exemptions given to political activities) of relevant laws in analogous circumstances? Is the ruling statute simply, "donor beware"?
July 8, 2008 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Boston newspaper article which first broke this story contacted a few of these donors. All were retired, most were elderly. Some didn't remember the contribution at all. In the cases where the candidates had dropped out of the race, none were aware of this when they made their contribution. One of the donors was an elderly man who had given more than 150K over several years to numerous candidates on whose behalf BMW Direct solicited (indicating to me that their claims of having to build up a new donor pool at great expense are untrue). This man's family has asked his caregiver to screen his mail and phone calls.
Because of reporting requirements, in theory these donors should be locatable and contactable. It's probably unrealistic, and perhaps open to a civil suit, but I'd like to see a grassroots effort to divy up these donor lists and have people contact the donors telling them—just the facts—what BMW Direct is doing. Because I believe they're contacted many of the same people again and again, this would substantially hurt their ability to prey upon these people. The problem is that BMW Direct isn't apparently breaking any laws.
A more realistic solution would be some House committee to hold hearing on this, investigating BMW Direct and any others (there's at least one other company doing something like this). That'd likely put a stop to it.
It seems to me that it's only a matter of time—ironically, more likely given this media attention—before someone starts doing this with Democratic candidates, too.
July 8, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
This really strikes me as just another version of a 527 organization. Only they cleverly use this "fundraising" gimmick to put out racial bigotry while purporting to raise money for an AA candidate.
Can't you just see Karl Rove giggling over this one?
July 8, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Direct mailers service 527's, just as they service political candidates, just as they service nonprofits.
Same mailings lists. Same copy writers.
BMW Direct's mailing list subsidiary is called Legacy List Marketing. Legacy owns "mailing lists" that have been put together for various reasons. They then re-sell those lists to other users.
Examine the "data cards" and you'll see, for example, that Karl Rove-affiliated Freedom's Watch is using Chavez-Ochoa's political list to tap donors. Proving "Freedom's Watch" was not built on Sheldon Adelson's $250,000 alone. They're also hitting up retirees for $20 a pop.
July 8, 2008 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
As an old DM hand I have to say this is good copy. It presses a few hot buttons using very simple words and sentences and leads directly to the "money shot", the sentence where the reader is saying to himself, "I'm enclosing my most generous contribution...." Picture zombies with their arms outstretched repeating the ad copy and especially that last line. I'm here to tell you it works! That Courier type, the bold face, the underlines, classic dm techniques honed over many years. And did you know that because so much direct marketing has gone onto the tubes, direct mail is working nearly as well as it did 20 years ago when it was the only game in town? BMW might be snakes, but they're smart snakes.
July 8, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
If she is an Afro-American Republican, she deserves everything she gets.
It just frightens me that someone that dumb and so little concerned for her fellow man holds a medical liscense.
July 8, 2008 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you saying black people can't be good Republicans?
Your only out, of course, is the fact that nobody can.
July 8, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
In today's GOP it is increasingly difficult to defend the honor of any individual party member. Even so, it's unfair, simpleminded, and even bigoted to make the sort of claim Mooser makes. A good-hearted, informed, and intelligent person could be a member of the GOP, for all its faults, because that person disagrees with the Democratic Party on some fundamental issue. For example, the size of government, foreign policy, or abortion. In each of those cases, yes, many conservatives are motivated by arguably malicious—or at least ungenerous—inclinations...but not all, and not necessarily.
The inclination to label every single member of the opposing party as immoral and malicious is itself an immoral and malicious tendency. It is pernicious and has a very distorting effect on politics. Sadly, it is the bread-and-butter of the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world. We on the left don't need to be like those abhorrent people.
Worse are the claims that a member of some identity group is somehow a hypocrite or a traitor for being affiliated with a particular party. This is disrespectful and anti-humanistic because it reduces a living, breathing individual into nothing more than a lifeless representative of some abstract group.
July 8, 2008 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I notice that that other candidate, Honeycutt, is also an M.D. Scary.
July 8, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having a separate subsidiary for the mailing lists is a great trick, because then you can bill for whatever you want, and claim the price isn't under your control. Then you give them the hit-rate information for free...
July 9, 2008 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Stupid is what stupid does.
This is a southern express that one would apply to this revelation. You judge for yourself. From reading many stories about BMW, I would be suprised that they screwed most undeserving republicans because apparently they did a pretty good job for some incumbents.
He that lieth down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas. - Benjamin Franklin
July 9, 2008 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I retain a whole folder of repetitive, underlined fund-raising letters for the GOP that were mailed to my elderly mother while she was alive (and for several years after). Most of these track back to "headquarters" that turn out to be mail-drop-only addresses. They get busted in MD, go over the line into VA and start cranking them out without even a 10-min pause. One of the masters of this method is Gary Jarmin, who has been at it for years:
file:///Users/ds/Desktop/political/motherlode.html
The Young Republicans have also been caught preying on the elderly with such letters, at least here in Durham, NC and in Seattle. The elderly often lose "executive functioning" skills and will pay the same bill (or make the same contribution)more than once.
If memory serves, it was Paul Keil who raked the muck on DM chicanery while he was still at TPM.
July 10, 2008 1:49 AM | Reply | Permalink