When Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn got a fundraising email from the Voter Protection Project on Monday, July 26, he was surprised to see that the focus wasn't on elections or the right to vote.
Rather, the email asked recipients to shell out money to show their support for National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House official who has become a focal point for right-wing anger over the past year-and-a-half.
"So many fundraising and list-building emails rely on a false sense of urgency," Cohn said. "A deadline that doesn't actually exist, a poll that doesn't mean anything, a petition that goes to no one, or the trucks of making something sound like a bill in need of payment."
Entitled "CRITICAL RESPONSE NEEDED," the email asks supporters to log on and fill out a four-question survey.
Questionable Tactics
The Voter Protection Project is a small PAC that took in $8,883,510 in 2020, spending $8,355,632 of that. The group is aimed at unseating Republicans and supporting Democrats, and spends the bulk of its money on media and campaign expenses. Led by Fresno Deputy District Attorney and one-time Devin Nunes opponent Andrew Janz, VPP advocates for voting rights reform at the state and federal level.
None of that, however, has anything to do with Fauci or GOP opinion of him. The questions are standard Democratic red meat: "Do you approve of Dr. Fauci?; Do you support the Biden-Harris administration so far?; and Did you know high-profile Republicans have publicly lied about the Biden-Harris administration and have called on Fauci to resign?" The first two have standard Yes-No-Unsure options but the third offers "YES, I did know that—disgusting!; and I did not know that—how low can they sink!?"
The last question is how much you want to donate to the group.
Not one question addresses voting rights—an example of how groups reliant on donations frequently use off-topic, emotional pleas to get donors to click through to the ask page.
While much of recent attention to political donation asks has been given to former President Donald Trump, whose campaign used a number of dishonest tricks to convince donors to turn over cash.
VPP's Fauci poll is by no means in the same universe as the shady tricks deployed by Trump. But it's part of how groups can try to lure donors in.