McCain Gets Big Payoff on Web Site

February 4, 2000

THE MONEY GAME

McCain Gets Big Payoff on Web Site

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Campaigns: White House 2000 -- John McCain (R)

By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

ASHINGTON, Feb. 3 -- Do not be surprised if every resurgent, cash-poor presidential campaign begins shamelessly plugging its campaign Web sites, where Visa, MasterCard and Discover are accepted, no matter how small the donation.
In the 48 hours since his resounding triumph in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, Senator John McCain of Arizona has dropped his campaign's Web address in nearly every nationally televised interview he has done.
The response has been a record $810,000 raised on the Internet, McCain campaign officials said today.
Even more surprising, 40 percent of the donations came from first-time political givers and 34 percent of the contributors are under age 40.
Hundreds of thousands of Internet surfers have flocked to the McCain 2000 Web site, many armed with their credit cards.
A presidential candidate has never raised so much money on the Internet in such a short period, and political strategists and analysts said today that it is a phenomenon that probably will repeat itself often in national campaigns.
"You take an emotional moment with the extraordinary outreach capacity that the Web has and you have the makings of a totally new form of raising money for candidates and causes in America," said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan political organization here. "This is the first prime example in political campaigns of the revolution that is taking place."
Today, Mr. McCain's supporters said that even after the pace of e-donations slowed, as it inevitably would, the campaign would still be in a position to meet its goal of $5 million raised by March 7, the day of coast-to-coast primaries in 16 states, including New York and California.
"The donations have come in at a clip of $18,000 an hour," said Howard Opinsky, the campaign's press secretary. "That's compared to the $10,000-a-day that we used to get. And our phone is ringing off the hook. We're having trouble returning all the calls."
Mr. McCain's 18-point triumph in New Hampshire was the product of a grass-roots campaign of town meetings and what he calls "straight talk." But in the past 48 hours, the grass-roots momentum of the campaign has shifted to the campaign's Web site (www.McCain2000.com).

Besides contributions, 7,000 new volunteers have signed up at the Web site, campaign officials said.
Mr. McCain has raised $2.2 million on the Internet, the most among the Republicans. It is perhaps not surprising that his campaign has the most user-friendly site of all the major presidential candidates.
On the first page, a window pops up with the headline, "McCain wins New Hampshire." It is accompanied by a challenge from Mr. McCain: "Please join me today and together we can beat the special interests." And below that, there is a prompt to "click here to contribute today."
The average donation collected on the campaign's Web site is $115, and most of the donations are less than $250.
That means that Mr. McCain's Internet take alone in the past day could mean a total of $1.5 million for his campaign.
Despite the infusion of cash, Mr. McCain will still struggle to raise enough money to broadcast advertisements in the large media-market states, like New York and California. Gov. George W. Bush of Texas has $31 million in the bank while Mr. McCain has just $7.7 million.
Mr. McCain's Internet fund-raising success has impressed even fund-raisers who support Mr. Bush.
"That is phenomenal," said Ted Welch, one such Republican fund-raiser.
"That bodes very well for Senator McCain that people would respond to that extent."

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