An Open Letter to Sen. Stevens' Campaign Manager

Dear Mr. Tibbles,

I saw your negative fundraising email this morning and I thought you'd appreciate some feedback.

While there are plenty of falsehood, smears, and fears worth responding to, unlike your campaign we're not going to deploy nasty, negative attacks. Instead, I'd like to just educate you a bit on our campaign and on how some websites on the internet work.

First, our campaign had 1,519 individual Alaskan donors in the 2nd quarter. By comparison, the Stevens campaign only had around 900 total donations. That's both in Alaska and Outside. So I wouldn't recommend getting out a measuring stick when it comes to comparing how many of our Alaskan supporters donated to our campaign last quarter. It's not a fight you'll win.

You wrote in your fundraising email:

"Just last quarter, the mayor raised more than $37,000 from just one liberal Lower 48 Internet campaign known as ActBlue"

ActBlue.com is a website, not a "Lower 48 Internet campaign". I hate to break it to you, but Alaskans use ActBlue, too. We're proud of our Alaskan donors who used ActBlue to support Mark's campaign.

What sort of website is ActBlue? Well, it is a website that allows Americans to make donations to candidates they support. That's it. It processes credit cards. So when you imply that we raised money "from" ActBlue, it's kind of like attacking us for raising money "from" PayPal or American Express or personal checks.

And it sure would be silly for you to criticize us for taking money "from" American Express (I'll spill the beans -- some of our donors gave with their AmEx cards).

I'm sure that the first email you're sending as Campaign Manager is an indication of what we can expect from the Stevens campaign: False attacks that stir up fear and don't do anything to help Alaska families. Of course, falsely smearing Mark might be all you have recourse to when a majority of Alaskans support him for US Senate in this election

That said, I'm happy to educate you and feel free to come back for future lessons into how the internet works and why Alaskans can't trust what the Stevens' campaign tells them.

Best,
Matt Browner-Hamlin
Online Communications Director
Alaskans for Begich

PS -- It's nice to see that now that Mark Begich has out-raised Stevens by over $250,000 and is 9 points up in the polls that the Stevens campaign has admitted that they actually are running against him.