Netroots come out in force for Burner in wake of house fire

By Bryan Bissell, PolitickerWA.com Reporter

Losing a home to fire takes a toll on nearly every aspect of one's life. When a high profile campaign for the U.S. House is part of that life, the price gets distributed on to thousands more people, whether they are active campaign volunteers, or merely constituents who passively miss out on normal campaigning. Such was the case last week when 8th District Democrat Darcy Burner lost her home to fire.

Fortunately for Burner many of her constituents, along with well-wishers across the country, have banded together to help ease the campaign burdens she will undoubtedly face in the coming weeks as she and her family move forward with their post-fire lives. The campaigns financial burdens, at least.

Spurred on by calls from bloggers across the country, Burner has raised over $110,000 from more than 2,000 contributors on the fundraising site ActBlue since last Tuesday's fire. David Goldstein who, at HA Seattle, was one of the first to call for relief contributions, said Monday that much of the money had come as news accelerated over the 4th of July weekend.

Even today the ActBlue tally has already grown by $10,000 and is increasing by the minute. Most of that has come from adding former presidential candidate and NATO commander General Wesley Clark as a champion. This morning Clark encouraged his supporters to donate inb order to help Burner in her time of need both on his WesPAC website, and his facebook page to show that Democrats "have her back" and has already raised more than $10,000 for her through ActBlue.

"Politics is tough," Clark says on his website. "So when one of our own is down, we have to have their back."

The brunt of the contributions have come from DailyKos, which has more or less been the collecting ground for blogs from across the country and as far away as New Hampshire's Blue Hampshire and Massachusetts' Blue Mass Group. Their "Orange to Blue" page has brought in $71,000 from more than 1200 contributors since news of the blaze broke according to ActBlue spokesperson Marissa Doran.

Local bloggers at HA Seattle, through their "A New House for Darcy Burner" page, have raised almost $9500.

Most of these contributions have come during the month of July and will not appear on next week's FEC quarterly filing reports, but they give Burner a nice head start for the ever important third quarter and a nice little nest egg for late summer and early fall advertisements in her expectedly tight re-match with Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Auburn).

Bryan Bissell is a PolitickerWA.com Reporter and can be reached via email at noreply@politicker.com.

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