By Jerry D. Rose

Who’s counting? Where elections and much else are concerned. we’re a culture of counters: you know, the “biggest” air crash is the one in which the largest number of lives were lost, the “biggest” movie this year was the one which took in the most dollars at the box office. So too with elections, we want to know much money candidates are raising, how many individuals and groups are endorsing them and of course, ultimately, the number of votes they get in their election campaigns. So be it with this Campaign for Campaigns, Campaign Corner. Here are some numbers in which you might be interested.

1. The easiest first: campaign funds raised: zero, nada, zilch and by design. For a project promoting de-emphasis on fund-raising, this seems appropriate enough. Campaign expenditures: maybe half of the pittance I pay my webmaster to operate this and other websites, maybe $100 per week.

2. Candidates who have posted their campaigns on the Corner: 49, with several expected to be added in the next few days. State breakdown of where they are and for what offices they are running is below.

3. Facebook “Friends” of the Corner: Facebook is currently listing 743, and these have just been arranged state-by-state as shown in numbers for each state below.

4. Offices being sought by registered candidates:

U.S. Senator 6

State Governor 5

House of Representatives 27

State legislatures and assemblies 5

City and County offices 5

5. Friends and candidates, state-by-state (Note: number for Friends is the number for whom Facebook records indicate location; information not always available; also the number on state-by-state lists to communicate with people in a certain state about election matters in their particular state. Number of candidates from that state in parenthesis)

Alabama 4

Arizona 12 (1)

Arkansas 3

California 86 (7)

Colorado 12

Connecticut 2

District of Columbia 8

Florida 66 (6)

Georgia 12

Hawaii 2

Idaho 2

Illinois 24 (4)

Indiana 5

Iowa 6

Kansas 4

Kentucky 8 (3)

Louisiana 3

Maine 4

Maryland 8

Massachusetts 15 (3)

Maryland 8

Michigan 13 (1)

Minnesota 7

Mississippi 2

Missouri 17

Nebraska 1

Nevada 9 (1)

New Jersey 9

New Mexico 2 (1)

New York 19 (3)

North Carolina 10 (3)

North Dakota 2

Ohio 12 (3)

Oklahoma 2

Oregon 28 (3)

Pennsylvania 17 (1)

Rhode Island 2

South Carolina 9 (2)

Tennessee 7 (2)

Texas 22 (1)

Utah 2 (1)

Vermont 3

Virginia 10

Washington 9 (1)

West Virginia 9

Wisconsin 6 (1)

Missing in action (0) Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, New Hampshire.

..

Outside USA 24

Well that’s it for June 24, 2010. Judge for yourself where we need to pick up more numbers in terms of candidates and potential supporters. It appears to me that we need to work especially to expand the number of state and local progressive populist candidates. Democracy begins at home, and too many of our state and local offices are the fiefdoms of local plutocrats and their minions. It’s already (in Florida anyway) a long hot summer and look for things to get a lot hotter as the public swelters under the current miseries of a failed political leadership and looks ever more hungrily for alternatives. Maybe it’s time for each of us to look around in our respective states and nudge our progressive populist friends to become friends and candidates on Campaign Corner.