Help! Who Wrote the Greatest Congressional Fundraising Story of All Time?

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In a post about the role of money in politics, Jonathan Bernstein tosses in this aside:

It’s absolutely ridiculous for Members of Congress to have built for themselves an expectation that they should spend four hours a day raising money.

(By the way: we have good reporting that such an expectation exists, and good reporting that Members spend way too much time raising money…but I have to admit I’m pretty skeptical of this four hours a day business. Do they really do that, day in, day out? Or do most of them reluctantly do a lot less (although still enough to cut way too much into their real jobs), but exaggerate it for the reporter’s notebook? Again, I’m not denying that it’s a big deal; just questioning the specific claim).

About eight or nine years ago (I think), someone wrote a phenomenal article about the life of a freshman member of Congress. As I recall, the reporter basically followed this guy around and documented the insane amount of time he spent on fundraising, including the two or three hours each evening spent in a basement cubicle provided by the RNC (or DNC). The cubicle contained a chair and a phone, and the congressman went down there daily armed with a list of a hundred calls to make, provided by his staff. And then he started dialing.

But where did this piece appear? The Washington Post? The New Republic? Those seem the most likely places to me, but I haven’t been able to find it in either place. And it’s a shame. It was a great piece, and I’ve wanted to reread it ever since. But I can’t remember who wrote it or where it appeared, and I also can’t remember enough unique search words to google it.

Help me, hive mind, you’re my only hope.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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