June 7, 2016

Sen. Mark Kirk Un-Endorses His Party’s Candidate for President

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Here’s our first un-endorsement of the season:

Kirk was always likely to be one of Trump’s first defectors. He’s running a tough reelection race in a blue state. Here’s his official reason:

At least, I guess that’s the official reason. Twitter is now the source of official political pronouncements, right?

Anyway, this might be the first time ever that a senator has un-endorsed a presidential candidate of his party. There have been plenty who never endorsed in the first place, but I’m not sure if anyone has ever endorsed and then taken it back. Historians, what say you?

Next up: Paul Ryan should become the first Speaker of the House to un-endorse a presidential candidate of his party. If enough members of Congress do this, we might even have to take the hyphen out of un-endorse and make it a real word.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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