The No on 8 campaign’s new director, Patrick Guerriero, laid out a “path to victory” on Tuesday during a weekly phone call with LGBT reporters, calling on every one of the roughly one million LGBT Californians to donate money to defeat Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
"If every single LGBT adult would, over the next couple of days, make a donation to this campaign, we will win,” he said. “And if they don't, we will lose.” He noted that California has roughly one million LGBT folks and only about 30,000 California residents have given to the campaign to date.
Guerriero, who said he had been asked to step in during the final weeks of the drive to defeat Prop. 8 and was temporarily on leave from the Gill Action Fund, delivered a classic good news/bad news conference call.
On the positive side, donations have been pouring in at a rate of about $1 million per day ever since No on 8 sounded the alarm bells last week that the campaign was $10 million behind the opposition in funding and about five points down in the polls.
“That's a remarkable feat," he said. “But the challenge is, we literally need to keep that pace up every day. In order to win, we need to raise $1 million a day through the election to be up on air [and] to be competitive."
Another plus: Internal polls indicate that when voters get equal exposure to the pro-Prop. 8 ads and “Vote No” ads, they come down on the side of defeating the anti-gay marriage amendment.
“Our messages are working,” he said. “Voters move to no on Prop. 8 when they see and hear our TV ads, but we simply need to be in more places and have greater penetration in our TV buys, and we need to also ramp up not just on TV but on radio.
"Getting the resources to be on TV and radio and match our opponents in an air war is the path to victory, it's that black and white," he concluded.
In addition to seeking donations from ever-day folks, Guerriero said he and everybody else associated with the campaign were making fund-raising calls fast and furiously to big-dollar donors. “I can tell you that I think you're going to see some breakthrough gifts in the next couple of days," he said, adding that some people may have been unclear about the urgency of the campaign after being lulled into complacency by early polls showing voters supported marriage equality.
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