You've Got (Mikal) Mail [UPDATE: (Noriega Mail follows)]

Oh, and since I made some sort of note to follow up on this, Mikal Watts is the first Democratic Senate candidate to actually email out to his list. For the life of me, I don't understand why the online communication (ie - the cheap & easy part of campaign communication) has been slow on both sides of this race. I'm sure my small chunk of change to reward Team Mikal will possibly offset the cost of the email to me and a few thousand others. Now I'll have to think up some other contest for the campaigns to "cash" in on.

Meanwhile, R.G. Ratcliffe takes note of the Draftnik's pledge.

"The Texas Bloggers Netroots for Noriega" fund-raising campaign has a goal of raising money from 800 supporters for Noriega in this quarter. So far, 102 donors have given $4,193 to Noriega's campaign through the online effort.

Watts raised more than $1 million in June, and he also has donated $3.8 million of his own money to winning the Democratic nomination.

The pro-Noriega bloggers have a lot of flogging to do if they want to catch up. The next financial report comes out in September.

The first comment on R.G.'s post ought to give a bit of insight into the Draftnik's aim:

During the first 30 days of their respective campaigns, Noriega's supporters will far surpass Watts's -- 800 of whom signed up to support Watts's campaign during the first 30 days.

Noriega is "people powered"! He'll get many more than 800 supporters contributing to him before his campaign is 30 days old!

Noriega may raise only 3/4 as much as Watts's $1.1 million in total funds raised during the first month but he'll surely get more individual supporters.

Surely that kool-aid has fermented. The issue here is that the candidate whom bloggers are bestowing the phrase "people-powered" currently has - and will have for the foreseeable future - fewer people powering it than the other guy. A quick reality check will tell you that this is going to be true after the next reports are filed ... just as it is today.

Needless to say, the Draftniks - many whom I call friend - are in the process of painting themselves into a corner and tossing whatever credibility might have been aspired to directly into the wind. Hopefully that doesn't impact Team Noriega. It'd be nice to have some visible, outward sign that something really good was happening with Team Noriega, though.

Via Eye On Williamson County, Noriega's at least getting some coverage in the Valley. It's a start, but it's not yet to the point where any clear competitive advantage is on full display.

I'm just looking to be impressed from here on the sidelines.

UPDATE: Just got a blast email from Team Noriega pushing the video that's been splattered all over the Texas Dem blogs the past week. Still no sign of an 800th donor to match Mikal's count as of July, though.