What It’s Like to be Rolodexed: One Candidate’s Journey into the Reality of Political Fundraising

Summary: This essay, by former congressional candidate Paul Perry,is in response to The Intercept’s recent reporting on the role of fundraising in the 2018 election cycle. The first door I knocked on as a congressional candidate was a gut check. Geraldine was a soft-spoken, middle-aged white woman suffering from cancer. She lived by herself in a modest rancher just a few miles from where I went to high school in the Philadelphia suburbs.