Jeff Backer, one of two Republicans hoping to grab his party's endorsement for Minnesota House District 12A and challenge freshman Jay McNamar (DFL-Elbow Lake) is experiencing quite the explosion of social media "likes" on Facebook right now.
Indeed, in his quest to replace the man he calls "Metro" Jay McNamar, Backer went from 78 Facebook "likes" during the week of January 24 throught January 30, 2014, to 389 between January 25 through January 31, 2014 (Facebook's charting, not Bluestem's) to a whopping 5215 likes during the period of January 26, 2014 though February 1, 2014, and peaked at 5729 "talking about this," according to data Facebook posts publicly; 5355 of the likes were very recent.
A few of his fans have unliked the page, so the count now rests at 5309.
Those of us who know the district, which includes "The Bump" of Big Stone and Traverse Counties, are truly astonished at this social media bump. After all, that's more Facebook likes that people who live in Big Stone County (population 5269 at the 2010 Census) or Traverse County, where a mere 3558 hardy Minnesotans huddle on the western prairies.
So where's the Backer Bunch coming from? Brown's Valley? Alberta? Artichoke or Big Stone Township? Correll?
Sadly, no. According to Facebook's data, captured in the screenshot above, the Most Popular City for Mr. Backer's mostly paid Facebook campaign friends are from Bangkok, Thailand.
Incumbent Jay McNamar's year end fundraising filing reported that he had receipts of $27,613.04, with $20,396.23 in the bank at the end of December. The other Republican vying for the seat, Nancy Taffe, raised $5465, with $4817.71 cash on hand.
Backer's campaign doesn't show up in the list of house campaign committees for Senate District 12. Instead, it's filed by the board under his old SD9 Senate campaign committee, although the filing itself is for HD12A. Backer started 2013 with $2094.87 COH, received $50 in contributions, spent a little money, and closed out the year with $1454.87 in the bank.
Presumably some of that money has been used to acquire those thousands of new friends in Thailand and other locales. Given the geography and the spike, this certainly looks like a not-terribly-well targeted Facebook ad buy.
Screenshot: "Bangkok" Jeff Backer's Big Bump. Too bad those paid friends don't seem to live in THE Bump, the place in HD12A where Big Stone and Traverse Counties "bump" into the state's border with the Dakotas.
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
Regardless of the population of those particular counties, the district as a whole must have about 40k, the same as any other district - that's the way redistricting works. (However, it is unlikely that equal population was achieved by gerrymander so severe as to include Bangkok.)
Posted by: Max Hailperin | Feb 03, 2014 at 08:32 PM