“Donald Trump’s ‘Self-Funding’ Stalls G.O.P. in Donor-Data Collection”

NYT:

He often brags that he is paying for his campaign, saying, “I don’t need anybody’s money.”

But Donald J. Trump’s disregard for fund-raising by email, building lists of small-dollar donors and assembling a modern campaign digital operation could hamstring him as a general-election candidate and do lasting damage to the Republican Party, strategists say.

In 2013 and 2014, one of the most valuable assets for Republican candidates at every level was Mitt Romney’s email list, containing the names and contact information for his donors, volunteers and supporters — a trove that had been amassed, culled and refined over 18 months of the 2012 campaign.

That required painstaking work, including frequent communications with supporters in hopes of conditioning them to donate repeatedly. And it paved the way for candidates to send emails to a vast, inherited universe of potential contributors who could easily make gifts with one click.

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