The nonfungible token crypto-craze has helped propel Republican Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters to an eye-popping $1.38 million fundraising haul in the fourth quarter of 2021.
More than a half a million of Masters’s haul from October through December, around 40% of the total, came in a 36-hour period during the last week of the year due to a unique NFT fundraising tactic.
NFTs, short for nonfungible tokens, are one-of-a-kind digital certificates verified with blockchain technology that prove ownership of digital goods such as artwork. Excitement and buzz about NFTs has swept the communities of blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as well as other investors. Digital artworks are routinely selling for thousands of dollars. The most expensive NFT sale ever sold for $69.3 million.
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Masters, president of the Thiel Foundation, minted 99 NFTs based on concept cover art of Zero to One, a book on building startup companies that he co-wrote with venture capitalist Peter Thiel. On Dec. 27, he announced that he would distribute the NFTs to the next 99 donors who contributed the legal limit of $5,800 to his campaign.
All 99 tokens sold out in just 36 hours, bringing in more than $550,000 for the Masters campaign, his campaign said.
That is nearly as much as the $563,823 that Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who led the Arizona Republican Senate primary field in a September poll, raised in three months during the third quarter of 2021 from July through September.
Admittedly, the fundraising campaign was not exclusively about the NFT. Masters offered some other perks to the 99 donors who contributed the maximum amount and received the token: A signed copy of his book from him and Thiel, an “exclusive invitation to a Zero to One token holders party,” access to a Discord chat for token holders.
The tactic, though, helped Masters show an increase in his fundraising in his second reporting quarter. The $1.38 million total is an increase from $1.1 million third-quarter fundraising haul from his campaign launch in July through the end of September.
A full breakdown of how much of the $1.38 million came from individual donors was not available, but the Masters campaign said that the overwhelming majority of that came from individual donors. Masters contributed $93,743 of his own money to his campaign in the third quarter, according to Federal Election Commission data.
But Masters is championing the haul as a demonstration that he can continue to bring in the cash necessary to effectively challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who had $13 million in his war chest as of the end of October.
“I’m not a conventional politician,” Masters said in a statement. “I’m running a bold and innovative campaign, and that pulls in new donors and new supporters. Democrats will pour more than a hundred million dollars into this race to prop up Mark Kelly. I am the only Republican who can do new things and generate the enthusiasm to compete and win.”
Not all of Masters’s opponents have released their fourth quarter 2021 fundraising figures, but Federal Election Commission reports show that he exceeded his primary opponents in individual fundraising totals and rates through the end of October. The filing deadline for fourth-quarter fundraising is Jan. 15.
Brnovich raised $1 million from his June campaign launch through September. Solar energy businessman Jim Lamon brought in more than $5.3 million from May through September, but $5 million of that were personal loans that he made to his own campaign. Michael “Mick” McGuire, a retired adjutant general of the Arizona National Guard, brought in $676,367 from the end of May through September.
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Masters is not the only candidate or political figure venturing into the NFT world.
Scott Jensen, a Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate, was the first candidate to mint NFTs as a fundraising tactic. Shrina Kurani, a Democrat running for Congress in California, is selling 2,022 tokens to fundraise for her campaign.
Former first lady Melania Trump is selling an NFT of a painting at an auction and has launched a platform to sell NFTs.
