Not for the Comedy Central star’s faux presidential campaign, but rather real cash for a website that directs donations to school projects that need funding across the nation. As of yesterday afternoon, Stephen Colbert backers had donated 27K, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) a distant second at 1.4K in the fund-raising battle on DonorsChoose.org.
Colbert has selected almost exclusively school projects in his home state of South Carolina, where he claims to be running in both the Democratic and Republican Party primaries, so his on-camera promotion of the donate to vote straw poll has created a modest windfall for the state’s schools.
Along with Colbert, some other long-shot candidates are among the top vote getters in this contest – including Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AK) and Jon Stewart, also of Comedy Central (who knew he was running?) – while former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) has polled only 10 bucks.
TVBR/RBR observation: OK, it’s hardly on the level of the 4.2 million that Rush Limbaugh raised for charity last week, but give Colbert credit for making a gag pay off for a good cause.
