Obama at Invesco, and My $5

Have you heard yet that Obama's on for the big acceptance speech at Invesco? Well how about this?

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

That's from an email the Obama campaign sent to my inbox (and tens of thousands more) today. The email seizes on two key issues: the excitement of this moment in history, and the real potential presented by small-donor contributions. By taking the buy-in price of supporting the candidate way down and putting a $5 pitch out there, and by attaching the possibility of such an alluring prize to the contribution, the campaign comes up with a winning hook.

The gamble is that the number of incoming, $5 contributions will easily cover the costs of flying 20 people to town and putting them up for a couple nights. Heck, maybe I've got a better-than-even chance of winning, since we're in Denver already and the campaign could save a little money by bringing us on but telling us we'll have to stay in our own place (I'm only partly tongue in cheek, here). Even though we're strapped, I bet I can find five bucks if it means I might win a chance to get on site and behind the scenes at the convention.

So how many others are thinking like me? I'm curious to see how much moolah the campaign can reap in the form of what amounts to an online, $5 raffle extravaganza.