PARSIPPANY – Writing a campaign check for $1,000 is so stone age.

Why bother?  Just buy a non-fungible token. It’s yours and you can always sell it – perhaps for more than you paid for it.

That very 2022-possibility has Laura Ali, the chair of the Morris County Republican Committee, feeling giddy.

“We are very innovative here. This is going to lead the way in 2022,” she said Monday morning.

What has Ali so excited is a new fundraising plan in which the Morris GOP will sell NFT’s, or non-fungible tokens, to supporters.

The concept may seem foreign to long-time political operatives accustomed to trafficking in checks, or even, cash.

Times change.

Think of this as similar, but not the same, as cryptocurrency.

The NFT’s, or tokens, are designed to give the donor a tangible benefit – beyond the knowledge their money is supporting their preferential political organization or candidate.

That benefit can be something like VIP treatment at party events or perhaps a digital campaign button.
Ali said the county committee will begin selling three levels of NFT’s on Thursday. They’ll breakdown as follows:

$1,000 for the platinum level. Some 39 are available to coincide with the county’s 39 towns.

$500 for the gold level, of which 199 are available.

And $50 for the lowest level; 500 are available. Buy one of those and you get an animated campaign button that shows the Republican-elephant kicking the Democratic-donkey out of the picture as the GOP
“takes back” New Jersey.

Ali said the Morris committee is the first Republican organization in the country to adopt NFT’s as a fundraising tool.

Still, there is some precedent here.

Bloomberg News reported earlier this month that a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona has raised almost $600,000 through selling NFT’s and that a Democratic House candidate in California raised $6,600 in three days by selling a mere 21 tokens.

Do the math and the Morris GOP would raise a bit more than $170,000 if they sell all the tokens.
As far as that is concerned, Ali is brimming with confidence.

She said she expects all the tokens to be sold by the end of this week.