Immediately after the DNC's annual big gay fundraiser last week the Advocate quoted an unnamed "Democratic source" who claimed that the fundraiser brought in $1 million, up from $750,000 the year before. The headlines in most queer papers and on most gay blogs went something like this one at Edge Boston: "Despite Protests and No-Shows, DNC Nets $1 Million in Pink Dollars." Some Slog commenters jumped on the figure, gleefully insisting that the efforts of gay bloggers—ahem—to derail the event in the wake of the infamous DOMA brief were unsuccessful. And didn't that $1 million figure prove that Pam Spaulding, Andrew Sullivan, John Aravovis, Andy Towle, JoeMyGod, et al, were a bunch of ineffectual whiners?

Here's what I had to say immediately after the fundraiser: "Democratic 'sources' are claiming that last night's DNC fundraiser—the DNC's annual LGBT Leadership Council dinner—"brought in nearly $1 million, up from about $750,000 last year." But Democratic sources, desperate to downplay the controversy kicked up Obama's DOMA brief, would say that, wouldn't they? I'd like to see some independent confirmation of the amount of money raised, thanks." And I added in a subsequent post: "So far we've only heard that number from an unnamed "DNC source," someone who would be interested in tamping down the controversy and convincing people that only a handful of crazy bloggers were pissed about the DOMA brief. There were 180 people at the fundraiser and tickets were $1000 a piece and not everyone paid to attend. Some people paid more than $1000, but for 180 people to raise $1 million dollars the average attendee would have to have donated more than $5,500."

Now Michelangelo Signorile is calling bullshit on the $1 million dollar figure. Signorile rips apart the figure and the way it was used to discredit bloggers and activists in a long, detailed, and well-argued post on his blog, The Gist:

[The] one million dollar figure still raised the eyebrows of several Democratic Party insiders with whom I spoke.

That is particularly true since Andy Tobias, the openly gay treasurer of the DNC, was fretting about the event and complaining to people, according to three individuals who'd interacted with him and with whom I spoke in the days before the fundraiser (and I've spoken to several others who confirmed this to me after the fundraiser as well). Publicly, DNC officials and hosts like Barney Frank were keeping a stiff upper lip, trying to tamp down the power of the blogs and the influence of all those who dropped out of the fundraiser. But privately, Tobias had pretty much thrown in the towel on the event.

There was no official response in Eleveld's story from the DNC itself—no line like, "the DNC would not confirm the amount"—so we can pretty much assume her "Democratic Party" source is inside the DNC, giving her the info on background and thus not giving any on-the-record comment confirming or denying. (If the source was not in the DNC, after all, she'd likely have gone to the DNC for official comment.) And who would that source be inside the DNC? If it were Andy Tobias himself, it wouldn't exactly be an unbiased source. I'd want much more information to back up the figures. The same goes if it were any of his underlings. And if the figure is accurate, why not just say it on-the-record? Why not at least allow Eleveld to attribute "a DNC source"—if indeed it is—even if it's on background and not for attribution, rather than "a Democratic Party" source? Why keep it so distanced?

When I contacted the DNC's LGBT fundraising director, Tom Petrillo, for confirmation of the one million dollar amount, he bumped me up after a day to press office, where Caroline Ciccone took another day to get back to me, only to tell me that the DNC would not confirm the one million dollar amount and said the DNC doesn't confirm fundraising event figures. But in searching around and looking at the coverage of other fundraisers, I found this story, which, for example, attributes Obama's bringing in 3 million dollars at an event recently to DNC "officials." And this one has many details and implies they came from the DNC. At the very least, the DNC doesn't seem to want to be so distanced from the reporting on the numbers in these stories.

...

We now need a confirmation of the one million dollar number from the DNC, on the record, with a clear breakdown of where the money comes from. With the absence of that no one should assume this fundraiser did well at all, as all of the evidence—and the statements from Tobias to various people before the fundraiser—points in the opposite direction. People who want to pressure the Democrats should continue to target the DNC fundraisers since it clearly really hit a nerve, to the point where they had to spin something out immediately and go so far with the numbers—like the Iranian ayatollahs—in an attempt to nip any revolution in the bud, even though it's now raised many more questions.

Read the whole post here.