Gavin Newsom fundraising on Super Bowl for gun control

The first email was innocuous enough. For a small donation to his gubernatorial campaign, Gavin Newsom would put you in a drawing to join him at a Giants baseball game.

But the lieutenant governor, it appears, has a wide open schedule and assumes you don’t have plans.

After baseball, Newsom wanted company at a concert. Then lunch. This week, Newsom was on Facebook waving Super Bowl tickets around.

“Do you want two amazing seats to the Super Bowl?” he asked.

For a $5 donation to his ballot measure to strengthen gun control laws in California, supporters can be entered into a drawing to win tickets to the big game in Santa Clara next month.

As of Tuesday, 1,704 people “liked” that.

Drawings for giveaways – often including face-to-face meetings with candidates – are a growing part of political campaigns, especially attractive to low-dollar donors who have few other ways to get personal attention.

For political campaigns, these contests are valuable less for the money raised than for the opportunity to increase a campaign’s social media footprint and to grow its fundraising lists.

Dan Newman, a Newsom spokesman, described the effort as a way in which Newsom is “creatively engaging supporters.”

This story was originally published January 19, 2016 at 3:20 PM.