Andrew Yang Announces $120,000 Contest At Democratic Primary Debate

By Lauren Rearick


Andrew Yang apparently has $120,000 to giveaway, and he wants you to be one of ten people to win it.


In his quest to secure nomination because the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Yang used his initial statements at Thursday evening’s Democratic Primary debate to announce a contest. As explained on his website, he wants to select 10 random families to receive $1,000 a month for a year.


"It's original, I'll give you that," Pete Buttigieg mentioned in response.


All that’s ostensibly required to enter the contest is your first last name, as well as an email and zip code — an admittedly clever way to add people to your email list. Soon after users input their data, the site takes you to a form asking you to donate to the Yang 2020 campaign. MTV News did not go behind this step in the fact-checking process. It’s not clear where users would “give us your story,” because the candidate mentioned on the debate stage in Houston.


The contest is intended to help promote his presidential plan for a Universal Generic Revenue, Politico explained. Under Yang’s recommended “Freedom Dividend” plan, every person In the
U.S. Over the age of 18 would receive a $1,000 monthly stipend. The cash could be supplied to a person without consideration of their revenue, and Yang explained that he intends to fund the dividend through consolidation of welfare programs and an increased Value Added Tax, which is a tax placed on goods produced by a business.


Complete contest rules weren’t revealed throughout the debate, although TIME pointed out a potential legal problem with the suggested giveaway. “Handing out cash to individuals for their own personalized use would seem to be a violation of campaign-finance law,” Erin Chlopak, director of campaign finance plan of action at the Campaign Legal Center as well as a former FEC attorney, told TIME. “It’s hard for me to envision how taking campaign funds and just handing it out to individuals would not violate the personalized use prohibition.”


Madalin Sammons, Yang’s press secretary, disputed the potential legal ramifications. “The campaign would not be making [Universal Generic Income] payments irrespective of Andrew’s candidacy, and so it is a legitimate campaign expenditure,” she told TIME. “No one that we count on giving this Freedom Dividend [to] will be asked to vote in any particular way. At the end of the day, people have their own free will.”


Based on a CNN poll conducted the week of September 5, Yang is polling at a two percent approval rating among potential voters. Almost all of his several plans on his website cite his Freedom Dividend plan as a solve for issues as far-ranging as student cash advance debt and standardizing the health insurance industry. However people are starkly divided on whether or not a UBI would have a net positive effect on the American economy, in part because there really is little proof it has worked in the past.