National Organization for Marriage is paying for t.v. ads asking Hawaiians to “let the people decide” whether same-sex couples can get married.  Irony alert: “the people” are nowhere to be found when it comes to paying for those ads.

“[F]rom Hawaii comes an important reminder of something that we here at NOM have always maintained to be crucial for the fate of marriage in the United States. On this important issue, the people should decide!“, writes NOM president Brian Brown.

Except that “the people” aren’t supporting NOM financially.  NOM’s national million-dollar fundraising campaign, up and running since Aug. 28, has raised only $190,000 so far.

NOM’s under-performing “Million Dollar Match For Marriage”.

That doesn’t seem enough to fund t.v. ads in Hawaii as well as pay to keep the lights on at NOM Central in Washington, D.C.  NOM’s got quite a payroll to maintain.  Brian Brown’s compensation alone runs upwards of $250,000 annually.  What they’re paying their spokesman Chris Plante and political director Frank Schubert is anybody’s guess.

So where is the money to run the t.v. ads coming from?  A handful of mega-donors like New York hedge fund manager Sean Fieler and former Gov. of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, most likely.  Relying on a few deep pockets is NOM’s M.O.

We may never know for sure, because NOM routinely — and illegally — withholds the names of their political campaign donors.  All we know is that little of NOM’s funding seems to be coming from the little people that NOM likes to use as a rhetorical tool.