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发帖数: 29846 | 1 In money race, it's advantage Dems
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
August 24, 2011 04:30 AM EDT
Republicans seem positively gleeful these days about their prospects headed
into 2012, buoyed by a new Gallup Poll showing a handful of Republican
presidential hopefuls within striking distance of President Barack Obama as
well as some recent predictions that the GOP will hold the House and could
take the Senate.
Yet despite all the apparent momentum, the three national party committees
tasked with ushering Republicans to victory trail their Democratic
counterparts in raising money for 2012, and the disparity is causing some
Republicans to fret privately about whether their party committees could dim
an otherwise bright outlook.
Even with a slowdown in fundraising during the debt ceiling debate last
month, Democratic Party committees have raised $24 million more this year
than their Republican counterparts — a money gap more than twice as large
as the Democratic advantages at similar points in either of the previous two
election cycles.
Through July, according to reports filed last weekend with the Federal
Election Commission, the three groups that make up the national GOP’s
official infrastructure — the Republican National Committee, the National
Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial
Committee — had raised a combined $105 million this year.
That compares with the $129 million raised in that same period by their
Democratic counterparts – the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee.
Raising money is no longer as centralized as it used to be, with fundraising
now spread among not only the parties and committees of individual
candidates, but also the increasingly prominent independent groups that can
take unlimited donations to candidates the party committees cannot.
But the party committees still play a major role, in part because they are
allowed to coordinate directly with their candidates’ campaigns, which the
independent groups are prohibited from doing.
Most of the Democratic Party committee fundraising superiority — $22
million worth — comes from the DNC’s advantage over the RNC, which is
largely the result of Obama’s fundraising prowess. With the debt ceiling
debate raging in July, the DNC’s fundraising lagged at least partly because
it canceled 10 events that were to have featured the president.
The official Republican Party explanation for the disparity is that the
Democrats’ control of the White House gives them a huge campaign cash
advantage — that plus the fact that Obama’s fundraising activities
significantly outpaced those of the previous five presidents during their
first terms.
Republicans argue that even coming close to the Democrats in party committee
fundraising is an achievement — and they point out that they are staying
much closer than Democrats did during George W. Bush’s presidency.
“Considering the DSCC outraised the NRSC by $70 million in the 2008 cycle,
and their party now controls the White House, it certainly has to concern
Senate Democrats to see their fundraising advantage dramatically eroded over
the last 24 months,” said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh.
DSCC spokesman Matt Canter argued that simply comparing party committee
totals does not reflect the actual advantage Democrats enjoy if fundraising
by their Senate incumbents and challengers is taken into account.
“Not only has the DSCC raised more money month after month than our
counterpart, but Senate Democrats already have more than $70 million on hand
to wage campaigns this cycle,” he said, asserting Republican candidates
had less.
Some Republican finance types expressed optimism that party fundraising will
pick up once the party selects its presidential nominee. But others
wondered why the congressional committees aren’t doing better.
Of particular concern was the DCCC’s slight fundraising edge over the NRCC
through the first seven months of the year — $37.7 million to $37.4 million.
“With the majority in the House of Representatives, we should be kicking
their butts in fundraising if there is strong leadership,” said a former
GOP finance official, who didn’t want to be identified expressing concern
about the party’s financial preparations for 2012. “For them to be
trailing, I find that to be astounding.”
To be sure, the NRCC actually finished the month with slightly more money in
the bank and less debt than the DCCC. And NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions
(R-Texas) called the NRCC’s fundraising “strong” in a statement, adding
“Americans all across this nation know that every dollar to the NRCC
diminishes Democrats’ drive to make Nancy Pelosi speaker again.”
Others Republicans say party committee fundraising has been weakened by the
deep-pocketed GOP-allied outside groups that were empowered by a January
2010 Supreme Court decision and have assumed some of the advertising
functions of the parties.
The most notable among them are American Crossroads and Crossroads
Grassroots Policy Strategies, which were conceived by Bush-era GOP
operatives.
“Karl Rove and his crew — Ed Gillespie and a sitting member of the (
Republican National Committee), former Chairman Mike Duncan — form American
Crossroads, and where are they going to go to get money?” asked Michael
Steele, the former RNC chairman.
“They are going to go to the donors who they’ve cultivated for the last 15
or 20 years, and that largely rests in the base of the RNC,” said Steele,
who told POLITICO that during his chairmanship, which ended in January,
major donors told him they were urged by Crossroads fundraisers not to give
to the RNC.
He stressed, though, that the GOP outside groups can’t replace the
functions of the party committees, generally, and the RNC, specifically.
“At the end of the day, there is only one organization that is going to
put the boots on the ground to win an election and that’s the RNC — period
,” Steele said. “So everybody should be concerned about making sure that
the party gets as much of that $30,800 per individual (the maximum party
committee donation) it can get in the door to lay down the ground game, to
get the resources and the phone systems in the offices in place.”
Under Steele, in the first seven months of 2009, the RNC raised $52 million,
$5 million more than the DNC raised during that period.
By contrast, during the first seven months of 2011, the RNC, under Steele’s
replacement, Reince Priebus, raised $43 million — or $22 million less than
the DNC, though under Priebus there appears to have been a spike in maximum
$30,800 contributions from wealthy donors.
And Priebus noted in a statement that the RNC has spent less money on
fundraising since he became chairman than it did under Steele.
“Our success raising money more efficiently has allowed us to engage voters
in key battleground states while making investments in our ground game that
are already paying dividends as we prepare for 2012,” Preibus said,
pointing out that the RNC has paid down more than $7 million of the $24
million in debt left over from Steele’s tenure.
That left the RNC with $17 million in debt and $7.6 on hand at the end of
last month, compared with the DNC’s $20 million in the bank and $11 million
in debt. The DCCC ended last month with $8 million on hand and $4 million
in debt, while the NRCC had $11 million in the bank and $3 million in debt.
And the DSCC had $9 million in the bank, with $2 million in debt, versus the
NRSC’s $4 million in the bank, with no debt.
Party committees often take on significant debt in the heat of election
cycles to free up cash to help candidates, and the party that controls the
White House typically enjoys a big fundraising edge.
That was certainly true for Republicans at this point in the election cycle
during Bush’s first term. Through the first seven months of 2003, the RNC,
NRCC and NRSC combined to raise $132 million, according to a POLITICO
analysis of data provided by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.
That was a staggering $80 million more than the combined DNC, DCCC and DSCC
haul.
“George W. Bush was phenomenal at raising money,” said Steele. “Now that
he’s not there, the party has to build a new reserve, a new resource of
major donors. And we need to look at donors who are in new industries and
who are younger, so they can be with us longer, and a lot of them will come
out of this presidential election cycle and the 2016 election cycle, but it
’s a transition.” |
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