The Cash Chase: McCain
by Ryan Sager
Mon, 2 Apr 2007 at 6:08 PM
updated Mon, 2 Apr 2007 at 6:15 PM
Well, John McCain's campaign has been hyping his disappointing first-quarter fundraising figures for so long that one might be forgiven for having grown suspicious it was all leading up to a surprise second-place finish. (OK, so maybe that was just my theory...)
Regardless, Mr. McCain, it turns out, was not building up to sucker-punch the expectations-game players. Instead, it looks like it's his campaign that has sustained the sucker punch.
The senator from Arizona has come in third on the Republican side in the cash chase with just $12.5 million raised in the first quarter.
To quote one Republican political operative friend of mine: "Ouch.
To quote my own reaction to the news: "Ouch."
To quote the (presumable) reaction of Mr. McCain's own staff: "M@&$#(%*@#$r!? Ouch."
So, to recount: Romney, $23 million ($2.5 million from a check written to himself); Rudy, $17 million ($3 million of that for the general); McCain, 12.5 million.
Now, to backtrack a bit, this is bad for Mr. McCain, but it's not that bad...
Let's start with the "not-that-bad." It's not that bad because Mitt Romney is barely hanging in there as a serious candidate despite his fundraising prowess. He has a financial base in Michigan, where his prominent political family hails from; he has a financial base in Massachusetts, where he was governor; and he has a financial base in the financial industry, as he made a fortune there. But he simply has no voter base. Anywhere. So, really — in a sense — McCain actually came in second to Rudy.
But that gets us back to the "bad." Mr. McCain's camp can say onto infinity that they "wouldn't trade places" with any of the other candidates. But the simple fact is that the McCain camp's campaign strategy was to be the "inevitable" candidate. Lock up the donors. Lock up the institutional support. And force all the conservatives who hate Mr. McCain to jump on the Straight Talk Express, lest they be left behind.
Instead, we have a wide-open primary race. While Mr. McCain is very competitive in such a wide-open race, he's also incredibly vulnerable because of the years of bad blood he's built up with institutional players and a lot of the grassroots.
So, when the would-have-been "inevitable" candidate comes in third in the money race, it's clear that something has seriously gone off-track.
UPDATE: Mr. Romney lent his campaign $2.5 million, not $3.5 million. The number has been corrected above.
Latest Politics Homepage
|
Print
Send
RSS
