A New Political Class

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

This autumn is seeing the flowering of a new political class — the presidential candidate as boss. In the 19th-century political strongmen such as Boss Tweed of New York and Mark Hanna of Ohio selected candidates, funded elections, and anointed the next generation of leadership. Nowadays, competitions have erupted in the Democratic Party among the likes of Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia, Senator Kerry, and Senator Clinton, among others. In the Republican Party, the competition is among Senator McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, and Governor Romney, as well as others.

The battle is over which presidential hopeful can help raise the most money for congressional and senate candidates in this highly competitive election year.

While Mr. Warner’s Forward Together PAC had taken in more money than Mr. Kerry’s Keeping America’s Promise Inc. as of August 31, $9 million as compared to almost $5 million, Mr. Kerry had done a better job of putting the money to use. Keeping America’s Promise gave out $1.8 million to Mr. Warner’s $673,000, according to reports available at the Federal Election Commission’s website, FEC.gov. Mrs. Clinton’s Hill Pac raised $2.3 million as of the last week in August and given out $415,000. Interestingly, a newcomer, Senator Obama of Illinois, is making his presence felt, raising almost $4 million and handing out almost $500,000.

This new development is the result of a convergence of expected and unanticipated factors. Most directly, it is the result of the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Known as the McCain-Feingold Act, for its sponsors in the Senate (Mr. McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Senator Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin), the law prohibited a major source of financing for both parties: federal “soft money,” unlimited donations from major donors to a political party for general “party-building.” It left alone hard money, such as the $5,000 limit on annual donations for political action committees.

A major beneficiary of this change has been the political action committees of individual public officials.

For the Democratic Party, in particular, this change represents a major shift. Before 2002, Democrats relied overwhelmingly on big money donations from major donors; the Republicans had a more developed system of donors who gave in amounts under the contribution limits. For this reason, many observers, including myself, saw the new law as killing the Democratic Party’s ability to raise money. In 2004, the candidacy of Howard Dean and the wave of progressive on-line activists uncovered a new source of small donors for Democrats. Liberals, for instance, can give to their candidate of choice by going to actblue.com, assisted, in part, by the founder of DailyKos, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.

If the rise of the bloggers was the story in 2004, the story this year is one of the traditional politicians catching up. While politicians have always had their own political action committees, for a variety of reasons, the after-effects of McCain-Feingold and the pressure to keep up with the progressive blog community are causing Democratic officials to step up their on-line fundraising.

Mr. Kerry has been using the e-mail list for his pac to raise money and encourage donors to fund key races. “With your extraordinary support — a kind of collective activity on behalf of Democratic candidates that is unprecedented in American politics — together we have contributed or helped raise nearly $10 million for over 160 Democratic candidates, committees, and organization,” reads a message at JohnKerry.com. The site trumpeted “more than $100,000” raised for eight critical races, including the Senate races in Florida, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

Even a lower tier political figure, the former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, Wesley Clark, is both raising money on-line and attempting to help Democratic candidates. General Clark sent out an e-mail promoting three Senate candidates, Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee, Jon Tester of Montana, and Ned Lamont of Connecticut. The e-mail directs users to actblue.com, which, in turn, permits them to give to General Clark’s political action committee or to each of the three candidates directly. The process is easier than buying a book online.

While the focus of online activism has been on Democrats, the Republicans are there as well. Mr. Romney’s Commonwealth Pac website, thecommonwealthpac.com, puts contribution options front and center. By June 30, Mr. Romney’s political action committee had taken in $1.6 million and given $100,000 to other candidates. By August 31, Mr. McCain’s Straight Talk America had raised nearly $7 million and ladled out $606,787 to other candidates and committees, more than the $2.4 million raised by Mr. Giuliani’s Solutions America PAC and the $1.5 million raised by Mr. Pataki’s 21st Century Freedom Pac. Mr. Giuliani has handed out $282,000 to Mr. Pataki’s $61,000.

More than three decades ago, a little-known governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, pulled a political master-stroke when he nabbed the job in 1974 of raising money for gubernatorial and congressional campaigns. Mr. Carter used it as a vehicle to raise his visibility nationwide and to help politicians around the country, upon whom he could call for support in his presidential run.

Thanks to the Internet and to the ramifications of McCain-Feingold, candidates are getting lots of help from today’s would-be presidential nominees.The question is which candidates will they pay back in 2008.

Mr. Gitell is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.


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