NYT: McCain Faces Test in Wooing Elite Donors

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/us/politics/31donate.html?ex=1207627200&en=abf0305e0a12f0ef&ei=5043&partner=EXCITE

By MICHAEL LUO and GRIFF PALMER
Published: March 31, 2008

With attention focused on the Democrats’ infighting for the presidential nomination, Senator John McCain is pressing ahead to the general election but has yet to sign up one critical constituency: the big-money people who powered the Bush fund-raising machine.

As he reintroduces himself to voters this week with stops like one at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss., where he was a flight instructor, Mr. McCain will also attend to another crucial task by courting donors in Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee.


David Kadlubowski for The New York Times

“It takes an enormous amount of passion,” said Joyce Haver, who raised over $300,000 for President Bush’s campaigns.


Building up his fund-raising apparatus is essential at this point for Mr. McCain, who struggled for much of last year to raise money. To prevail in the general election, he will need to raise substantial amounts of cash to cut into the vast fund-raising edge the Democratic presidential candidates have shown over the Republicans this election cycle.

Even though he all but secured the Republican nomination by mid-February, Mr. McCain has so far managed to enlist only a fraction of the heavyweight bundlers of campaign contributions who helped drive President Bush’s two runs for the White House, an examination of Mr. McCain’s fund-raising network shows.

Well over half of the top fund-raisers for Mr. Bush, who raised a record $274 million for him in the 2004 primary season, stayed on the sidelines through this year’s Republican nominating contests. Others wound up working for Rudolph W. Giuliani, who signed up the most top Bush fund-raisers, and Mitt Romney, who had about the same number as Mr. McCain.

The dearth of Pioneers and Rangers, the elite fund-raisers for Mr. Bush who collected more than $100,000 or $200,000 respectively for his re-election bid in 2004, is illustrative of just how far Mr. McCain has to go to build up his financial operation.

FULL story at link.

[opihimoimoi]

1. The Slow Response in fund raising is so revealing...The Odds look grim

Joe and John = Dim and Slim

[DFW]

2. Let's not get over-confident

These people know what's at stake for them if the next attorney general
is a Democrat, and if the next Supreme Court Justice(s) is/are appointed
by a Democrat. They will find a way, and they find the money. Legality
doesn't pose a great barrier to them, and some Tom Noe goes away for illegal
campaign contributions, but the guys who put him (and all those like him) up
to it will run around free as McCain White House staff while we rant about it
here. The money will materialize soon enough. Be prepared, because they will
spend it on the same kind of crap they used to buy 2000, 2002 and 2004.