CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
June 10, 2008 – 12:04 a.m.
Former Bush Donors: Still Hesitant About Backing McCain
By Emily Cadei and Alex Knott, CQ Staff
John McCain may be the presumed Republican presidential nominee, but he’s still not connecting with a critical group of donors the way President Bush did during his 2004 re-election campaign.
The extensive network of partisan supporters that helped President Bush break fundraising records on his way to two terms in office has, for an array of reasons, yet to rally around the Arizona senator.
According to a Congressional Quarterly analysis, only about 5,000 of the 62,800 donors who gave the maximum contribution of $2,000 to Bush — roughly 8 percent — had given to McCain as of April 30.
Although the general election is still months away, the hesitancy on the part of former Bush donors may point to larger fundraising challenges for McCain. So far, he has been out-raised by his Democratic counterparts, tallying only $101 million in receipts through the end of April compared to $272 million for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , the presumed Democratic nominee. The huge fundraising gap represents a monumental switch from the past two presidential elections, when Bush enjoyed a significant fundraising edge over his Democratic opponents. At this stage of the campaign in 2004, the president had raised nearly $204 million.
“It’s early, but there are troubling signs that he’s not getting financial support from significant numbers of Republicans,” said Jan Baran, a campaign finance attorney with Wiley Rein and a former counsel to the Republican National Committee.
One of the problems, Baran noted, is that McCain was written off by the Republican establishment and the pundits last fall when his campaign was struggling and broke. Since resurrecting himself in the New Hampshire and Florida primaries in January, he has had to scramble to build up his money operations and consolidate party support, a process that is still ongoing.
McCain’s fundraising has shown steady improvement over the past several months, however.
During February, March and April, when his grasp on the nomination tightened, McCain took in almost $4.5 million from former Bush donors. That represents quite a jump from previous months; the senator raised only $947,000 in January and $252,000 in December.
That upward trajectory should continue, thanks to a series of fundraisers Bush held for McCain in May, which will be reflected in the campaign’s report to the Federal Election Commission later this month. The campaign also has ramped up its “Trailblazer” and “Innovator” program, its version of the Bush campaign’s highly successful “Pioneer” and “Rangers” system that encouraged donors to raise or “bundle” money on the candidate’s behalf.
The McCain campaign also announced last week that it had raised approximately $22 million in May, its best fundraising tally so far this election.
Slow Start for Fundraising Operations
When asked about the dearth of Bush donor support, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers’ quipped, “So much for the third Bush term,” a reference to Democrats’ attempts to paint the 2008 Republican candidate as a mirror image of the current president.
Rogers suggested the comparison to Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign was “a bad analogy,” and that it was unfair “to compare a re-election campaign for a sitting president in 2004 to a very competitive Republican primary.”
Former Bush Donors: Still Hesitant About Backing McCain
“I just think they are fundamentally two different elections,” he said.
But while nobody expected McCain to match an incumbent president’s fundraising efforts, the size of the fundraising gap does raise some questions about McCain’s ability to connect with Bush’s old donors.
Rogers acknowledged some difficulties connecting with the Republican base, noting that McCain’s differences with conservatives in the party on “a collection of issues” may explain why many former Bush supporters have yet to contribute.
“Obviously, John McCain has taken some positions in the past that have honestly rankled some in the party,” he said. “We are working hard and we have every confidence that we will have the funds to run a winning campaign.”
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, a grass-roots conservative lobbying organization, says McCain’s fundraising struggles are less about his problems appealing to conservatives, whom he has made some strides with recently, and more about his lack of infrastructure.
“It’s really a symptom of the fact he doesn’t have the mechanism in place working the way it should to reach all those people,” who supported Bush in 2004, Keene said.
Indeed, there are signs the campaign’s outreach to former Bush donors has been less than aggressive. A number of individuals who raised bundled contributions for Bush in 2004 said they don’t feel a sense of urgency to give now, even though they intend to at some point.
“You know you’re going to get hit, so you kind of duck while you can,” said one former Bush supporter, who has yet to be contacted by the campaign.
Another Bush donor who raised money for Rudolph Giuliani in the Republican primary said he’s been contacted by the McCain campaign but hasn’t given yet. “I haven’t been bombarded, but I’ve had a couple of requests,” said this former donor, who asked not to be named.
Keene chalks up McCain’s patchy fundraising outreach to nothing more than a late start.
“I suspect it will get fixed,” he said. “In all likelihood, he won’t get [all the Bush donors], but he’ll get most of them.”
No Contribution Because of the War
The political climate also is working against McCain. A number of large Bush donors from 2004, driven both by pragmatism and frustration with the country’s direction, have given to Obama and his former chief rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton .
Former Bush Donors: Still Hesitant About Backing McCain
The CQ analysis found that 827 of Bush’s major supporters have contributed almost $1.7 million to Obama so far and 603 have donated more than $1.5 million to Clinton. At least 46 of Bush’s 2004 donors also have given big to both Democrats — but were not listed as donors to McCain’s campaign.
One of them, a lifetime Republican who gave $2,000 to Bush in 2004, said he would not be contributing to McCain or the party’s presidential effort this year — largely because of the Iraq War.
“I always considered myself a Republican, primarily because of a belief in smaller government. And if you want a smaller government, you don’t want wars — especially wars that can be avoided,” said this long-time GOP donor, who asked not to be named because of his history with the party.
New York attorney Ken Henderson, another one of the 46 who gave to both Democratic candidates, is a self-described Democrat who wrote a $2,000 check for Bush in 2004 for “business” reasons after being approached by a Bush bundler. But he said he has no plans to repeat that contribution for McCain, regardless of business incentives.
“I gave initially to Hillary, and I went to a fundraiser and met President Clinton,” says Henderson. “But as the primary season went on, I became very enthusiastic about Obama, and me and my wife have given him the maximum.”
For this study, CQ analyzed donors who contributed at least $2,000 to Bush’s 2004 re-election— the most an individual was allowed to donate per election that cycle. These donors’ names and addresses were cross-referenced with contributors to the three major 2008 presidential candidates.
Comments
How many Clinton supporters will now switch to McCain.It seems that his economic plans are more mature(Do we really need another burdensome economic stimulus package)
Does the old wheeze (not necessarily referring to McSame) 'don't throw goodmoney after bad' mean anything to you? I suspect the only big contribs McSame will likely to get are from those looking to avoid future prosecution for war crimes and profiteering. The 'investor' class sees the handwrting on the wall and any 'investment' in McSame looks a bad deal, indeed.
Hillary Clinton drew her support in the Democratic primaries from regular Democrats. Her big victories came in states with closed primaries. The GOP hope that Clinton supporters will defect to McCain is in the same vein as their assessments of Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. McCain remains a creature of the beltway and conservative echo chamber.
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