Posted on 10/05/2010 5:54:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
People talk about wanting to get the money out of politics, but fundraising totals can tell us a lot about who's hitting their stride and who will soon be hitting the bench.
We are now within striking distance of November 2, so much so that Muse’s “Uprising” is my ringtone. “Rise up and take the power back/It’s time the fat cats had a heart attack … .”
As we get down to the wire, polls matter, block walks matter, enthusiasm matters — and money matters. In fact, money tells us a lot about the health of a candidate and where he or she stands in relation to his or her opponent. Money raised and money in the war chest tells us who’s going to hit the gas through October, and who’s going to be running on fumes when election day draws near.
That in mind, let’s turn our eyes to Texas. Much has been made of Democrat Bill White’s relatively strong run for governor. The former Houston mayor has never led incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry, but the race hasn’t been a blowout. Perry currently has a poll lead somewhere between 6 and 8 points, with the margins of error making that as close as 3 points or as wide as maybe 10. For a conservative Republican running in a conservative Republican bastion in a decidedly Republican year, even that’s a little closer than anyone expected. Particularly if we’re really at the low end of those margins. For the record, I don’t think we are, but now is not a time to take anything for granted.
The money lines tell us a very different story from the polls. Earlier in the year, Bill White had a cash advantage and went on a spending spree and bought millions of dollars in media. To some extent he needed to; the question was whether he was spending his money too early, and was he spending too much of it within Houston where he should be strong. As the former mayor of Houston, he was for all intents and purposes unknown to the vast majority of Texans. He had to convince them that he’s not just another big-spending, tax-loving liberal Democrat. He went into that buying season with a deficit in the polls of between 6 and 8 points, and came out of with a poll deficit of … between 6 and 8 points. Six million dollars didn’t move the needle a bit, but they did put White’s campaign a little behind Perry’s in cash on hand at that point. But where are we now?
On Monday, both campaigns released their numbers for the past quarter, July through September. Both campaigns crowed about their healthy numbers. But in a race of two, only one can come in first. And here are their respective numbers.
According to the White campaign, Bill White raised $4.68 million, and now has $2.75 million cash on hand. That’s not bad.
But I bet he wants that $6 million back that he spent too early in the campaign to introduce himself. Since that time, he had a miserable couple of weeks as President Obama’s visit to Texas sent him running for the hills. And he’s had to answer for the whole BTEC scandal, in which he apparently profiteered from a company he hired to perform services during hurricane relief. Hurricane relief had been Bill White’s claim to governmental competency; that story made it his claim to corruption.
Gov. Perry’s fundraising numbers run like this: In the same period in which White raised nearly $5 million, Perry raised $8.2 million. He reports a little over $10 million cash on hand.
White: $2.75 million cash on hand. Perry: $10 million cash on hand. That’s nearly a four-to-one advantage for Perry, with about four weeks to go. When I reached the campaign Monday night, Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner was blunt: “Bill White has run his campaign into the ground financially, much like he did to the city of Houston when he was mayor. Now he is bankrupt on ideas and campaign dollars.”
There’s more bad news for White. A week back, the Democratic Governors Association announced that they were pouring about $2 million into Texas. That sounds like good news for White, and it mostly is, but there’s a catch: The DGA is spending the money directly. They don’t want White to manage it so they’re buying the ads themselves. That’s not only a vote of no confidence in the way White is running his campaign, it’s a vote of no confidence with a price tag. If the DGA gave their money directly to White, they’d get his advertising rates, which means their dollars would go about 25% farther.
So why would the DGA waste so much money this way? Word is, White is micromanaging his campaign, and he’s just not doing it well. Every tweet, every Facebook post, every ad — everything — has to pass his eyes before it goes out. He’s strangling his own campaign, and he can ill afford to. White simply is not raising the money to keep up with Perry, and what he did raise early on, he wasted.
This race isn’t over yet, not by a long shot. But Gov. Perry is poised to take his lead through the last month of the campaign running strong, while the best White can do is struggle just to get to the finishing line.
The problem is that Bill White is a Democrat, a fact that he is trying to hide.
ping
'Nuff said.
Early Voting begins in 13 days on Oct. 18.
Wow, labour unions have been donating to White’s campaign, but it appears that they have been stingy. On the other hand, SEIU has been working on the voter registration fraud angle...
The problem is that Bill White is not only a Democrat, but ugly, inarticulate, and a former mayor of HOUSTON, of all places. How anyone can point to governing that mess of a city as an accomplishment is beyond me.
I know very few fellow Texans who like Rick Perry, but neither party seems capable of fielding a serious challenger.
Apologies to my friends in Houston. Terrible place to live, and White didn’t help.
I do like Perry's radio spot about Bill White being "the most mysterious liberal in the world" taking off the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World commercials. "He spent every penny Houston had, and then he spent 17 billion more"
Conservative ???
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha .... inhale .... ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha .... inhale .... ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha .... inhale .... stop it, you're killing me.
I'll be voting for the former yell leader ... but please, don't insult my intelligence.
Perry and the Texas house will be key in redistricting following the 2010 census where TX will probably pick up 3-4 congressional seats.
A demonrat that went to Harvard(that bastion of conservative thinking /sarc). That’s all we need to know.
This was my reaction as well. I almost painted my computer screen with coffee when I read that. Gov. ‘Good-Hair’ is anything but conservative, the only reason he hasn’t done worse is that the TX Governor doesn’t have a lot of power compared with other states. If it wasn’t for the close race, I wouldn’t vote for him again, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that weaselly DIM White be governor of my state.
Ping Txgov2010.
Ping Txgov2010.
The trial lawyers must’ve decided to stop throwing money down a hole trying to get Bill White’s name out there this year.
Think he will bother trying to run again in 2012 for Kay’s Senate seat?
He had a strong showing against the Palestinian hairdresser in the Democrat primary. That's about it...
Funny thing you don’t hear about Brother Bill is that he has been a party hack for decades. What about the wonderful job he did after Katrina? The spike in crime? Keeping the facts from the media? Oh, wait, the media was complicit in Mayor White’s deceit.
White and Brown before him have shown themselves to be carpetbagger Democrats from the Clinton administration who when they couldn’t find some other line of employment, served as term-limited Mayor Bob’s selected Rat replacements.
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