RNC Trumps DNC in Fundraising

NewsMax ^ | 10/16/02 | Limbacher

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

With less than three weeks to go before Election Day, the Democratic Party has a major problem: the party's fundraising operation is lagging far behind the GOP campaign cash juggernaut.

According to Staten Island political analyst Kevin Collins:

• Since January, Democratic hard money contributions (money given directly to a candidate) have seriously lagged behind even their 1996 levels.

• While Democratic National Committee (DNC) hard money contributions have slowed to a virtual halt, Republican National Committee (RNC) contributions have swelled by more than 19 percent.

• In just the two months of August and September, the RNC collected more than 75 percent of what the DNC raised in the months from January to September.

• Boiled down to hard numbers, the RNC has raised more than $66 million to the $21 million collected by the DNC - more than three times as much.

• As the numbers stand today, the Republican party has an edge of more than $60 million, after expenses. That's more than the total cash on hand now in Democratic Party coffers.

Clearly, the Democrats are at a huge financial disadvantage. They're going into battle with a pocketknife while the Republicans are armed with a machine gun.

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe has been boasting for months that the fall elections look good for his party. But if money means anything in politics - and it usually does - McAuliffe may be whistling past the graveyard.

[Alberta's Child]

Interesting post. Democrats have convinced themselves that the GOP is a party that caters to the rich, but even the hard money contributions (which are capped at a certain dollar amount for each individual) are heavily in the GOP's favor. The Republican Party can't have this kind of edge in hard-money contributions unless it is attracting a huge sum of money from middle-class donors.

[RoseofTexas]

That's great and dandy, BUT, will it make a difference come Nov. 5?! It's voter turnout that will either make or break the republicans!

[sphinx]

Clearly, the Democrats are at a huge financial disadvantage.

Nonsense. Organized labor, as usual, will probably spend more than the official Republican and Democratic Parties combined.

Listen to the people working in the tossup Senate races. In most of them, Democrat/union ads have been dominating the airwaves for months. We will probably be more competitive down the stretch, since the usual GOP tactic is to husband resources for the close.

[white trash redneck]

What this doesn't take account of is the value of all the free media boosting that the DemocRATs get from ABCNNBCBS, not to mention the Boston Globe, NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, and all the large metropolitan newspapers and TV stations.

[alwaysconservative]

"What this doesn't take account of is the value of all the free media boosting that the DemocRATs get from ABCNNBCBS, not to mention the Boston Globe, NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, and all the large metropolitan newspapers and TV stations."

Yeah, and if I happen to catch "The American President" or "West Wing" on TV just one more time before elections, I will probably lose my cookies!