Poor Republicans
Mar 31st, 2008 at 9:48 am by Susie
Looks like the big money’s drying up:
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.
