A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats' two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world's financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.
The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services chief executives who are most upset about the financial regulatory reform bill that House Democrats passed last week with almost no Republican support. The Senate expects to take up the measure this month.
This fundraising free fall from the New York area has left Democrats with diminished resources to defend their House and Senate majorities in November's midterm elections. Although the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have seen just a 16 percent drop in overall donations compared with this stage of the 2008 campaign, party leaders are concerned about the loss of big-dollar donors. The two congressional committees have raised $49.5 million this election cycle from people giving $1,000 or more at a time, compared with $81.3 million at this point in the last election.
This is very common in an election year. Wall Street looks to the party looking to gain control and they put their money in that party. When Republicans were on top back in the early part of the last decade, Wall Street gave big bucks to them. Then the Democrats became the new winners and Wall Street jumped ship over there.
The moral of the story? Wall Street tries and go with the winner.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee buying time in Massachusetts Senate special election....developing...more soon on Fix...
It spells trouble for Democrats to have to keep dumping money into a race that should be solid Democrats. Even more troubling is that they are having to do it during a special election, when the mid-term election is less than 11 months away.
I’m sorry but these congressional campaign committees should stay away from primary battles. We saw what happened in NY-23 a few weeks ago, but the DSCC apparently didn’t:
Secretary of State Elaine Marshall is leading other candidates in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate by a wide margin.
Marshall is the choice of 42 percent of voters in a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling. Chapel Hill lawyer Kenneth Lewis has 7 percent and unofficial candidate and Lexington lawyer Cal Cunningham has 5 percent. There's plenty of room to grow: 45 percent of poll respondents were undecided, according to the survey of 667 likely Democratic primary voters that was conducted Nov. 23-24.
The poll may prove helpful to Marshall, who is still trying to convince the national Democratic establishment that she is worth the investment of the millions of dollars it would take to defeat Republican Sen. Richard Burr. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee unsuccessfully lobbied U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge of Lillington to run for the seat.
The committee is now lobbying Cunningham, who previously announced he would not run, to reconsider.
John McCain, who ended the year with a $4.5 million debt, plans six coast-to-coast fundraisers in three days to capitalize on his Florida victory and front-runner status and build on the $7 million he raised in the first three weeks of January.
[...]New fund-raising figures to be made public on Thursday will show that the national campaign committee of the House Democrats ended 2007 with $35 million in the bank and $1.3 million in debt. The Republicans’ committee had $5 million in the bank and $2 million in debt.
One of this biggest factors for the past decade of GOP wins has been their fundraising and GOTV (get out the vote) campaign, which I will have more on later. These two factors combined have dealt lethal blows to the Democrats and the Democrats have not been able to counter them, until now.
This year has been a fundraising landslide for Democrats. More big time businesses are donating to the Democrats and they have been catching up to the Republican fundraising machine. Today's Washington Post even talks about the sudden "surge" in Democrat fundraising:
Democratic fundraising for the midterm elections is ending with a surge.
In September, the Democratic campaign committees for the House and the Senate outraised their counterpart Republican committees, reversing historical trends.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $14.4 million and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee collected $13.6 million last month, they said. In contrast, the National Republican Congressional Committee raised $12 million and the National Republican Senatorial Committee collected $5.2 million.
The Republican National Committee, however, continued to outpace the Democratic National Committee. In September, the RNC raised $13.1 million and reported total receipts of $14.3 million, while the DNC said it collected $5.6 million.
The GOP committees maintained an overall advantage of about $10 million in funds available to be spent. At the end of September, the Democratic committees had $67.3 million on hand; the Republican committees had $77.4 million.
While the Republicans still have the upper hand in fundraising, the gap is closing. What is amazing is that with the Republicans still outspending the Democrats, the Republicans are facing a certain defeat in November.
While Lieberman is out giving the proverbial "fuck you" to Democrats in Connecticut, the Democratic leadership have spoken and show where their support now lies:
Democratic Leader Harry Reid and DSCC Chair Chuck Schumer issued the following joint statement today on the Connecticut Senate race:
“The Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken and chosen Ned Lamont as their nominee. Both we and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fully support Mr. Lamont’s candidacy. Congratulations to Ned on his victory and on a race well run.
“Joe Lieberman has been an effective Democratic Senator for Connecticut and for America. But the perception was that he was too close to George Bush and this election was, in many respects, a referendum on the President more than anything else. The results bode well for Democratic victories in November and our efforts to take the country in a new direction.”
The results of yesterday's primary could be a definite glimpse into the near future. It very well could indicate that more voters are going to turn to candidates opposed to Bush's war then to the stale "stay the course" candidates.
Connecticut is going to be a very interesting race this fall and I don't think anyone knows how to predict this one. We are treading in new territory now in the way of politics, but there are a few key points that need to be considered.
Christy has a post up that says the DSCC will support whoever wins the primary in Connecticut:
Boltin’ Joe is waking up to some startling news this morning — guess all those call arounds to party elders didn’t go a smoothly as Lieberman tried to spin them yesterday. When you decide to try and game the political party system, you can’t expect the people who hold power in that political party to say , "Good on ya’!", now can you?
CNN is reporting (video clip) that an anonymous Senior Staffer at the DSCC says that the DSCC will likely support the winner of the Connecticut primary.
In a serious blow to Sen. Joseph Lieberman's (D-CT) reelection campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is likely to back the winner of the Democratic primary in Connecticut, meaning that Lieberman may be left without national allies for campaign money.
A senior Democratic party official confirmed that the DSCC is unlikely to back Lieberman should he lose the primary to Ned Lamont, a more progressive contender in Connecticut who has garnered support from bloggers and has catalyzed his campaign around Lieberman's aggressive position on Iraq.
“It is likely that the DSCC will back the winner of the Democratic primary in Connecticut,” the party official told RAW STORY, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the race.
Today Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made a statement that would lead us to believe the DSCC, whose mission is to get more Democrats elected to Senate, would support Joe Lieberman if he was defeated in the August primary and forced to run as an Independent.
I added a new Get Active item today to sign a petition by Ned Lamont urging Joe Lieberman to back Lamont should Lamont win in August. Lamont has already made the promise to Joe.
Jane has much more on what can be done. If the DSCC is worried more about protecting incumbents then helping Democrats get elected then they have no respect for a democracy. The people who identify themselves as Democrats elect the next candidate for a seat, not the DSCC. If this is the avenue the DSCC is taking then they can go to hell. I will not donate another single dollar to them until they show they are fully behind Democrats and not their buddies.
Earlier this week we heard that the Republicans were having problems finding their platform for this year's election. Now something else they have been quick to point out about Democrats is that they fall short on fund raising when compared to the GOP. Well looks like that other tactic has now changed:
The Republican committee that handles Senate campaigns picked up the pace in fundraising in February but still trails its rival Democratic committee by almost a 2-to-1 margin.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee raised $5.5 million in February, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $3.8 million.
Democrats still hold a big advantage on money in the bank with $27.4 million, while Republicans have $14.5 million.
"We had a huge January and February. Where we're seeing progress is new money through small donors in the direct mail program," said Brian Nick, an NRSC spokesman.
There you have it. The Democrats are actually leading the Republicans 2-1 in Senate fund raising. If you consider everything the Republicans are not falling short on, the Democrats are looking real good this fall.
There is one last obstacle though, and this is one that all of us can help out on. That is getting people out to vote. It might seem like something that is not worth the effort, but this is going to be a close election year and every vote will be needed.
