Wednesday, October 19th, 2005...7:46 pm
F-Oldin’ Money
In tommorrow’s Tucson Weekly, Jim Nintzel digs into the campaign finance reports of the candidates. Much to his suprise, he finds that the Republican candidates have not raised as much money as their publicly financed Democratic opponents.
He says there might be three reasons for this:
1) The Republicans were holding off on the big fundraising so they don’t have to reveal the big donors until Oct. 27, when the next round of reports is due;
2) The Republicans thought they’d be able to raise more money, but wallets have been tighter than they expected; or
3) The Republicans never intended to go on the big ol’ spending spree of special-interest money that Democrats have been accusing them of for the entire campaign.
Nintzel says that his guess is a combination of 2 and 3. Jim, you aren’t allowed to guess two answers, especially when you came up with the list.
He failed to consider a fourth possibility. I can bring up a fourth possibility you see, because I didn’t write the list. The Republicans are deliberately holding back on their fundraising to deny the Democrats the issue of big money in politics. Yes, it’s absolutely brilliant.
Okay, maybe not.
The reason is a variant of answer number two. The people that typically give to local Republicans just are not excited about this race. Some normally supportive business groups are holding back on support for Fred Ronstadt, mostly because he deals with them in the same high handed manner that he deals with regular citizens.
Kathleen Dunbar is seen as a losing cause by many Republican muckety mucks. This is odd, since I always saw her as the stronger candidate of the two. She has a much stronger community presence than Ronstadt does. This may be one case where the quality of the Democratic nominee has scared the Republicans. Karin Uhlich used to be the executive director of the Primavera Foundation, the fundraising list of which has many of the Republican buisinessmen who give to campaigns. I don’t know if this has hurt Dunbar’s fundraising, but it can’t help.
I have been suprised by the listlessness of the Republican campaigns so far. I have recieved one piece of mail from Ronstadt’s folks, and that wasn’t technically a campaign mailing. I haven’t seen any ads for either Ronstadt or Dunbar. I have barely seen any activity from pro-Republican “independent” campaigns. I’ve seen a grand total of three signs for either Ronstadt of Dunbar (by the way, I think I saw more signs for Vernon Walker than the two active candidates). What the heck is going on here?
7 Comments
October 19th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
You obviously missed the billboard on 22nd and Campbell, which has a grotesquely huge picture of Kathleen Dunbar. But, you’re right.. I haven’t gotten ANY mailings from anyone either, except a nice little message from my favorite Congressman, reminding me to vote Democrat.
October 20th, 2005 at 7:08 am
Yeah…maybe that’s where their money is going…to those all so effective billboards…
Maybe if a mailing house habitually broke the law and had an ongoing lawsuit with the city, she’d send more mail.
So, let me get this right Mexilina, Jim Kolbe sent you a mailing asking you to vote Democrat?
October 20th, 2005 at 10:51 am
I think they are trying to screw the filing – they don’t want to give their opponents any ammo to use against them.
A good example, this bullshit bipartisan committee — they filed NO ACTIVITY right?
Seems like this is part of their grand strategy.
October 20th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
What kind of voting machines do you have in play down there?
October 20th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
I don’t know about the exact name for the model, but they are optical scan machines. You bubble in a ballot and feed it into the machine.
October 24th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
I’ve actually seen more signs for Dunbar (including multiple grotesque billboards) than any other candidate, followed closely by Trasoff, and distantly in third by Uhlich. Rondstadt, apparently has not designed any signs of any kind, but he does have quite a few radio spots running, so if he is spending less money accorping to his disclosures, the cost of printing signs must have really gone up… or he could be lying.
October 24th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
OK.. just read your comment, Ted..and, don’t hate because Raul didn’t call YOU! Alas, since then I’ve heard that McCain did some phone messages of his own..
BTW, billboards are So Very Ineffective! and although billboards run ~$1,000, signs can be as “cheap” as $5 each.