RAISING HAY
Political fundraisers say they are interested to see how all of the
Democrats will be able to fundraise against each other. As it
stands — excepting Sen. John Kerry’s personal
wealth — all of them appear to be starting from the same
position.
Recent Federal Election Commission filings indicate that almost
all of the prospective Democratic candidates have nearly $2 million
banked in some political accounts: personal PACs, campaign accounts
or exploratory committee accounts. Only Vermont Gov. Howie
Dean has raised less. Way less. He has about $125,000
banked.
Sen. Tom Daschle has more than $1.8 million,
and he’s on the low end for the hopefuls. Sens. John
Edwards, Kerry, and Joe Lieberman all
raised more than $2 million this past year. Lieberman, ever the
gentleman, spent almost all of it helping his party’s candidates
around the country. He has almost three-quarters of a million in
the bank. “Getting more will not be a problem,” says a Lieberman
Senate staffer. “He’s been keeping all of his fundraisers busy
making sure they know he’s going to need their help soon.”
Perhaps most interesting in the filings is that John Edwards
continues to carry as much as $6 million in debt from this first
Senate campaign. Should he lose in his presidential bid, and not
retain his Senate seat, he may have to up his per-hour rate as a
country lawyer for “regular folk” to pay it off.
AN OVERSIGHT
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi made clear on
Monday who’s going to be buttering her party’s political bread in
the coming year or two, not that she’s bragging about it. In
unveiling her caucus’s economic stimulus package to reporters, she
neglected to credit assistance from the legislative affairs office
of the AFL-CIO, which helped put the plan together with House
leadership staffers.
“It wasn’t like they signed off on the plan, but they knew in
advance what we were doing and were enthusiastic supporters,” says
a Democratic staffer on the Joint Economic Committee.
Despite arguments by moderate Democrats to include a broad-based
tax cut and/or refund to families with incomes greater than $80,000
to $100,000, Pelosi’s left-leaning leadership team instead focused
on putting together a plan that they hoped would energize their
base. “They weren’t interested in helping the people who
consistently are the most taxed group in America,” says a staffer
for a conservative Democratic House member. “It was all about
helping the lower end of the economic spectrum.”
SENATE SQUATTER
For someone who claims to know so much about the inner-workings of
the Senate, Trent Lott seems awfully
forgetful.
With the Senate kicking into business mode today, the outgoing
party leader hasn’t moved out of his leadership offices, meaning
new majority leader Sen. Bill Frist is still using
his personal offices for leadership meetings.
According to a Frist leadership source, Lott, while not being
wholly uncooperative about a move, suggested that they simply hang
the Majority Leader shingle over Frist’s office space, in a manner
similar to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who
replaced his House Whip shingle on Monday with the leadership
title.
“We all understand what Lott is up against,” says a Senate
leadership source. “He hasn’t been unclassy about what is
happening, but he isn’t moving as fast as he could.”
