Apr. 7, 2003
White House Flexes Money Muscle in N.C. Elections
By J. Barlow Herget
RALEIGH - The news that Sen. John Edwards has raised an astounding $7.4 million for his 2004 presidential campaign underscores again the muscle that money brings to politics today.
Money not only pays for tangible items such as good staff, advertising, opinion surveys, and fund raising operations, it also confers the halo of a serious candidate. After all, a candidate who can persuade people to bet real money on him or her is worth watching.
President Bush is the champion at fund raising, having collected over $186 million in his successful 2000 campaign. He has continued to be a magnet for campaign money; he has raised over $140 million for the Republican Party since he took office, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.
But it is President Bush’s willingness to use the White House’s political muscle and money to select Republican candidates that is unprecedented. "The President last time [2002] spent considerable political capital and rolled the dice and got involved in numerous campaigns and was successful," said Marc Rotterman, a North Carolina Republican consultant.
And North Carolina has been the model fitness center for this new presidential exercise.
Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove have been particularly successful in selecting Republican nominees for the U.S. Senate who went on to win in the general election. The White House’s efforts helped Republicans regain control of the Senate, no small reward for the President.
In North Carolina, Rove became involved early in the campaign to replace Sen. Jesse Helms after he announced in 2001 that he would retire at the end of his fifth term. The White House encouraged Elizabeth Dole to run and let it be known she was Bush’s candidate. She was popular in North Carolina and loyal to Bush’s agenda.
Equally important, the White House helped clear the field for Dole. Only one well known Republican stood in the way, former Charlotte Mayor and Republican gubernatorial nominee, Richard Vinroot. He withdrew from the race in November 2001.
Many people concluded that Vinroot simply recognized that Dole was the better candidate. There was something else. Four weeks later, the national party, which takes its orders from the White House, paid over $200,000 to Vinroot’s campaign committee to help him retire the debt from his losing campaign for governor in 2000.
Bush began to actively campaign for Dole. Most presidents campaign and raise money for their party’s respective nominees, but they usually wait until state voters have picked the nominee.
President Bush was campaigning for Dole as early as February 2002 at a Charlotte rally. The primary, delayed by legal suits, wasn’t held until September. Dole overwhelmed her little known opponents.
The presidential endorsement is a valuable commodity in itself, but it’s the money that a president can raise for a candidate’s campaign that pays the bills. And the Bush/Rove White House has money muscle.
It’s difficult to know how much Rove and Bush brought to Dole’s campaign, but the February rally reportedly raised $1 million for her and other Republican candidates. Another Bush campaign appearance for Dole in July in Winston-Salem raised between $700,000 and $800,000, according to newspaper reports at the time. Bush had been in the state four times by mid-summer.
Dole won in November by a comfortable margin over Democrat Erskine Bowles, and the White House’s selection process worked in a number of other critical U.S. Senate races. The White House helped pick Republican nominees in Minnesota, Missouri, Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas, and South Dakota.
Now, President Bush and Rove have picked the person they would like North Carolina Republican voters to select as their nominee for the U.S. Senate in the 2004 Election. It is Winston-Salem congressman Richard Burr.
Anyone thinking about running against him for the Republican nomination faces Burr’s own considerable campaign skills as well as the resources of the Bush White House.
It’s no accident, for example, that Burr -- 21 months before the election -- has collected the endorsements of the state’s Republican royalty. Look at the list: former U.S. Sens. Jesse Helms, Jim Broyhill and D. M. "Lauch" Faircloth, former Govs. Jim Holshouser and Jim Martin, all six sitting Republican congressmen and women, and Sen. Dole.
When was the last time that happened in either party?
Burr reports that he has raised $1.7 million of the $12 million he believes he will need to win the race. The White House is helping him get more. A $1,000-per-person event in Washington on April 29 is expected to raise $100,000, and on April 24, Burr will have a $1,000-ticket fund-raiser in Winston-Salem. The main attraction there will be Karl Rove.
Barlow Herget served two terms on the Raleigh City Council and is a contributor to "The North Carolina Century."
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