Dialing for Dollars
Forget New Hampshire. The contest for cash is the first real primary
New Mexico's Richardson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate, both face an additional hurdle in that they can't roll leftover funds from their previous campaigns into the presidential race, as senators can. "Senators go into the desert with at least some water," says Craig Varoga, former campaign manager for Democratic ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who dropped out of the presidential race in February, less than three months after declaring his candidacy. "We had to look for the streams." But even with $6 million from his earlier Senate re-election campaign, Indiana's Bayh says his goal of raising $25 million more by the end of 2007 left no time to focus on anything else. "Between meeting prospective and current donors and phone time, fundraising took up 80 to 90 percent of the day," says Bayh. "And the fundraising people kept saying it wasn't enough."
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law of 2002 was meant to stanch the flow of money into campaigns. But the lower donation limits-$4,600 per candidate per person for the primary and general election cycle combined-simply gave rise to a new class of small-donation "bundlers" like Torrey.
Markets. Even for the top-tier candidates, the '08 cycle's costs will require tapping into new markets. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, for instance, is confident he can keep pace with Republican rivals McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani by hitting up networks derived from his stints in the venture capital industry and at the Olympic organizing committee, along with harnessing ties to the Mormon community.
But the campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, running third in national Democratic polls, says it expects to need only around $35 million before Iowa. Edwards is banking on grass-roots support in Iowa and Nevada, which will host the second of the nation's caucuses next year, to translate into strong early finishes that create momentum for the February 5 states. The campaign is resigned to having much smaller presences in those states. But Edwards's gamble relies on grass-roots networks built during the '04 cycle, when he was a presidential candidate and the vice presidential nominee. First-time candidates lack such assets.
Second-tier candidates are loath to discuss their disadvantages. Asked about the first filing deadline, Huckabee-whose support in polls is around 2 percent-says, "We don't see it as a viability test. We're just trying to ... make sure we're not burning more [money] than we're bringing in." Huckabee notes that many well-financed presidential candidates have gone nowhere, including then Texas Sen. Phil Gramm in 1996.
But skyrocketing campaign spending has also made shoestring bids like Jimmy Carter's in 1976 almost inconceivable today. "Carter ... spent 18 months camped out in Iowa without a lot of money but with all the time in the world," says Southern Methodist University Prof. Cal Jillson. "Now, you [need] ... an organization in 50 states at once and need $100 million, and that doesn't sound like Jimmy Carter, and it doesn't sound like Richardson or Huckabee."
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