Bring On The Cash!

ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY ROBERT NEUBECKER
RAKING IT IN: President Bush has raised $132 million this cycle, while Democrat John Kerry stands at $25 million

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Republicans are eager to either get in the 527 game or shut it down. Late last year, a group of Republican operatives forced the issue by forming what else?--a 527, and demanding the FEC declare an opinion on it. They gave it a parody-of-a Beltway-group name, Americans for a Better Country. The group's counsel, former Reagan Administration official Frank Donatelli, is candid that their "goal is to help President Bush and the Bush-Cheney ticket," and he maintains he's in a win-win situation. If the FEC puts 527s out of the campaign business, that's dandy, but if it allows them, then Republicans will start producing more of their own 527s. "We have to play ... We have no choice in the matter," says Donatelli.

Although the landscape gives the President a big advantage so far, Kerry is not in the weak position that Bob Dole inhabited in the 1996 race a putative nominee without resources or the wherewithal to get any. Like Bush, Kerry has opted out of the federal financing system, and as a result he will be the first Democratic nominee in recent history to emerge from the primaries with the ability to raise and spend money without restriction before the convention. Had he abided by the federal finance rules, Kerry would have already hit his limits and would not have been able to spend any more money until he formally got the nomination. In addition, as other candidates have dropped out of the race, his campaign has scooped up their fund raisers. Whereas his Internet operation raised $50,000 on its best day in 2003, it is now bringing in about $200,000 every day. And the candidate himself, who has attended only one fund raiser so far this year, is scheduling at least 20 of them across the country in March.

What is helping Kerry right now more than anything else is the fact that donors love a winner. When his campaign was careening in late December, it looked as though it would have trouble making its payroll. So Kerry tapped his fortune a considerable one, thanks to his marriage to condiment heir Teresa Heinz and mortgaged one of their five homes for $6.4 million to keep his campaign afloat. But once he started racking up primary victories, his fund raisers started getting their calls returned. They had expected to raise $400,000 at one event in New York City on Feb. 5, two days after Kerry won five contests across the country; the night's final bottom line reached $750,000. The campaign says a total of $6.5 million has poured in since his first win in Iowa.

That's impressive for a Democrat. But Kerry's fund-raising operation pales in comparison to the colossus that is the Bush-Cheney re-election effort. Bush raised a record-setting $132 million in 2003. Ken Mehlman, campaign manager of the President's re-election effort, says that his team "still has its goal of raising $170 million" by this September's Republican Convention in New York City, but no one will be surprised if they clear closer to $200 million. So far they have been frugal, says Mehlman, striking good cash-up-front deals with vendors. Indeed, the cash-rich Bush-Cheney campaign got plenty of national media last week for hardly spending any money at all. They put up an Internet ad attacking Kerry as an "unprincipled" lackey of special interests. The ad was e-mailed to 6 million supporters.

So how does the Bush team raise all that money, and where does it come from? First, there are the well-heeled big donors who give $2,000 apiece. The Bush-Cheney campaign wrangles them through its Rangers fund raisers who are required amass at least $200,000 (that is, they round up 100 people who will give $2,000 each). The system is so well-organized that each fund raiser is assigned a number, and that number is put on donors' checks. If the fund raisers make their quotas, they get benefits like a visit to Bush at his ranch.

All of this is possible because the Republican base of donors, large and small, has always been broader than the Democrats'. Until the 2000 election cycle, no presidential candidate had ever found more than 19,000 donors who could contribute the maximum allowable for an individual. In 2000, Bush found some 58,000 to pay the max. This year, it's likely to be much higher. And the small-donor base of Republicans has been larger too. The Republican National Committee has picked up a million new donors since McCain-Feingold while the Democrats have picked up 600,000.

Republicans have also turned fund raising into an exact science. In Bush World, everything moves with relentless efficiency. Georgette Mosbacher, the cosmetics executive and author of inspirational books like It Takes Money, Honey, raised money for Bush's father and the current President. Back in 1988, Mosbacher recalls, sorbet courses would be served at fund-raising dinners for wealthy donors. The goal was to give President Bush, the father, "time to visit the tables." These days, George W. Bush sweeps in and out of donor events without even eating. Like the father, the son pens handwritten thank-you notes, often adding a sentence at the end of a typed missive. "It is very, very organized," says Mosbacher.