Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, at
a conference on Innovation in Education Systems in Lisbon, Portugal.
Photographer: Alfredo Rocha/WireImage
Jeb Bush, the popular former Florida
governor, said he will “stay neutral” in the state’s
Republican presidential primary while warning his party’s
candidates to leave the “circular firing squad” of their
debates behind and start appealing to a broader audience.
Bush’s remarks, in an exclusive interview, establish a
challenge for his party’s candidates as the contest advances to
Florida, where the Jan. 31 primary will take the race into its
biggest and most diverse arena yet. The winner will be awarded
all of the state’s 50 presidential convention delegates.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich have courted Bush’s endorsement in recent
days, he says. In December, his father, former President George
H. W. Bush, told the Houston Chronicle he was giving Romney an
“unofficial” endorsement. John H. Sununu Sr., the senior
Bush’s former White House chief of staff, is serving as a
surrogate for the Romney campaign.
The younger Bush described both Romney and Gingrich as
“credible” candidates in a November contest with President
Barack Obama. “I intend to help whoever wins the nomination,”
the former governor said in the interview yesterday.
Gingrich has increased the stakes of the Florida contest
with his defeat of Romney in yesterday’s South Carolina primary.
Polling has shown Romney leading in Florida.
At the same time, Bush said his party’s candidates should
adjust the “tone” of their debate on issues such as illegal
immigration to start appealing to independent-minded voters in
“swing states” such as Florida with a history of voting for
either major party. These voters are likely to decide the
outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
Romney Tax Returns
Bush in a telephone interview also said Romney should
disclose his income tax records during the Florida contest,
calling Romney’s riches “a wonderful success story.”
“Release your taxes,” Bush advised Romney. “I don’t quite
understand the reluctance to do so.”
Romney today said he will release his 2010 tax return and
estimate for 2011 taxes on Jan. 24, saying the issue has become
a distraction.
“We just made a mistake in holding off as long as we did”
in releasing the returns, Romney said today in an interview on
“Fox News Sunday.”
The candidates are ‘’going to have 10 days to come make
their case, hopefully in a way that positions the candidates for
the general election as well, which seems to be less the focus
now,” Bush said in the telephone interview.
“Candidates are making lasting impressions on voters, not
just primary voters, in how they campaign,” he said from his
office in Miami. “You have to remember that in a state like
Florida, independent voters will decide the election. You have
to maintain your principles but have a broader appeal.”
Circular Firing Squad
“We’re sort of in the circular firing squad right now,”
Bush said of divisive disputes among the Republican candidates.
Florida is not only the biggest primary contest so far.
It’s also an important win for any presidential nominee.
Obama won Florida by 2.8 percentage points in 2008 with the
help of swing-voters in the central region around Orlando and
also younger Cuban-Americans less aligned with Republicans than
are their parents. Florida also backed Bush’s brother, former
President George W. Bush, by 5 percentage points in 2004 and by
just 537 votes in 2000 after a fight over disputed ballots that
ended in the U.S. Supreme Court (1000L).
Florida also is home to an ethnically diverse electorate.
With a population of 18.8 million, Hispanics account for 22.5
percent of the Sunshine State’s residents, blacks 15 percent.
Immigration an Issue
The debate over immigration laws in the Republican Party
could be a problem for its nominee, Bush said. Nationally, exit
polls showed that 67 percent of Hispanic voters supported Obama
in 2008 and 31 percent backed Republican John McCain.
“That could be an issue in the general election that plays
out in a negative way for Republican candidates,” Bush said.
“In swing-states, Hispanic voters are increasingly the swing
voters, and if you, by your tone more than anything else, send a
signal that ‘you’re not wanted on my team’ -- and I’m not saying
any candidate has done that -- you could alienate voters that
could be part of the winning” formula.
Romney has referred to benefits such as in-state Texas
college tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants as
“magnets” encouraging more immigrants. In a Sept. 7 debate at
the Reagan Library in California, Romney said: “We cannot give
amnesty to those who have come here illegally.” Those who have
arrived recently, he said: “You just go back home.” Those here
for a long time with children “and so forth, you let stay
enough time to organize their affairs and go home.”
Gingrich Immigration Stance
Gingrich, at a Nov. 22 debate in Washington, D.C., said he
supports allowing some illegal immigrants who arrived in the
U.S. years ago to remain -- saying that, while those newly
arrived with no U.S. ties should be deported, those who entered
decades ago, have children and paid taxes shouldn’t be uprooted.
The former Georgia congressman toughened his stance in
South Carolina by vowing to uphold the state’s anti-illegal
immigration law, which is being challenged in federal court by
the U.S. Department of Justice for its impact on minority
voters.
“I don’t agree with Mitt’s views on immigration in their
totality but that’s OK,” Bush said. “My not endorsing him does
not relate to any particular issue.”
“I like Mitt Romney; I think he would be a very credible
challenger to President Obama,” said Bush, adding the same of
Gingrich -- “and so would Rick Santorum, by the way.”
Florida’s Role
Yet Bush, fielding requests for endorsements from Romney
and Gingrich in recent days and from former Pennsylvania Senator
Santorum longer ago, said: “It’s a big decision. Florida is
going to play a big role in who the party’s nominee is. I think
the voters can make up their own minds.”
Endorsements are sought for a reason: In 2008, McCain and
Romney tied in opinion polling nearing the Jan. 29 Florida
primary. Then-Republican Governor Charlie Crist endorsed McCain
four days before the election, and McCain defeated Romney by 5
percentage points, essentially clinching the nomination.
Bush, who served as governor from 1999-2007, left in good
standing. In a Quinnipiac University poll of Florida voters
released Dec. 26, 2006, 21 percent of those surveyed rated Bush
as a “great governor,” 36 percent as a “good governor.”
The year before the 2008 Florida primary, Bush introduced
Romney to advisers and friends as a worthy candidate but stopped
short of endorsing anyone. In this year’s primary “I’m going to
stay neutral,” he said. “I have a lot of friends supporting
all the varying candidates, but more importantly I think the
voters ought to make the determination.”
Romney’s Advantage
Romney was running twice as strongly as Gingrich and
Santorum in a CNN/Time magazine poll of likely Republican voters
in Florida taken Jan. 13-17, with Romney supported by 43
percent, Santorum 19 percent and Gingrich 18 percent. That was
well before Gingrich won in South Carolina, a prize claimed by
every Republican nominated for president since 1980.
In Florida, as in the rest of the nation, Bush said, voters
this year are most mindful of the economy.
“The broader issues of how to grow the economy and how to
get back to a saner fiscal policy would be the two drivers,” he
said. “That is so overwhelmingly on the minds of people.”
Florida’s economic health has declined by 12.4 percent
since the first quarter of 2009, when Obama was inaugurated,
according to the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States. The
state’s home prices have declined 22.5 percent in the period.
The debate within the Republican primary over Romney’s
success at Bain Capital LLC has made Bush “kind of dizzy,” he
said. Romney should disclose his tax returns, as Gingrich has,
and should be “talking about his successes” as he campaigns in
Florida, according to the state’s former governor.
“He is clearly uncomfortable talking about his own
success, which is natural,” Bush said of Romney, a multi-
millionaire. “At the same time, I don’t think he has anything
to be ashamed of. What a wonderful success story. It should
stand as an example of American exceptionalism.”
Ultimately, Bush says, the rigor of the campaign should
make the nominee stronger. Looking ahead to the Republican
National Convention on Aug. 27-30 -- in Tampa -- Bush says of
the contest: “I’d like it not to go all the way to August.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Mark Silva in Washington at
msilva34@bloomberg.net
South Carolina voters are being buried this week under an avalanche
of combative and often nasty political commercials from super PACs,
funded by a tiny group of super-rich donors with very particular
interests in the state’s Republican primary.
Hedge-fund king John Paulson, who donated $1 million to a group
backing former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, would very much like
to see President Obama’s financial reforms repealed. The Marriott
brothers, who also gave $1 million to a pro-Romney super PAC, have
lobbied Washington for favorable tax and immigration policies through
their hotel companies.
And casino magnate Sheldon Adelson recently dashed off a $5 million check
to a group backing former House speaker Newt Gingrich, marking what may
be the largest single political contribution in U.S. history. Adelson
is well known for supporting hard-line policies favoring Israel while
also advocating measures that would benefit the gambling industry.
“There
are probably fewer than 100 people who are fueling 90 percent of this
outside money right now,” said David Donnelly, national campaigns
director at the Public Campaign Action Fund,
an advocacy group favoring limits on political spending. “When you
think about the amazing impact that this small number of people have on
deciding the election, on the information that people will have on who
to vote for, it’s mind-boggling.”
The departure of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. from the field on Monday also underscores how few rules
govern super PACs, which are free to shift their support and money to
another candidate or cause once their main beneficiary bows out. A group
called Our Destiny PAC spent $2.5 million backing Huntsman, bankrolled
in part by his billionaire industrialist father; its future plans are
unclear.
In total, these new and unrestrained political action committees spent more than $15 million supporting GOP candidates in Iowa
and New Hampshire and are now outspending the official campaigns in
South Carolina by 2 to 1, according to advertising and expenditure data.
The onslaught of outside money has already shaped the contours
of the race, shoring up Romney in Iowa and giving candidates such as
Gingrich (Ga.), former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Texas Gov. Rick
Perry a last chance to break through in South Carolina.
Sporting anodyne names such as Endorse Liberty and Make Us Great Again,
super PACs are taking advantage of recent court rulings allowing
corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to spend as much as they
want on elections. The groups have quickly evolved into de facto shadow
operations of the traditional campaigns, despite rules forbidding direct
cooperation between the two.
Super PACs are generally staffed by
former aides of the candidates they support, and they are fueled by
benefactors wealthy enough to write six- and seven-figure checks for
what amounts to a political gamble. The biggest super-PAC donors also
are often fundraisers for the candidates: A Wall Street event for Romney
on Tuesday includes at least six hosts who gave to the main pro-Romney
super PAC as well.
Many of the donors will remain anonymous until
Jan. 31, when reports to the Federal Election Commission are due. But
previous disclosure records, combined with leaks and news reports,
sketch out a varied list of tycoons, hedge-fund managers and
industrialists behind many of the donations, with a pronounced tilt
toward Wall Street and the powerful financial services industry.
Restore Our Future, the
pro-Romney super PAC, spent $7.8 million on the primaries through last
week thanks to contributors dominated by Wall Street and the real estate
sector. Several donors — including Edward Conard, who gave $1 million,
and Paul Edgerley, who gave $1 million together with his wife — have
ties to Romney’s former equity fund, Bain Capital.
J.W. “Bill”
Marriott Jr., chairman of Marriott International, and Richard Marriott,
head of Host Hotels & Resorts, each gave $500,000 to Restore Our
Future. A Marriott International spokesman said all such donations are
personal and have no connection to the company.
Paulson, who made much of his fortune
by betting on the housing market’s collapse, has decried the Dodd-Frank
financial reform law as “a failure” and agrees with Romney that it
should be repealed. He said in a statement: “We contribute to candidates
and organizations that support U.S. economic growth and leadership.”
Super PACs were made possible by a 2010 ruling
by the Supreme Court allowing corporations and unions to spend
unlimited funds on elections, yet only a handful of publicly held
corporations have taken advantage of the opening so far. One of those is
BE Aerospace Inc., founded by Romney donor Amin Khoury, which gave
$50,000 to Restore Our Future and has received at least $80 million in
U.S. government contracts, federal data show.
The single largest
known contributor in the 2012 election so far is Adelson, the
billionaire chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., who gave $5 million
earlier this month to Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC.
The
group is, in many respects, a case study of the promise and pitfalls of
super PACs: Founded and funded by Gingrich’s closest confidantes,
Winning Our Future has grabbed headlines for its broad assault on Romney’s time at Bain, while also prompting Gingrich to distance himself from inaccuracies in the group’s ads.
“We
shifted the whole debate before we even began spending any money,”
boasted Rick Tyler, a longtime Gingrich aide who now serves as senior
adviser to the super PAC. “Our ads are scheduled to be interrupted only
by more of our ads.”
Spokesman Ron Reese said Adelson gave money
to the group because of “a long-documented personal relationship” with
Gingrich. He also said Adelson does not expect any special treatment if
Gingrich reaches the White House.
“He’s hopeful that Speaker
Gingrich would be elected president and that maybe he would be invited
to the White House Hanukkah party,” Reese said. “That’s it. There are no
expectations.”
Three candidates who left the GOP race in recent
weeks each had at least one super PAC championing their cause. A group
favoring Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) switched its support to Romney,
while one backing Herman Cain has gone dormant. A spokesman for Our
Destiny PAC, the pro-Huntsman group, did not respond to requests for
comment on the group’s plans.
Democrats also are taking advantage of the loosened campaign finance environment. Priorities USA Action,
a pro-Obama super PAC, received a $2 million donation from Hollywood
mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and $500,000 from media magnate Fred Eychaner,
who co-hosted a Chicago fundraiser for Obama last week.
Another group called the Red, White and Blue Fund,
was recently formed to bolster Santorum, who finished just eight votes
behind Romney in the Iowa caucuses but lagged in New Hampshire. The
group, which has bought at least $800,000 worth of ads in South Carolina
so far, is funded in part by Foster Friess, a Wyoming-based mutual fund manager and longtime supporter of conservative and evangelical causes.
When
asked what he expects in return for his financial support, which could
reach $1 million, Friess joked in an interview that “I have my heart set
on an ambassadorship to Zimbabwe.”
“In all my years of giving,
I’ve never asked a politician for any particular favors or anything,”
Friess continued. “I’ve just asked for them to support the principles of
the Founding Fathers and the values that made this nation great.”
Friess added: “I do want something desperately: I want my country back.”
Dec 14, 2011
Sen. Rubio heads list of potential GOP running mates
Voting for the Iowa caucuses is 20 days away. Is it too early to talk about Republican vice presidential picks?
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida tops a list of potential GOP running mates in a national survey by Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. He edges out Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is waging her own fight to become the party's standard bearer, on the VP list.
"The Republican Party is trending older and whiter and more male," Peter Woolley, a political scientist and director of the PublicMind Poll. "Clearly some voters are looking for a little more contrast. Some know they will have to appeal to a broader group of people to win the White House."
Rubio, a freshman senator elected last year with Tea Party support, is often mentioned as a possibility for the GOP ticket. He has said he's not interested in the slot.
A poll earlier this week found 46% of Latino voters say having Rubio as the vice presidential nominee would have no effect on their vote.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a popular politician who has endorsed Mitt Romney for president, comes in fifth on the list of potential GOP vice presidents in the PublicMind Poll. The blunt-speaking Christie once said that the Republican who picks him as a running mate would need to be "sedated."
DeMint: Tea Party Revolutionizing GOP, America
Sunday, 03 Jul 2011 05:56 PM
By Matthew Belvedere and Ashley Martella
The best way for Republicans to win back the majority in the Senate is “to do what we say we’re going to do,” argues tea party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint in an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview.
The South Carolina conservative maintains that he’d “rather have 30 Republicans who believe in the principles of freedom than 60 who believe in nothing at all.
“The quickest way for us to get back to majority is to do what we say we're going to do,” he says. “And that is to support a constitutionally limited government.”
DeMint arrived in Washington as a freshman congressman in 1999. He served three terms in the House. When he became a senator in 2004, Republicans had 55 seats, a large majority in the House, and a Republican, George W. Bush, in the White House.
“We didn't do what we said we were going to do,” he points out, and the election of 2006 proved costly for Republicans. “So if you have the numbers but not the principles it doesn't matter . . . I think that set the Republican Party back 10 or 20 years.”
Now in his second term in the Senate, DeMint spoke to Newsmax.TV about his new book, “The Great American Awakening: Two Years That Changed America, Washington, and Me.” It covers the two years from the time President Barack Obama was elected until “the last earthquake election where we saw dramatic changes in Washington,” he describes.
DeMint says that what he wanted “people to see in this book is the importance of citizen activism. What the tea parties and the town halls and when people came to Washington on 9/12 and other times. The book just tracks what happens around America when this groundswell develops. And how that changed how we did business inside of Congress. And how it ultimately changed the people who served here.”
The book is a rallying cry for conservatives in 2012 — an election cycle that DeMint plans to be heavily involved in through his political action committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund.
DeMint didn’t set out to buck the Republican establishment. He was trying to raise money for the National Republican Senatorial Committee after the GOP stumbles in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But that proved difficult.
“So many people said that they're not going to give us another dime until we start acting like Republicans,” he explains. “And I asked if they would give to an organization, a PAC that only supported rock solid conservatives. And a lot of people said yes.”
The Senate Conservatives Fund was launched and started with endorsements of Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania and Marco Rubio from Florida — both of whom won their elections and are now part of the conservative core in the Senate.
The Toomey endorsement put DeMint at odds with the party establishment, which supported the re-election of then-Republican Arlen Specter. DeMint says the GOP leadership “believed in places like Pennsylvania that an Arlen Specter could win and a Pat Toomey couldn't. But what we saw is that conservatives who tell the truth, who tell it like it is, can get elected anywhere in the country.
“It was not because the political establishment changed it was because power moved out of Washington back into the hands of the American people . . . if people read the book they'll see we do this on the outside, they start changing on the inside and we still got a lot of changing we need to do.”
DeMint says his PAC raised $9 million for conservative candidates in the last election. He hopes to pull in $15 million this cycle as Republicans target the 23 Democrat seats up for election in 2012.
“We hope to have at least eight or 10 [races] where we've got conservative Republicans running in primaries we can support,” he says. “We just announced our first endorsement this year, which is Josh Mandel in Ohio, who will be taking on Sherrod Brown, one of the most liberal members of the Senate.”
DeMint is counting on continued tea party support.
“The tea party showed that if Americans get active they can change things. They can elect new people,” he says in the Newsmax interview. “We wouldn't have banned earmarks if it hadn't been for the tea parties being active . . . we now, as a party, are now supporting a balanced budget amendment. We're working together to try to cut spending. None of these things could have happened without the tea party movement.”
The tea party and conservatives like DeMint pushed these issues on the Republican leadership. But he says he’s still on good terms with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Of course we disagreed on some things. It always happens. But he's always showed me a lot of courtesy. And we continue to work together.
“[McConnell] knows that I'm going to go out and get involved in Republican primaries all across the country this time and select real conservatives who we think can win the general election . . . I don’t think the Republican Party will get as involved in primaries. So hopefully we won’t find ourselves at odds in primaries like we did last time.”
In 2012, DeMint can continue to help others get elected with his own re-election last year behind him. But he almost didn’t run in 2010.
He writes about it in “The Great American Awakening” and tells Newsmax.TV that the two-year span of the book was a very lonely time and he did a lot of soul-searching.
“It was a process for me of just making a decision that I had to go against my own leadership in some cases,” he says. “I had to step out of the comfort zone here. I frankly think that I would have been crushed if so many American people had not gotten behind me,” he admits.
DeMint says it was his wife, Debbie, who never wanted him to run for office in the first place, “who decided that we needed to stay into the fight. I got back in it. I was expecting a real hard campaign, but as it turned out, it was not a hard campaign. And I gave most of my campaign funds to other candidates.”
When his number is up again in 2016, DeMint won’t be running for a third Senate term. He says it’s not a campaign promise like he made to limit his House tenure. “Just my belief that the longer people stay up here the more likely it is they become part of the problem rather than the solution. And I don’t want to go that way myself. There will be a lot of ways we can serve. But my intent after this six years is to do something else.”
Perhaps, run for president? Only time will tell.
But there’s already speculation and even a Facebook group of DeMint disciples who would like to see the South Carolina maverick as a candidate for the White House.
June 17, 2011, 5:38 PM ET
Barbour to Republicans: Pick a Candidate and Stick With ‘Em
By Patrick O'Connor
NEW ORLEANS — Some like Newt. Others like Mitt. And some go gaga for Michele.
Mississippi Gov.
Haley Barbour speaks at the Republican Leadership Conference in New
Orleans, Friday. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
But the only candidate who really unifies the crowd at the Republican
Leader Conference here is on the other side of the ballot: President Barack Obama.
Some Republicans are lukewarm about the current crop of candidates
running to take on Mr. Obama, but the message from some party elders
seems to be: Pick one — any one — and rally around that candidate.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to nominate somebody, and whoever
that somebody is is going to be many multiples better than Barack
Obama,” Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told the crowd.
As tea party activists threaten to wage primary campaigns against
Republicans in Congress, Mr. Barbour, a former chairman of the
Republican National Committee who has assumed the job of party sage
after bowing out of the presidential race, warned the audience of
conservatives not to impose litmus tests on candidates and pleaded with
them to stick with the eventual nominee.
“If you split the conservative vote, that is the best thing for the
left,” he said. “Don’t get hung up on purity. In politics, purity is a
loser.”
He said the president has “worn out three sets of knee pads” praying that the tea party will split off from the GOP.
Afterward, he told reporters that Republicans must remain united in order to focus voters on the president’s policies.
“We’re going to run a campaign that is about the president’s record
and the economy and jobs,” he said. “And that’s going to be a successful
campaign, if we all stick together. If we don’t, it gets much, much
harder.”
In keeping with that theme, Mr. Barbour told reporters after his speech that former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.’s
service to Mr. Obama as the U.S. envoy to China wouldn’t disqualify him
as the nominee. “It’s an issue he’ll have to deal with,” Mr. Barbour
said.
The Mississippi governor said the same thing about Mr. Huntsman’s
past support for civil unions among same-sex couples. “It’s an obstacle
for him,” Mr. Barbour said. “Anytime you don’t have sort of a platform
position, you have to explain why not.”
NEW ORLEANS, LA - JUNE 18: Texas governor Rick
Perry speaks during the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference on June
18, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
(Credit:
Justin Sullivan)
NEW ORLEANS - Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry - a
highly-buzzed-about potential GOP presidential candidate - said at the
Republican Leadership Conference Saturday that Republicans should "stop
apologizing" for taking conservative positions on social and fiscal
issues.
"It saddens me when sometimes my fellow Republicans duck and cover in
the face of pressure from the left," said Perry, referencing calls for a
"truce" on social issues. He added: "Our party cannot be all things to
all people."
"Our opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let's quit trying to curry favor with them," continued Perry.
He called on the party activists present to "stand up" and "speak
with pride about our morals and our values ... let's stop this American
downward spiral."
Perry, who is openly considering entering the 2012 race, was greeted
enthusiastically by conference-goers, who applauded wildly for his
criticisms of what he called the Obama administration's "mix of
arrogance and audacity," which he deemed an "affront to every
freedom-loving American."
Criticizing the administration for what he cast as excessive
regulation and big-government overreach, Perry said of the
administration, "they clearly think that they know best. And let me tell
you, I vehemently disagree. They don't know best."
Perry assailed the administration for "too much spending, too much
interfering, and too much apologizing." Making a sarcastic talking
motion with his hand, Perry said "this administration may get up and
mouth words about job creation, but they clearly consider enterprise a
dirty word."
The speech was carefully choreographed: When the Texas governor
complained of the "runaway train known as Obamacare," the sound of a
train was piped through the ballroom speakers.
Perry, who described himself as a "disciplined, conservative Texan,"
complained of an "entitlement culture in our nation." He pointed to the
fact that Texas has balanced its budget and leads the nation in exports,
saying such accomplishments result when people are "willing to take a
beating from the liberal left and their friends in the media."
Perry got perhaps his most enthusiastic applause when he called for
the elimination of frivolous lawsuits; pointed to a Texas law that
requires women seeking abortions to be given sonograms; and discussed
his state's passage of a law requiring voters to show identification
cards at the polls.
Voting, he said, "is precious to us, and don't you think it's fair to
apply at least the same standard required to get a library card or to
board an airplane?"
Perry held a book signing before his speech, and was rumored to be
hosting a $1,000-per-person fundraiser for the Louisiana GOP immediately
afterward. While he did not participate in the straw poll held earlier here today, conference-goers said they would be happy if he jumps in the race.
"Rick Perry always fires me up," one woman said as she left the ballroom after the speech. "He's awesome. He's got my vote."
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters; Susan Walsh/Associated Press
Senators Lindsey Graham, left, and Jim DeMint are both Republicans but are getting some different responses back home.
The county party, which has traditionally been considered moderate, voted by a wide margin to censure Mr. Graham in harsh terms.
Their grievance list was long: it cited the senator for calling opponents of immigration law change “bigots,” holding the Republican Party “hostage” by participating in bipartisan maneuvers, voting for the Wall Street bailout and tarnishing the ideals of freedom.
It even criticized Mr. Graham, a Republican and the state’s senior senator, as having “stated on many occasions that his primary concern is to ‘be relevant.’ ”
The party had no such criticism for the other senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint.
In fact, Mr. DeMint, a Republican in his first term, is the leader of a movement to pull the party in the opposite direction from Mr. Graham’s conciliatory approach. The political action committee he founded, called the Senate Conservatives Fund, backs only candidates who are rock-solid conservatives, and adherents to his views have led the efforts to censure Mr. Graham.
The two senators say they are friends whose differences are exaggerated by the news media, and Mr. DeMint has not personally criticized Mr. Graham or called for his censure.
But their contrasting strategies have brought home to South Carolina the struggle over the future of the Republican Party and have put them on opposite sides of important Senate primaries in states like Florida, where Mr. DeMint supports a vocal conservative, Marco Rubio, and Mr. Graham supports Gov. Charlie Crist.
In California, Mr. DeMint supports Chuck DeVore, in defiance of the national party leadership and Mr. Graham, who said he would campaign for Carly Fiorina.
Here in South Carolina, Mr. Graham’s vote to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, among other positions, has cost him the support of many conservatives, as have his comments that voters want politicians to reach across the aisle and that Republicans need to do a better job of attracting younger voters and minorities.
After the Charleston party vote, Mr. Graham narrowly averted censure in neighboring Berkeley County by promising to meet with party leaders. In the north part of the state, the York County Republican Party stopped short of a censure but made its displeasure with Mr. Graham known by approving a resolution strenuously opposing cap and trade.
“I believe in the Constitution 100 percent — Mr. Graham does not,” Terry Hutchinson, an auto mechanic in Rock Hill, said before attending the York County meeting. “He voted for Sotomayor, that’s the first thing. She is a liberal, she is a racist, and you support her? Wrong, absolutely wrong.”
The voting records of Mr. Graham and Mr. DeMint are actually not that far apart — according to the American Conservative Union, which gives Mr. Graham a lifetime rating of 90 out of 100, he voted with Mr. DeMint on bellwether issues 80 percent of the time in 2008. Mr. DeMint is the only senator the group designates as a “Defender of Liberty,” its highest accolade.
Instead, the two men diverge on their vision of the party’s future. Mr. DeMint, who declined an interview for this article after several requests, has said he would prefer having fewer, but ideologically pure, Republicans in the Senate rather than more Republicans who were ideologically suspect.
Mr. Graham takes the more pragmatic view, countering in an interview that neither he nor Mr. DeMint would be electable in states like Maine or California, but that a single centrist Republican senator from a moderate state could give the party enough votes to block President Obama’s major initiatives.
“If we had one more vote, one more Republican, this health care debate would be over,” Mr. Graham said.
Mr. DeMint, a favorite of the tea party movement, a diffuse grass-roots group that taps into antigovernment sentiments, attracted widespread attention when he referred to health care legislation as Mr. Obama’s Waterloo, while Mr. Graham was one of 12 senators to join a yet-unsuccessful effort at a bipartisan health care compromise.
Mr. Graham has a history of bucking partisan expectations. As a House member, he signed on to Senator John McCain’s presidential bid, giving Mr. McCain a lift in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000 when many in the party and the state supported George W. Bush. In 2005, he was a member of the bipartisan “Gang of 14,” which preserved the minority party’s right to block presidential appointments by filibuster but also cleared the way for the confirmation of several conservative judges.
Political analysts in the state say it is difficult to tell how much the anger of the right will hurt Mr. Graham, who does not face re-election until 2014.
“A lot of these stories that make it look like Lindsey Graham is on the ropes I don’t think are fully accurate,” said Scott H. Huffmon, an associate professor of political science at Winthrop University in Rock Hill. Though Mr. Graham may be under attack by louder members of the party, Mr. Huffmon said, in general Republicans like him.
His popularity helped him survive a 2007 censure by the Greenville County Republicans for his support of immigration changes. He won the 2008 primary statewide with 67 percent of the vote and the general election by a 15-point margin. Mr. Graham won Charleston County in 2008, while in 2004, Mr. DeMint lost there.
But here, perhaps even more than elsewhere, politics has become much more polarized as conservative anxiety has taken root under Mr. Obama. In a different climate, said John Graham Altman, a former Republican state lawmaker, Mr. Graham’s negotiation with Mr. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, over the cap-and-trade bill might have been viewed very differently.
“It could have been, ‘Oh, look at Lindsey, he’s pulling one over on Kerry, he’s got the Brahmin by the big toe,’ ” Mr. Altman said.
Still, some two dozen people interviewed around the state said they had only a vague notion, if any, of displeasure with Mr. Graham. John Dorn, a restaurant supplier and a Republican in Charleston, said the party needed more like him.
“He’s probably as close to being a senator who tries to look at things from other angles as we have,” Mr. Dorn said.
Independent voters like those in the tea party movement, are turned off by such “mushy” Republicans, said J. Warren Sloane, the vice chairman of the Charleston party, who wrote the censure resolution.
“Lindsey Graham paints himself as a martyr who is going against what his constituents feel because he knows what’s best for the country,” Mr. Sloane said. “We’re a little bit tired of the martyr shtick.”
Others say that catering to the angry fringe will only keep the party small.
“In all candor, being a Republican who is primarily working in African-American and Hispanic areas, Lindsey Graham makes it easier for me to be a Republican in those demographics,” said Marvin D. Rogers, 33, a staunchly conservative black Republican in Rock Hill.
“I’m not asking anyone to be any less conservative — please don’t,” Mr. Rogers said. “But be more civil in communicating that conservative message. Don’t get on TV talking about ‘The president’s a racist.’ Don’t get on the radio talking about Waterloos.”
GOP needs power player to end 'warlord status,' expert says
Story Highlights
The Republican Party "is sort of in warlord status," John Avlon says
"Vacuum of leadership" biggest problem for the party, GOP strategist says
Independents disillusioned by Obama present an opportunity for GOP, Avlon says
Next step: Go from stopping Obama's agenda to offering solutions, strategist says
updated 9:23 a.m. EDT, Fri October 9, 2009
By Kristi Keck CNN
(CNN) -- The 1994 elections were approaching, and House Republicans were on a mission to take control of their chamber for the first time in nearly 50 years.
A clear message and strong leadership helped the Republicans pick up big wins in the 1994 election.
Buoyed by an electorate skeptical of then-President Clinton after his unsuccessful push for health care reform, Republicans charged forward with what experts say they are lacking now: a clear message and a leader.
With Newt Gingrich at the helm of a legislative agenda called the "Contract with America," Republicans handed Democrats a blistering defeat, taking back control not only of the House, but the Senate, too.
For 10 of the next 12 years, Republicans held the majority in both chambers. By the end of the bruising 2006 and 2008 election cycles, the Republicans found themselves back in the wilderness.
Exit polls from the 2006 election indicated views of President Bush and the war in Iraq were key to the outcome. By the 2008 election, even Republican presidential candidates were trying to distance themselves from Bush.
In the year since the last election, the Grand Old Party has made a handful of attempts to give itself a makeover, but all have stagnated. Now, the fractured party finds itself trying to regroup as the 2010 election cycle nears.
"The party is sort of in warlord status -- where different people are leading different fiefdoms, different warring armies that are frequently at war with each other," said John Avlon, author of books on independent and extremist politics.
abandoning party principles. In the other, moderates are blasting conservatives for drawing partisan lines. And then there's the Tea Party fringe that's attacking both sides -- moderates because they are moderate and conservatives because they are not conservative enough.
The various factions have different ideas for the direction of the party, and they turn to different people to represent the voice of the GOP.
"Where the Republicans are having the biggest problem now is sort of a vacuum of leadership," said Republican strategist Chris Wilson.
Catch phrases, slogans and tag lines can change, Wilson said, "but what it gets down to is leadership, and it is all about who is seen as the leader of the party."
"It's not like you can just change one day the Republican brand from 'a to b' the way that Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to go from 'Finger lickin' good' to 'We do chicken right.' It just doesn't work like that," said Wilson, who has conducted thousands of public opinion surveys for candidates, companies and political groups.
Attempts to revive the Republican brand -- from Rep. Eric Cantor's "National Council for a New America" to Republican Party head Michael Steele's vow to launch an "off the hook," hip-hop infused PR campaign -- all failed to gain much momentum.
The reason, according to Avlon, is that the Republican Party tried to move forward without dealing with the mistakes of the recent past.
"The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. There are a lot of folks in the far right who do not want to admit they have a problem," said Avlon, author of "Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics" and the upcoming "Attack of the Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America."
"They need to come to grips with what went wrong when they controlled both the White House and Congress, and why they were so repudiated by the American people in 2006 and 2008, and I don't think they've done that hard work yet," he said.
Some on the far right say the problem is that they weren't conservative enough -- an idea Avlon calls "self-evidently" crazy. History is clear about how parties come out of the wilderness, he said: by reconnecting with the center.
"But as long as the Republican Party is so angrily fixated on playing to its base and dividing to conquer -- they will become not only more ideologically isolated but more regionally isolated and that is the road to irrelevance," he said, adding that what he describes as an "obsessive hunt for heretics" in the GOP must stop.
The perceived lack of tolerance for diversity of opinion is a key obstacle preventing the Republican brand from gaining traction, said John Quelch, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of "Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy."
"I think part of the problem that the Republicans have is that the base has, in many cases, certain litmus test issues on which they are black and white on their thinking," he said, pointing to abortion and gun rights as examples of issues that are elevated from debates over policy to attacks on a person's morals.
Adding to the Republicans' image problem is President Obama », Quelch said. He's dominated the news cycle with a speech-a-day strategy, leaving Republicans little time on the air.
Republicans have recently found a voice in criticizing Obama for not being able to deliver on a substantial portion of his agenda, but, going into 2010, that could end up helping the Democrats instead, Quelch said. "The fact that there hasn't been any major legislative success actually makes it harder for the opposition to galvanize."
Despite the damaged brand and back-to-back election cycle losses, there are glimmers of hope ahead for Republicans in Congress.
Support for Democrats has been on the decline, and a recent Gallup Poll suggests the parties are nearly tied in the midterm matchups.
But while voters are de-affiliating with Democrats, Avlon said "they are not re-affiliating with the Republicans."
Obama won over independent voters in the last election cycle, but many of those voters -- who are fiscally conservative and socially progressive -- have since been turned off by the administration's unprecedented government spending.
"That should create an opening for Republicans, but to do that they need to recognize that in part they lost their way by losing the mantle of fiscal responsibility, by growing deficits and squandering surpluses," Avlon said.
Going ahead, the GOP needs to moderate its extremes and clarify its message, he said.
"I think what they need to do is focus on what made them the party of Lincoln in the first place. They need to focus on the common ground items, being a party of national unity, national security, fiscal responsibility and individual freedom," he said.
As for Wilson, he's hopeful for the future. "The Republican Party as a whole is at the best point I've seen it in the last decade."
He's also confident Republicans can put forth a clear agenda to get the party back on track and shake the "Party of No" label prescribed by Democrats.
"For fair or for not, the proposals being pushed by the Obama administration have increasingly become very unpopular and so the American people have seen the Republicans being able to stop those unpopular proposals," he said.
The next step, he said, is "to move from stopping what's unpopular to moving to a positive agenda that's going to help people."
Asked how the party balances prevention with progression, Wilson replied, "That's the $64,000 question.
"You just have to work that much harder. I think you have to pivot, bottom-line."
Republicans take aim at Ore. congressman over SUV
By BRAD CAIN, Associated Press Writer Brad Cain, Associated Press WriterThu Oct 8, 7:40 pm ET
SALEM, Ore. – Republican campaign officials took aim on Thursday at an Oregon congressman who has pushed for tougher vehicle emission standards, touting a YouTube video of the environmentally friendly Democrat driving what they called a gas-guzzling SUV in Washington, D.C.
The video, recorded by a GOP staffer assigned to track Rep. David Wu and distributed by the National Republican Congressional Committee, was an early political fusillade against a six-term Democrat the Republicans believe will finally be vulnerable in next year's midterm elections.
NRCC spokeswoman Joanna Burgos acknowledged that Republicans and Democrats alike drive SUVs. But Wu has boasted of his advocacy of green legislation and has urged stricter emission standards, she said.
"What it shows is that David Wu tries to be one person when he's back in Oregon, and a different one when he's in Washington, D.C.," Burgos said.
Wu has been a durable political figure since first getting elected from his Portland-based district in 1998 — Republicans didn't even put a challenger on last year's ballot.
But Wu won't get a free ride in 2010, Burgos said. Rob Cornilles, a sports business consultant and community leader from suburban Tualatin, recently announced his candidacy and will focus on congressional overspending supported by Wu and other Democrats, she said.
Wu, who is married and has two children, bought the black GMC Yukon eight years ago so that it could carry his dog, a couple of strollers and his family, spokeswoman Julia Louise Krahe said. The congressman and his family regularly practice recycling in their household, she added.
"He demonstrates his commitment to the environment in a number of ways, both personal and professional," Krahe said.
Republicans will have their work cut out for them in trying to knock off Wu, who is very popular with constituents, political analyst Jim Moore said. Criticism over his SUV driving habits might be fun way to hit at Wu, but it won't make a difference in the 2010 election, he said.
"He's only had one tough election campaign, and that was his first one," said Moore, who teaches political science at Pacific University in Forest Grove. "Since then he's built good name familiarity in the district."
Following major setbacks in 2008, the national political landscape for Republicans has improved so dramatically in recent months that election analysts say the only remaining question is how deep the Democrats' losses will be in the 2010 congressional midterm races.
President Obama's approval rating has fallen to 51 percent in the Gallup tracking survey. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that voters were nearly evenly divided on which party should control Congress, with Democrats edging Republicans by just three points, down from a seven-point lead in July, and election analysts have moved nearly two dozen Democratic House seats into "competitive" rating columns benefiting the Republican Party.
"The president's standing has weakened; Democrats are on the defensive on the economy, spending and health care; and key midterm voting groups — including seniors and independents — are moving away from the Democrats and toward the GOP," veteran elections analyst Stuart Rothenberg told his newsletter subscribers last week in his latest survey of House races for 2010.
"We've moved a number of races, but it's still early, and we expect many more races to develop that are not now on our chart. Eventually, this should put more Democratic seats at risk," Mr. Rothenberg said.
Longtime elections handicapper Charlie Cook agrees that the national political movement has turned decidedly away from the Democrats at this point in the two-year election cycle.
"As the political environment for Democrats has turned ugly, it is widely assumed the party will sustain losses in next year's midterm elections. The operative question is: How bad will those losses be?" he said in a recent analysis for Congress Daily.
Historically, the party that wins the White House loses House seats in the new president's first midterm elections, a trend that has been broken just twice since the 1930s (under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 and George W. Bush in 2002). The post-World War II average losses in a president's first term is 16 House seats, but Mr. Cook says "the number of seats now at risk exceeds [the Democrats'] majority."
Democrats hold a 256-177 edge in the House, with two vacancies, meaning Republicans would have to score a net gain of 40 seats to reclaim the majority lost in 2006.
With little more than 13 months remaining before next year's elections, Democrats are hoping the economy will turn around sooner than expected, unemployment will recede more quickly than current projections and the White House will score a major political victory by passing a health care reform bill before the end of the year.
"But they also fear the 13 months might give matters a chance to snowball and get worse. If Democrats go 0-2 in this year's gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, that will only dampen party morale more," Mr. Cook warned.
Mr. Rothenberg's analysis of all 435 House seats puts 48 of them in play, 31 held by Democrats and 17 held by Republicans. Since his last race-by-race rating, he has shifted 22 Democratic-held seats into competitive categories from "tossups" to "leaning Republican" — all of them "benefiting Republicans," he said.
As of now, "Republicans could gain anywhere from only a handful of seats to a couple of dozen or more, depending on how things develop over the next year," he said, adding that "the National Republican Congressional Committee's 2006 and 2008 nightmare is over."
David Wasserman, the House elections analyst at the Cook Political Report, said Democrats "have 25 to 30 seats that are truly vulnerable, with another 40 seats where there's a chance of a competitive race. Republicans have between 10 to 15 vulnerable seats."
"If the election were held today, Republicans could pick up 10 to 25 House seats," Mr. Wasserman said.
Meantime, the Democrats' prospects in the Senate appear to have softened, although the real vulnerabilities lie not in 2010, but beyond.
"While the Democrats' majority status next year is not in doubt, their 60-seat majority is in grave danger, and the odds of their maintaining control after the 2012 and 2014 elections are increasingly remote," Mr. Cook wrote in a recent Congress Daily analysis.
With Republicans hit by seven retirements this year, most forecasters saw Democrats picking up a handful of additional seats next year. But Republican prospects have improved in open races in Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire and Florida, and several incumbent Democrats appear to be running into trouble, including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.
"Basically, there is a real chance that Democrats won't be able to flip any GOP Senate seats. This is not, repeat not, to say that Democrats can't pick up any Republican seats, but their chances certainly aren't what they used to be," Mr. Cook wrote last week.
Democratic campaign officials acknowledge that their party was badly beaten up by Republicans in the health care battle during the August recess, when protesters opposing Mr. Obama's health care plan packed town-hall meetings and threw Democrats on the defensive.
"To be honest, we needed to be more aggressive in August. We saw Republicans led by extremists in their party mobilize and make a lot of noises, and there is no question that some momentum was lost at this period of time," said New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
But Mr. Menendez thinks that, while "the Republicans have adopted a strategy that buys them momentum in the short term, it makes them really vulnerable in the long term. Instead of contributing to the solutions of problems they helped create, they have been the party of no, the party of obstacles and obfuscation."
Sen. candidate likens his campaign to World War II
By Eric Zimmermann - 10/05/09 11:44 AM ET
Connecticut Senate candidate Peter Schiff (R) went a little off-message in a recent interview with the Washington Post, comparing his campaign to World War II and pledging to do the work of ten senators.
Schiff, who has a considerable fortune from investments, told the Post that he's "willing to interrupt" his career for the causes he belives in, comparing himself to a WWII soldier.
"It's not like I want my new career in politics," he said. "But I'm willing to interrupt it the same way that somebody interrupted their career and joined World War II and went off to fight the Nazis. I don't think that I'm that heroic, and I don't think I'm risking as much as a soldier. But it's the same principle."
There's more:
"[M]ost of the other senators spend 90 percent of their time trying to get reelected--raising money, doing what it takes to stay in the Senate, right? I'm not going to spend any of my time on that. So I'll be, like, 10 senators all by myself."
Sounds like all the ingredients for a new campaign slogan: "Peter Schiff: He'd be like 10 Nazi-fighting Senators."
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said he thinks President Barack Obama could be in for an ousting from office similar to what happened to Democratic President Jimmy Carter after his first term.(PHOTO CREDITS: Chris Welch/CNN)
MACKINAC ISLAND, Michigan (CNN) – Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said he thinks President Barack Obama could be in for an ousting from office similar to what happened to Democratic President Jimmy Carter after his first term.
"I think the people wanted a change," the Florida Republican said, speaking of the election of Obama in November while drawing similarities to events decades earlier.
"They wanted a change back in 1976. You remember? Richard Nixon had been president. That ended. Gerald Ford took over. The people decided they wanted a change. They got one-Jimmy Carter. Four years later, they took care of business-Ronald Reagan."
"It may happen again," Crist went on. "I believe that the people have seen that they wanted a change but not this much. Not this kind, and not this way. America is awake and we're coming back."
Crist, who's now running for U.S. Senate, said Republicans feel a winning streak coming on for the next few years, "so bad they can taste it," he said. "Especially after the seven or eight or nine months that we've had of this new administration."
Crist was the keynote speaker Friday night at the biennial Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island, Michigan.
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor delivered an address himself Saturday morning. Cantor touched on the healthcare debate, calling some of the options being discussed in Washington of late "ill-defined," adding they would be "a gamble," according to remarks sent out by Cantor's campaign committee.
The Mackinac conference is held every other year-non-election years-and brings together politicians and candidates from across the state of Michigan, as well as national Republican figures making waves.
Also scheduled to speak this year is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Both men have been rumored to be considering a presidential run in 2012.
Two years ago, this conference brought together the likes of previous presidential hopefuls. John McCain, Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson all attended in 2007.
WASHINGTON — Despite being in the minority in Congress, Republican campaign committees outraised Democrats by $1.7 million in August as they have aggressively collected political cash amid the rancorous debate over health care.
Republicans also held an edge over Democrats in the amount of money available, when counting debts, as both parties set the stage for the 2010 elections, in which more than three dozen competitive House and Senate seats are at stake.
The GOP spike is a departure. In each of the past four years, the party in power — whether Democrat or Republican — raised more than the minority's fundraising committees in August, a USA TODAY review of campaign records shows.
"Republicans have been able to tap into some of the anger against Democrats in power and translate that into fundraising," said Nathan Gonzales of The Rothenberg Political Report. "There are a lot of Republicans who wish the election were this November, not November 2010, because they feel like the momentum is on their side now."
In the Senate, where Republicans are far outnumbered, their fundraising committee collected $3.1 million last month, compared to $2.2 million by the Democratic committee. It was the second month in a row that the Senate GOP committee outperformed Democrats — bringing its fundraising total for the year to $26.5 million, just $1 million less than the Democrats.
Brian Walsh, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the committee has attracted more than 70,000 first-time donors this year as voters grew alarmed by President Obama's policies. "There are a lot of independents who may have voted for Obama who are now saying, 'This type of big government spending is not what we signed up for,' " he said.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) also had a fundraising bump in August, bringing in $1 million more than the Democratic National Committee. Only the House Democratic committee outraised the Republicans in August — by $200,000.
For the year, the three GOP committees have $28.3 million in available funds after expenses and debts — about $8 million more than the Democrats.
RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said the health-care debate that played out in town-hall meetings in August boosted fundraising. In the first three weeks in August, for example, the party averaged 2,000 donations a day from new donors, she said.
Democrats say they are on track for a strong showing in 2010. "We continue to raise the resources we need to accomplish our goals," Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan said. Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic committee, said his group "will have more than enough funds to be competitive."
Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for The Cook Political Report, said the Republican surge is not a surprise. GOP "apathy turned pretty quickly into activism" after the White House and congressional Democrats moved swiftly this year to pass an economic rescue plan and work on health care and climate change legislation, she said.
"If the administration and Democrats in Congress were doing nothing, it might be harder to raise money," Duffy said. "They have certainly given Republicans something to work with."
She said GOP activists are focused on winning enough Senate seats to deprive Democrats of the 60 votes needed to avoid GOP filibusters of controversial measures.
Political cash
How much the three political action committees for each party have raised and how much they have left as of Aug. 31 (in millions):
Category
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Democratic National Committee
Total Democrats
August receipts
$2.2 million
$3.3 million
$6.9 million
$12.4 million
2009 receipts
$27.5 million
$37.4 million
$53.6 million
$118.5 million
Cash on hand, minus debt
$4 million
$6 million
$10 million
$20 million
Category
National Republican Senatorial Committee
National Republican Congressional Committee
Republican National Committee
Total Republicans
August receipts
$3.1 million
$3.1 million
$7.9 million
$14.1 million
2009 receipts
$26.5 million
$23.8 million
$59.9 million
$110.2 million
Cash on hand, minus debt
$5.1 million
$2.2 million
21 million
$28.3 million
Source: Federal Election Commission
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