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Oct 28, 2007

The Arizona Republic - Arizona's Democrats lead GOP in fundraising

Slightly more than a year out from the 2008 general election, two of the biggest electoral indicators are pointing to a decidedly Democratic year in Arizona.

The state's Republican Party has fallen far behind in fundraising, trailing Democrats by a more than 3-to-1 ratio so far this year.

Nearly the same ratio holds true for new voters signed up during the past year. Since October 2006, just one in every 10 new voters has registered with the GOP, a startling percentage in a state long dominated by the Republican Party.

"It's too bad right now our party's not energized," said Tucson car dealer Jim Click, arguably Arizona's biggest GOP donor. "You've got a lot of big supporters on the sidelines."

What's going on?

In many ways, it's a continuation of the Democratic momentum from the 2006 election.

The party won landslides in the races for governor and attorney general and gained seven legislative and two congressional seats, though the GOP still controls the state House and Senate.

"Let's face it: The Democrats had a wonderful 2006, even here in Arizona," said Sean McCaffrey, executive director of the state Republican Party. "Part of the fundraising is celebration, part of it is wanting more, part of it is defense."

And part of it is the bandwagon effect.

"Donors are fickle," McCaffrey said. "People like to bet on winners."

So, while the state Democratic Party has raised $1.41 million this year and has scheduled another major fundraiser Friday, the GOP has managed to raise just $441,000. At this point leading into the 2004 general election, the state GOP had raised just over $810,000, reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show.

Besides being an important indicator of party enthusiasm, money fuels the party engine, paying for candidate recruitment and training as well as efforts to register voters and get them to the polls.

"I think this is a tremendous indication of how strongly Arizona Democrats will perform in the 2008 election," said Emily Bittner, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party. "It's an endorsement of what the party has been doing and where we're going."

The funding windfall has allowed the state party to put together a full-time paid staff of 14, four of whom are funded by the Democratic National Committee. The Arizona GOP has six full-time paid staff and is in the market for a communications director.

"It's the Number 1 rule of politics: He or she with the most money wins," said Jason Rose, a Republican political consultant based in Scottsdale.

Well, money and registered voters. Arizona Republicans have been lagging in that area, too. The party still has a 140,000-registered-voter edge, but that advantage has narrowed with the addition of nearly 31,000 Democrats in the past year. Growing fastest of all: independent voters. That voter bloc, now more than 750,000 strong, represents the key swing group in the upcoming election and those going forward.

Republicans aren't just running into money trouble in Arizona. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the national group focused on contests such as closely watched races in Arizona Congressional Districts 1, 5 and 8, had amassed a war chest of more than $28 million as of the end of September.

Its Republican national counterpart had $1.6 million on-hand, according to the FEC.

"I don't care if you have the best candidates in the world. If they beat us 28-to-1 (in fundraising), they'll clean our clock," Click said.

The GOP maintains a sizable fundraising edge with the other national-party infrastructure, the Republican and Democratic national committees.

But that money traditionally is devoted to the presidential election and would be of little help when it comes to winning congressional or legislative races.

After more than a decade of fundraising dominance, Rose wondered if the traditional GOP donor base is tapped out. Or worn down, at least, after a couple politically bruising years between the ongoing war in Iraq and the immigration debate.

The border debate came to a head last spring when the state's Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, emerged as major backers of an immigration-reform measure that promised both hardened border security and a temporary-worker program and path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already living on U.S. soil. A GOP long divided on immigration split wide open.

Some Republicans backed the reform bill, rallying behind Kyl and McCain. Another group, louder if not larger, condemned the bill, with some even protesting outside Kyl's office. State Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen, himself elected just months earlier in a nasty intraparty contest again focused on immigration policy, took the unusual step of opposing a measure brought by a member of its delegation.

Congress rejected the bill, but scars from the debate remain.

"State Republican parties are funded by the grass roots and the fat cats," Rose said. "The incredibly debilitating thing about the immigration debate is it alienated both segments."

Still, McCaffrey is optimistic about 2008 and 2010, ticking off a list of factors that bode well for the GOP: a strong slate of candidates, improving conditions in Iraq, a Democratic-led Congress that's even less popular than President Bush. Click is hopeful that Republican fortunes will improve with the selection of a presidential nominee next winter.

In the meantime, though, he conceded that it's Democrats who are on the move.

Perhaps the best evidence: 116,353 new voters have come on the state rolls since the 2006 election. Just 11,844 registered Republican.