John Kerry's Five-Star Campaign

[Chicago Democrat]

John Kerry's Five-Star Campaign
How many millions can you spend in three weeks?
By Chris Suellentrop
Updated Friday, July 9, 2004, at 3:57 PM PT


NEW YORK—Never mind the arrival of John Edwards; I knew the general election had begun when I got my own butler. During the penny-pinching primary season, when the candidates were constantly on the brink of bankruptcy, I followed campaigns that stayed at discount hotels and even supporters' homes. Not John Kerry—at least, not anymore. In the past three days, we stayed at the Westin in Pittsburgh, the Sheraton Sand Key Beach Resort in Clearwater, Fla., and the St. Regis Hotel in midtown Manhattan, where each room comes equipped with a 24-hour on-call Jeeves and where the rate for my room, picked up by Slate, was $299 a night. (On hotels.com, it goes for $445.) Somewhere between March and July, the presidential campaign turned into an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! "Say what you will about Kerry, at least he travels better than Gore," one reporter tells me. "Gore was all Super 8s and Econo Lodges." In Gore's defense (or Kerry's, depending on your perspective), the former vice president didn't have $180 million to burn.

Flush with cash—and still raising it, with $2 million flowing into the campaign after Thursday night's Radio City Music Hall gala and another $1.2 million after two Friday morning fund-raisers—the Kerry campaign is engaged in a scheme not unlike the one Richard Pryor is tasked with in Brewster's Millions: seeing how much money it can spend on deadline. Unless Kerry takes the unprecedented step of opting out of the public-financing system for the general election, he has to spend his remaining millions in the next three weeks. Once he formally accepts the Democratic nomination on July 29, he's got only $75 million for the next three months. By mid-August, my reporter friend might start grumbling again.


Rest at....
http://slate.msn.com/id/2103706/

[Chicago Democrat]

1. That's 5 reasons right there to give to Senate and House Candidates.

:(

[xray s]

2. So...during August Bush can spend a bunch and Kerry has to save his $75mil

That doesn't sound good to me

[Chicago Democrat]

3. Yeah , Kerry should have blown off the public financing...That system

is counterproductive and totally stupid now. Dontcha think?

[xray s]

5. Maybe he will blow it off

I guess he has until the convention to decide? Or maybe he can hold off taking any of the 75 million until he sees how much damage Bush is doing with his attacks in August?

We shall see...

[AndyTiedye]

4. August Won't Be Pretty At All

and we know that their negative ads work, even though they are nothing
but lies, because they saturate the airwaves with them.

Will any independent organizations have the resources
to counter the onslaught?

Then Bush* get's his convention bounce in September,
and we'll have a whole lot of catching up to do.