WP: Kerry overcoming Bush $$$ advantage?

[DeepModem Mom]

Kerry Capitalizing on Party Resources to Fill Coffers

By Jim VandeHei and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A06


Sen. John F. Kerry is setting the stage to raise as much as $100 million for his presidential campaign by seizing control of his party's fundraising machinery, winning the support of top money people for vanquished rivals, and attracting thousands of new small donors via the Internet, according to officials inside and outside his campaign.

In the two months since the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses, the Massachusetts Democrat's campaign has pulled in more than $26 million, including $18 million over the Internet, aides said. Just two weeks ago, the campaign had announced a goal of raising $80 million -- and was greeted with initial skepticism among some party fundraisers....

***

Although Bush is virtually certain to raise more money than Kerry -- and perhaps double -- Democrats are no longer concerned that the president will spend the Democratic nominee into the ground even before most voters tune into the race months from now. Some Republicans privately express concern that Bush's money advantage will not prove invincible, as they had once believed....

***

Kerry's fundraising operation reflects two political trends:

First, Democrats are more united than they have been in decades, and the base of Democratic donors, especially new and smaller ones, appears deeper than most party officials originally projected....
Second, Democrats are copying Bush's successful model of creating scorecards for their top fundraisers, and have added special Internet tracking systems so that the people who raise large amounts get credit from the campaign and their peers....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6292-2004Mar18.html

[TomSeaverr]

1. woooooooo

I'm begining to feel good.

[The Spirit of JFK]

2. Not to be a wet blanket

Before we get that warm fuzzy feeling, you should read this artilce at Media Transparency ( http://www.mediatransparency.com/stories/apparat.html ) about the conservative (mostly ultra right wing conservative) money machine. And it's SCARY!

-snip-

Rob Stein, an independent Washington researcher, follows the money flow to the radical activist establishment. He estimates that since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations he tracks that constitute the core of the radical machine.

--snip--

Stein describes it as movement conservatism's "intellectual infrastructure" -- multiple-issue, non-profit, tax-exempt, and supposedly non-partisan. The apparatus includes think tanks, policy institutes, media-harassment enterprises, as well as litigation firms that file lawsuits to impose their ideological templates on the law.

--snip--

Today, the right's funding base has hugely expanded. The NCRP now identifies a total of 79 private foundations that make grants to right-wing political action groups. The NCRP estimates that those foundations granted some $253 million to the 350 activist organizations between 1999 and 2001 alone.

Scores of for-profit corporations add millions more to the funding stream. These include Time-Warner, Altria (Philip Morris), AT&T, Microsoft, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and other members of the pharmaceutical industry, the two titans of the military-industrial complex Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as telecommunications, banking, real estate, and financial interests. Precise information on corporate contributions to tax exempt organizations is scarce since the IRS does not require their public disclosure.

-end of snippage--

It's these mouthpieces that fund, and to a large part, start the smear campaigns, the innuendos, and the PR spin...such as the media is liberal, trying to prevent MoveOn (and other's) from running ads and contrubuting to the Democrats, and now attacking Kerry. They are running the agendas....

This needs to be an issue. This needs to be a BIG issue.

[NJCher]

3. excellent expose

Thanks for posting it. I hope once some people here have read it, we can get some exposure for it. If anyone's up for a group effort, PM me.


Cher

[TomSeaverr]

4. Oh we know

we will never be able to contend with them because they have the big corporations, big oil, and big healthcare companies

[The Spirit of JFK]

5. Not a dollar war

I'm not saying we need to try and compete with them financially. Not at all.

What needs to be done is for this issue to be dragged out into the light. People need to know who is REALLY running the country (at least the GOP part of it). People need to know that while the GOP and their right wing cohorts whine about Democratic fundraising and Kerry's millions, ultra-conservative guerilla political machines are filling the GOP's coffers beyond King Midas's wild dreams. People need to know that "The Contract with America" was practically written by the Heritage Foundation, whose higher ups have included Paul Weyrich, a power broker for the religious right (who one Easter commented that "Christ was crucified by the Jews") and whose key advisor Laslo Pasztor, served a prison term for his role as a functionary in a pro-Nazi party. Joseph Coors (yes, of the brewery), a vocal anti-labor advocate and ultra-conservative, helped found it and still sits on the board. And Richard Mellon Scaife (of Mellon industrial, oil and banking fortune) who also controls three other large conservative foundations, He funded the American Spectator's attack on Clinton ("the Arkansas Project"), owns and the Publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, and funded/funds the Pacific Legal Foundation, the litigious arm of the Pioneer Fund (which he also funds) which, among other things, initiated Prop 187 in Califorina a few years back, which was legislature that basically discriminated against illegal immigrants, denying them health care (such as immunizations and emergency care), education and welfare benefits. Although Proposition 187 did not limit its discrimination to one racial group, clearly it targeted California's large Hispanic immigrant population.

I'm rambling here. But you get the picture. And it's only the tip of the iceberg. And by the way, according to the article, the Heritage Foundation had donated over $45 million to conservative causes since 1985, and THAT'S just only under it's own name.

People need to know who is behind this money....racists, radical right religious, big business, media.....what they do, and where it goes. They need to be shown that the administration is being bought; that they are being led by people they never elected (yes, I realize the irony in that statement). And they need to know the conservatives are being two-faced about the whole thing and simply cannot be trusted. I find it hard to believe that some of the more moderate Republicans (not to mention conservative Dems) wouldn't be incredibly put off by it all.

It's THIS was that need to be waged and won.

Ok...I'm done ranting. Had a bad day.

[freeforall]

6. Welcome Spirit of JFK!

Which JFK, by the way? Kennedy or Kerry?

:toast:

[The Spirit of JFK]

8. I'm from Massachusetts..

Born and raised. Grew up with the Kennedy legacy all around me.

(I DID work on one of Kerry's early senate campaigns, though, as a volunteer grunt...but I knew one of his speechwriters.)

[Adelante]

7. This is a MUST READ

I had just posted it in the articles section. It is very long, but worth every word. Know thy enemy is right.