American Idle: Unpacking The '08 PACs
ShareAt least some of your Hotline editors are not American Idol fans and couldn't name the two finalists (although Katherine McPhee is apparently a registered Democrat.)
We spent the evening looking at '08 (potential) presidential candidate PAC filings for clues about strategy. As always, PoliticalMoneyLine.com made our evening much more pleasant.
Sen. John McCain's Straight Talk America PAC continues to do what PACs generally are supposed to do. The PAC wrote ten checks to state parties at $5K a pop, made at least two dozen direct donations to candidates running for House and Senate, and sent more than 100 checks to candidates running for governor, or for local offices, or to county Republican parties. Its biggest expense continues to be airplanes, because McCain, in order to get from, say, Liberty University in VA to Utah, flies charter whenever he can. STA has seven paid staff members.
McCain's chief strategist, John Weaver, and longtime adviser Mike Dennehyare paid through a political consulting disbursement. The PAC spent $7,500 to rent "Top Of The Rock" in NYC for a fundraiser. And interestingly, the majority of its April contributions came from Arizonans.
Rudy Giuliani is clearly ramping up his pre-presidential activity. His Solutions America PAC raised nothing -- it has a multimillion dollar fundraiser scheduled for June -- but it spent more in April than in the previous six months combined.
Witness these disbursements, per PoliticalMoneyLine.com:
FUNDRAISING CONSULTANT $25,000
1 PURCHASE COMPUTER EQUIPMENT $21,423
1 COMPLIANCE CONSULTANT $3,750
1 PURCHASE TELECOM EQUIPMENT $2,499
1 RENT $1,717
1 TELECOM CONSULTANT/LEASE PHONES $1,577
1 CONTRACT LABOR-ADMINISTRATIVE WORK $430
Sen. Bill Frist's VOLPAC continues to dig for as many potential donors as possible. It purchased a $32,045 list from Precision List in VA. It spent more than $120K -- almost a third of its entire expenditures -- on direct mail and direct mail postage. VOLPAC paid eight staff directly. Notable contributors include the CEO of Quaker Oats, William Smithburg, and Jeffrey McWaters, the Virginia-based GOP mega-donor and president of Amerigroup.
Ex-VA Gov. Mark Warner's PAC is bi-iig. It spends a lot on staff -- 100K a month. That said, there's a reasonable and appropriate explanation for its size, which is that Warner, unlike, say, Sen. Evan Bayh or Gov. Bill Richardson, no longer has an official staff to perform the rudimentary functions of policy generation and political/schedule planning.
Warner's PAC pays for his communications staff, his policy specialists, his web team and his personal assistants. The PAC paid Peter Hart Research Assoc. $63,000 for "research." Hart (D) helps to poll for the NBC News/WSJ survey. Dem strategist Kenneth Baer's firm received $10K. Baer is helping Warner with speeches. Notable contributions include more than $74K from employees of E-Trade Financial.
Sen. Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund is growing. It spent $75K on a direct mail solicitation in April and has nine paid staff members. [MARC AMBINDER]
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