Richmond, Virginia -- April 12, 2006
Three Sirens
The first quarter fund raising numbers have been released by the Webb and Miller senatorial campaigns. I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that Not Larry Sabato came up with the news first and posted it next to three sirens. Raising Kaine, The Richmond Report, and, somewhat later, Virginia Belle all posted write ups on the news. I'm just going to rely on them for the facts and add my two cents worth of analysis.
What Do We Know?
According to Michael Shear, Miller raised $539,000 and Webb raised $260,000 in the first quarter. Miller's donations came from a total of about 600 donors; Webb's donations came from about 1,000 donors. According to the folks at Not Larry Sabato, $175,000 of the money Miller claimed he "raised" was actually Miller's own money. We also know that approximately $100,000 of Miller's money was raised at a fundraiser sponsored by Mark Warner and Mark Warner apparently has now pledged to do the same for Webb.
Both sides' blogosphere proxies are busy spinning the numbers, trying to draw conclusions from them favorable to their candidate. Let me take a shot.
Because of the spinning going on, it is first necessary to make some adjustments to the numbers. The first adjustment has to do with time. Harris Miller declared his candidacy on January 9th, but he was "running" at least a month prior to that time, making calls to potential supporters and donors, so as far as I am concerned Miller's first quarter began on January 1st and ended March 31st. This means Miller had 90 days worth of fundraising time in his first quarter. Some Webb supporters point to his March 7th announcement in Richmond as the beginning of his campaign and try to suggest that he has therefore only had about three weeks in the first quarter to raise money. I do not agree. I mark the beginning of Webb's campaign from the letter he released, and Viola Baskerville read, at the February 11th Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. Webb actually had 49 days worth of fundraising time in his first quarter.
Secondly, Miller's contribution to his own campaign cannot count as "fundraising": it is self-funding, something rather different (but still very important).
Finally, the Warner fundraiser must be factored out because it creates an anomoly: we now know that Warner may hold a fundraiser for Webb, but we won't be able to do a Q2 comparison for these two candidates because the primary will end before the second quarter does. To get a comparable set of numbers then, you have to either subtract Miller's fundraiser with Warner or add a comparable amount to Webb's total. For my purposes I have elected to subtract the Warner fundraiser, rather than add a hypothetical fundraiser to Webb. Here are the adjusted results:
Miller:
$539,000
(175,000) less self-funding
(100,000) less Warner fundraiser
___
$264,000 divided by 90 days ='s $2,933 per day
$264,000 divided by 600 donors ='s $440 per donor
Webb:
$260,000
(?) less self-funding
(0) less Warner fundraiser
___
$260,000 divided by 49 days ='s $5,306 per day
$260,000 divided by 1,000 donors ='s $260 per donor
What Does It Mean?
As you can see from the rough calculations above, Harris Miller did not significantly outdo Jim Webb in fundraising. Miller's ability to self-fund is important, but it is not the same as someone else voluntarily surrendering their hard-earned cash to demonstrate the strength of their support. Miller did apparently draw larger average donations, but there are strong arguments for the proposition that a larger base of smaller donors is better in the long run, because many of these people will give again.
On the other hand, Webb's late start in putting together his finance team and not doing early energetic fundraising has cost him an opportunity to knock Miller off early with a fundraising blowout. Many Democrats, like Virginia Belle, are still on the fence as a result.
The Real Story: Dueling Warner Fundraisers
The biggest story to come out of yesterday's number reporting was that Mark Warner may hold a fundraiser for Jim Webb in May. This fundraiser will likely eliminate the distortion in the comparative fundraising numbers caused by his earlier fundraiser for Miller. Much more importantly, it will demonstrate that Warner really is neutral and has not endorsed Miller, either explicitly or implicitly. Many Miller supporters have pointed to Warner fundraiser for Miller as [wink-wink, nudge-nudge] an endorsement. Warner's announcement, expected today, will make it impossible for Miller and his army of staffers to make that argument any longer, and doors in the party will begin swinging open for Webb.
What We Don't Know
There are still many things we don't know. How much self-funding did Jim Webb do? I assume he did some, perhaps a few thousand dollars in seed cash, but nothing on the order of Harris Miller's $175,000. We don't know how much self-funding Harris Miller really plans to do. Theoretically he has about $50 million in assets, but it's silly to suggest that he'd spend more than $1-2 million on a long-shot candidacy to unseat George Allen.
We also don't know how the fundraising numbers are trending: are they going up or down? Did Miller's fundraising dry up when Webb entered the race, or did it accelerate? We don't really know, but we can make some educated guesses about the relative strength of their donor bases. Miller's base includes other party insiders and former lobbying clients.
Webb's celebrity status has the potential to place him in an entirely differently category, drawing from tens of thousands of small donors across the entire United States. Webb has fans of his many novels, his history book Born Fighting, and his screenplay Rules of Engagement. Webb has many fans in military community, both active and retired, and these men and women will form a strong, nation wide network for him. Webb also has ties to other entertainment figures who may be sources of funding.
Miller has nothing like this wide base of appeal, and this goes some part of the way towards offsetting Miller's advantage in self-funding potential. Commentators who rule out Webb's potential to best Miller at fundraising are wrong, but right now, that potential remains to be fully exploited.
Conclusions
Every time some new fragment of news comes out that can be interpreted as positive for one candidate in this race, his blogosphere proxies begin calling for his opponent to drop out. These numbers do not support this kind of action on the part of either candidate. From a purely financial point of view both remain viable. Neither Miller nor Webb can claim to have landed a knockout blow based on these numbers, and these are the last fundraising numbers we are likely to see before the end of the primary.
I predict that neither candidate will drop out and that the primary election will almost certainly occur. Both candidates have more than enough funds to go forward to June 13th. There is only one thing that can stop the primary election: one or the other candidate's obtaining a commanding advantage in head-to-head polling (either internal or external) so great as to exclude the possibility of a win by his opponent.
If, hypothetically, Harris Miller's own internal polls showed him losing the primary by the same 58 to 42% that he lost Gerry Connelly's straw poll by, then Miller might decide to save face and make a party-unifying gesture by bowing out. But Miller is an exceptionally tough competitor, so I would not count on that scenario coming to pass. This primary will probably need to be fought right down to the line.