Yes, it's another Edwards diary. I was going to make this a comment in another diary, but it's new info and a different angle on the candidate's first quarter fundraising story.
We all know Edwards finished third in the money race, about ten million behind Hillary and Obama. It was still a very respectable showing and gave him more than enough money to be competitive.
What we didn't know until now was where much of that money came from, and what the implications might be.
But in money raised in the South, Edwards was the leader. From Louisiana to the Carolinas, Edwards easily beat his Democratic rivals and — perhaps more importantly — raised more money than the top three Republican candidates combined.
The two New Yorkers considered front-runners in the 2008 race — Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani — fared particularly poorly in the region.
Some Southern states bucked the trend, mostly as a result of steady donations from Palm Beach and Miami in Florida and Virginia's Washington suburbs.
Counting only Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, Edwards raised $2,723,000. That's more than six times Clinton's take of $440,471 and nearly four times the $705,650 raised by Obama, according to numbers compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine.org, an online repository of campaign finance data.
Among Republicans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led the way with $1,127,484, compared with $603,723 for Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) and $384,500 for Giuliani.
It's been said by some that Edwards is the only Democratic candidate that can carry the south. I don't know if that is true or not, but his fundraising success there does seem to indicate that he has at least some advantage over his Democratic rivals.
But that's not the only story.
The numbers for the top tier Republicans are dismal, considering that these are traditionally red states. That's good news for Democrats, and bad news for Republicans.
Rep. Jack Kingston (news, bio, voting record), a Georgia Republican, said the lackluster fundraising by the Republican candidates underscores what he's heard from party activists at home: that Southerners are on the fence about the GOP field.
"I think people are just not that fired up, and the intensity level just isn't where it should be," he said. "You have strengths and weaknesses in every one of the candidates."
Kingston, who is leaning toward supporting Romney, predicted that his party could be in trouble in the South with the current front-runners.
"The consensus I hear from people in Georgia is if (Republicans) want to win, they have to have a Southerner on the ticket," he said, noting that Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Newt Gingrich of Georgia have attracted strong interest by only flirting with a run.
You see, I'm greedy. I don't want whoever the Democratic nominee is to win in a squeaker by taking the solid blue states and winning just enough swing states. I want a landslide victory. A landslide victory with coat tails that will turn our majority in congress into a supermajority. And that means taking some of the red states.
I want to see the Republicans forced to play defense in states they have not had to fight for in a long time, and hopefully losing some of them.
The candidate that can do that, whoever that might be, has got my vote.