The New York Times has a good story here: Republican fundraising has been so dismal they are focusing recruitment efforts on wealthy candidates who can finance their own campaigns!
Confronting an enormous fund-raising gap with Democrats, Republican Party officials are aggressively recruiting wealthy candidates who can spend millions of their own money to finance their Congressional races, Republican officials say.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Wanna run for Congress? How much ya got?
Think of how demoralizing it must be for Republicans to realize that if they want to run for office, they are going to have to PAY their OWN WAY to get there.
More from NY Times:
At this point, strategists for the National Republican Congressional Committee have enlisted wealthy candidates to run in at least a dozen competitive Congressional districts nationwide, particularly those where Democrats are finishing their first term and are thus considered most vulnerable. They say more are on the way.
These wealthy Republicans have each already invested $100,000 to $1 million of their own money to finance their campaigns, according to campaign finance disclosure reports and interviews with party strategists. Experts say that is a large amount for this early in the cycle.
The numbers show how bad things are for the GOP. The article points out that $56.6 million and has $29.2 million at its disposal this cycle. The National Republican Congressional Committee has raised $40.7 million with a cash balance of $2.5 million.
Pretty bad cash-on-hand numbers for the GOP.
In 2006, the GOP congressonal campaign committee outraised the Democrats $179.5 million to $139.9 million.
And the Republicans are bragging about it:
Ken Spain, a spokesman for the House Republicans’ campaign committee, said that the recruiting effort has made the party more competitive heading into the elections.
"We have been very fortunate in our recruiting efforts," he said. "There will be a number of credible Republican challengers running for Congress next year that happen to have access to personal financial resources. They are in position to run strong, well-financed grass-roots campaigns next year in some of our top targeted districts."
Grass roots? More like Green roots.