Note: Everything here is paraphrased. If I put it in quotes, it means it's his exact phrase. I feel I have honestly represented everything he said.
Davis:
Senator Obama announced he raised 150mil. It's extraordinary and his track record is extraordinary for someone who will go down in political history as the greatest fundraiser ever.
From day one Obama said he'd bring in new politics. Talked about being transparent and has challenged others.
Davis: (Cont)
Obama is refusing to release any of his donors under $200.00 per person. Obviously in order to raise 150 million he's had to include hundreds of thousands possibly a million new donors.
It's important to note that this is the first campaign since the watergate era that has taken a primary fundraising effort and driven into general election. This is the first time that all primary funds could be used for general, this raises questions about whether his donors are qualified. Why isn't the Obama Campaign reporting them?
The RNC is going to update all their stuff online so you'll be able to search every donation that McCain AND RNC has ever raised.
What is Obama's excuse for not doing this? He has the technology.
During the primary Obama constantly badgered opponents. If he were the nominee and the Republican agreed, he'd take Government funds. But he didn't. His fundraising machine grew and grew; Nobody knows how or why.
He repeatedly made pledges to the public that he'd take government funds if the Republican candidate did. He looked in the camera and said, "I will call John McCain, and I will negotiate with John McCain..."
He never called John McCain, and we all learned in a blog post that he'd forgo public financing.
We need to have a public dialog about this.
We don't want to find out there has been impropriety in the donations he's received. If there's problems we need to find out about them and publish them. There have been discussions between Obama's campaign and the FEC to clean up his donations. People on the Gaza strip have been buying teeshirts. It's against the law.
We could go on with more and more examples of these and that's just from the disclosed ones.
We want sunshine and transparency on this issue. The RNC has filed a complaint with the FEC to see if they can get to the bottom of these three hundred million in "secret donations" I say secret because I have no doubt that the vast majority are probably legitimate but they are being kept secret by the Obama campaign for no good reason. I looked everywhere I could to find out why they don't disclose these and other than the explanation during the primary that there were "Technical Limitations" on doing it I can't find any explanation. They have the resources to do it.
The RNC says they can make all their donations publicly searchable in 24 hours. If the RNC can do it, why can't the Obama campaign do it?
To finish up: this pattern of non-disclosure & setting his own rules is consistent with what we've seen from Senator Obama. Doesn't answer ACORN questions. Just puts out enough information to get through each day. We dribble out information.
[Adam's Note: The "We" in "We dribble out information" is "The Obama Campaign." Since I've been working on the Obama campaign 25 hours a week, I tend to think of it as an "Us," but obviously this is misleading. Davis didn't say "We," he was referring to Obama's people just dribbling out information)
Where's the disclosure? RElationships. I don't want this call to devolve into a relationship call but "Just one of my friends in the neighborhood" but now we know Ayers had a much deeper much more involved relationship with Obama.
When will we learn more about the least experience Presidential nominee from the Democratic party?
One report from FEC says this could result in the largest fine ever.
Obviously Obama wants to obey the law. Obviously his campaign wants to adhere to requirements.
One other disturbing aspect of this issue is that because John McCain took funds, their campaign will be audited by the FEC. Because Obama didn't take funds, there's a "lingering question" as to whether or not there will be an audit of his fundraising. That raises "larger spectre" over voluntary cooperation that Obama isn't showing.
Congrats to Obama on money raised, but shame on them for not letting the public see where coming from.
Open to questions now.
QUESTIONS
Laura of WSJ:
Please address financial mismatch. You predicted earlier that you'd have the same money as Obama with RNC, but clearly you don't. How will you deal with it?
DAVIS:
Begs important question. Clearly last time we talked about this the Obama campaign's record prior to September was 55 million a month. That's a lot. More than any campaign in history. More than us. And he's only raising more and more. That's a great effort. "Wow." Are we at disadvantage? Absolutely. We are happy with our funds. We will have raised and spent close to 400 million in two months if you count RNC, our funds, plus fed matching. RNC is raising record amounts. I think I can win with that money. I don't think it's all about the money. We are jealous of Obama's media buy. We sure would like SEIU's money. If you combine Obama & groups spending, compared to ours, it's about the same.
Wallstreet is hurting us more than Obama's money.
Obama should be forced to buy stock to help recovery (joke).
KLEIN of ABC:
Anything about Obama's spending surprising you?
DAVIS:
They are trying to spread the race around to states we don't think they could win. I find it ironic that the battleground states are the same as they were in 2004. OBVIOUSLY there are red states in play because Bush is unpopular and our "right track" is in the single digits. If this were a dem administration and Obama were running to succed an unpopular Democrat, we'd be competitive in NY.
When you review electoral map, all McCain has to do is win his base to win the election. We like that. We'd rather win Virginia than Minnesota. We are very competitive in every Republican state and I anticipate winning all of them. McCain will win every state Bush won in 2004 plus a couple more. The only changes we have made to our buy is Michigan. We are robust everywhere else. We have enormous mail and phone going on. We feel good. We've just undergone worst financial crisis in history but we're still in the game. Crisis plays to Obama's benefit.
JIM of AP
Your Oct report for Sep says you spent 22 million on ads. How much of that has been spent with the RNC on hybrid ads? Also some reps are questioning why you are still spending in Iowa and Wisconsin.
DAVIS:
A vast majority of our spending in September has been on hybrid ads. You can make an assumption that we're able to double our ad expenditures. That's probably more money than any Rep has ever spent in history. Obviously we were still outbought, but not by much in September. Ideally we've taken that blow and continue to campaign through it. It has had no impact on outcome of election. I can't judge what RNC will do or not do. I'll leave that one to the airwaves.
The Iowa numbers look good to us. We are MoE in Iowa. Once we've won our 260, we look to IA to pick up more EVs. If we win IA & NV, we win the Presidency. Obviously Obama has done well there but we believe we have a chance.
Jill of Chicago Trib:
Please go through your internal polling numbers. Yours seem to differ from what is publicly available. And why haven't you given up in PA?
DAVIS:
We love PA. We anticipate winning PA. We don't believe the naysayers. The night before the PA dem primary Obama had 32k people in a crowd but STILL lost it by ten points even though all you reporters said Obama would win it. I've learned in life, "Don't believe the press when they tell you you're going to lose a state."
The polls are all over the map! Some national polls have us 4-5 points, others have double digits. We will see record turnout. If 90% people turn out, we believe we will win.
Back to spending money: How much people spend in states is important. You have to have confidence that the money you are spending is legit.
There are reports that 3-4 million of Obama's funds were not appropriate. We'd love 3-4 million dollars, and yet Obama gets away with raising illega... illegitimate money and spending it. We don't know if he's given it back yet. They are under no pressure to comply with the law based on what you all reporters know.
I would think going into this election at a time when it's obviously going to be a close race you'd want to know for certain that every dollar being spent in this election has been raised legally.
I don't think that is too high a bar to jump through.
We've seen what happens when people question the outcome of an election, we don't want that to happen.
We've seen problems with ACORN. The press needs to do its job so that when John McCain wins, everyone will know the election has been fair and legal.
JONATHAN MARTIN:
Two questions: What is your CoH. Do you expect any kind of third party help from outside groups that have been dormant?
DAVIS:
No clue on the third party groups. I'll hear it from you first because you're the one who tells me everything about this election.
The press says we have about 45 million and the RNC has significant amounts, they'll report tomorrow. You'll have a sense of CoH.
We will finish this month with at least 150 million in October, that's enough to win. Obama will probably have more. I just hope we know that every one of his donations came from a legitimate US based source. It would be very disappointing if there was no transparency in his small donors. He needs to show everyone his books.
I've been in this game a long time. I've not seen a campaign since 1980 where you didn't know where your money was coming from.
Thanks everybody, hope I was entertaining. Talk soon. Thank you.
END OF CALL