December 17, 2006
2 Days Out From Campaign Rudy Kick-Off
(Hat tip to RudyRoots.org for the above flyer graphic)
Just two days out from the kick-off of Campaign Rudy, which will be a major fundraising event held in NYC, Rudy is “lacking,” according to conventional wisdom, in the organization primary.? While McCain and Romney have spent the past year gobbling up endorsements and campaign hires left and right, Rudy has laid low, bided his time, and snatched a few big-name staff here and there.? For the nascent Giuliani 2008 campaign, it appears that “less is more.”? We don’t get to hear about every tiny little campaign pick-up like we do for McCain, but when Rudy does pop up to hire someone, it’s usually somebody big, like the RNC Political Director, a top Bush fundraiser, or the Chair of the South Carolina Republican Party.? Instead of just doing an all-out sweep to pick up every little morsel he can get his hands on, Rudy is playing the fisherman’s campaign, waiting for weeks before making a move, and then grabbing a huge pick-up that puts everyone else’s little ones to shame.
Even as one of the few participants in the “exploratory committee club,” which, at present includes only Rudy, McCain, Thompson, Brownback, and Hunter, Giuliani has been?probably more low-key than any of them these past several weeks, even moreso than Hunter the Underdog, who has been blitzing Iowa and other key states in recent days.? Even though Giuliani was the first major Republican contender to file the FEC papers, he still doesn’t even have an exploratory committee website, though McCain and Brownback got hooked up to the web almost instantaneously.? However, as the flyer above shows, with ticket prices at $2100 a person, Giuliani is likely to make somewhere between several dozen thousand to several hundred thousand dollars this Tuesday?in a single night.? If and when he does, it will prove that he can raise millions of dollars?in a very short amount of time.? Just a week’s worth of these kind of fundraisers could net Rudy a million dollars in and of itself, and the mounds of small grassroots donations haven’t even begun pouring in yet.
Rudy’s lag in the “organization game” has been cited as a potential candidacy weakness by many even moreso than his personal positions on abortion or gun control.? Money and staff seem to be the key in recent elections to winning the Republican nomination, and Rudy will need lots to win in ‘08.? But even more than having “lots of stuff,” Rudy needs to have the right stuff–the right advisors, the right donors, the right staff.
But rest assured, Rudy Giuliani doesn’t kid around.? He plays to win.? And if he’s really as serious as the evidence makes him out to be, he’ll be doing a lot of impressing the next few weeks.
http://race42008.com/2006/12/17/2-days-out-from-campaign-rudy-kick-off/trackback/
December 17th, 2006 at 10:58 am
The is not a lag in anyone’s campaign at this point. I continue to read this on this blog
especially concerning Huckabee’s camp. Here is the real fact that people might look at. Romney
and McCain are not trying to win by presenting the best ideas or even being the best candidate,
they know they can’t do it that way. But becasue of their resources they are are trying to win
by keeping others out of the race by hiring everyone who might even appear to be useful on a
campaign. I unerstand that this strategy might have some effectiveness, but in the end it is not going to work.
Americans are looking for a leader, not a person who is able to buy up all the support. The American
people want ideas and solutions. Huckabee has that and that is why he has people calling him and looking to get involved not for pay but because they believe what he stands for and in his ideas. The money
and staff will come with time, but it is far from over. Romney and McCain can hire all the people in the worl, but until he gets a message he is only going to be left with a big payroll.
December 17th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
How can someone win the primany when the club of growth can/will outspend that person attacking him.
December 17th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Organization will be much more important in 2008 than it’s ever been in past primaries. Why? Well, in 2008 the GOP is holding a “Super Tuesday” primary, a mere 3 days after the South Carolina primary.
Iowa is on the 21st of January, New Hampshire is a week later on the 28th, South Carolina is just 4 days after that on February 2nd and the massive “Super Tuesday” primary (AL, AZ, AK, MS, MI, NM, NC, ND, OK, UT, WV, and FL) is on February 5th. In order to compete in that many states on one day, it’s necessary to have a strong national ground game in place. McCain and Romney have that and while Rudy picks up high profile people like Mike DuHaime, they mean nothing without boots on the ground.
One of my friends who’s an activist in the WI GOP went to Iowa on Thursday to talk to his friends in the Iowa GOP. He told me that activists in Iowa said that while McCain and Romney’s people are everywhere in the state trying to lockup any and all support, Rudy is almost treated as an afterthought because he has not locked up anyone in the state to support a Presidential run. Even if Rudy starts the ground game, most of the main Iowa talent has either been snatched up already or is being heavily courted and it’s doubtful that Rudy could catch up to Romney or McCain. As we know, winning the Iowa caucuses is almost solely about organization and the ability to turn out voters. Rudy has such a void of any organizational capacity in state that many in Iowa are wondering if Rudy will just skip Iowa altogether and try his hand in New Hampshire, just like McCain in 2000.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I live in NY I was about to go until I saw the price!