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| THE MONEY RACE | |
 July 2, 1999 
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The 2000 presidential candidates are searching for both votes and tens of millions of dollars to finance their campaigns. Kwame Holman reports on the money race, followed by a discussion with Dan Balz of the Washington Post. For more on the election visit the washingtonpost.com.
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KWAME HOLMAN: George W. Bush was in California this week for a three-day
fundraising swing, and by the |
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TIPPER GORE: He is funny, he is good-looking, he is KWAME HOLMAN: Events -- like this reception in April for young professionals in Washington D.C. -- were relatively small. Here Gore raised about $200,000. But he too has held large events from coast to coast. And it doesn't appear investigations into Gore's fundraising efforts during the last presidential campaign have hurt his ability to attract donors. Gore Adviser Lynn Utrecht -- who also was a member of the Clinton/Gore 1996 team -- says the campaign is being extra cautious.
KWAME HOLMAN: Gore's lone primary opponent -- former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley -- is keeping pace with the Vice President. Bradley already has raised more than $11 million. And he appears to be on target to raise the more than $20 million his campaign says it needs to contend with Gore in the presidential primaries that begin early next year. Anita Dunn is a senior advisor in the Bradley campaign. |
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KWAME HOLMAN: Bradley has tapped a non-traditional source for money
for his campaign -- the world of sports. This Bradley event in New York
City in April |
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| Bush campaign planning. | |||||||||||
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JIM LEHRER: And to Margaret Warner. MARGARET WARNER: For more on George W. Bush's money bonanza and his week in California, we're joined by Dan Balz of the Washington Post.
DAN BALZ: He's been the beneficiary of belief in the Republican Party that they very much want to win this election, and there's this huge outpouring among the Republican establishment for him. Second, though, they've put a lot of emphasis into fund-raising from the very beginning. He did what we all wrote about -- a front port campaign in Austin -- but much of the emphasis of bringing people into Austin in the months early in this year and even beginning late last year were aimed at bringing in people who could raise a lot of money. He's put together a network of fund-raisers who represent really the crème de la crème of Republican fund-raisers from many campaigns in the past. One of them said to me if you'd looked at the top 25 fund-raisers in the Republican Party, Bush has 22 or 23 of them. MARGARET WARNER: That's still, though, a massive organizational effort when you think about $36 million all in thousand-dollar chunks or smaller. I mean, who's running it for him?
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| Fund-raising records. | |||||||||||
| MARGARET WARNER: Now, was he able to keep
up this same pace of fund-raising on this week in California?
DAN BALZ: Very much so. The goal in California originally was somewhere around 4 or 4.2 million dollars. MARGARET WARNER: For this week. DAN BALZ: For this week alone, seven events over three days in California. By the time they left Fresno, California, on Thursday afternoon, Don Evans said that they were at 5 million and still counting. MARGARET WARNER: Now, he did a lot of other events, other than fund-raisers, though. What are those like? What were those like this week? DAN BALZ: It's interesting to see the Bush campaign at this point.
There are a couple of things that I think are MARGARET WARNER: Almost like what a Democratic candidate would go to. DAN BALZ: That's exactly right. He has the luxury MARGARET WARNER: Now the road show -- he's only been out on the road nationally for three weeks. Is it as organized as the fund-raising operation? |
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| Learning from the Clinton camp. | |||||||||||
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DAN BALZ: I'd say two things about that, Margaret. First of all, he's very loose. He's confident, bordering on cocky. He was in Silicon Valley Thursday morning for a big fund-raiser and he got up and said, this isn't my first trip to Silicon Valley, but it is my first trip here as President of the United States. Then he caught himself and said, well, soon-to-be President of the United States, but there wasn't even that much ripple in the room about the faux pa that he had made. Beyond that, he's still at a very general level in what he's talking about. He's not talking specifics. He's answering some questions, but there is still a lot voters don't know about George W. Bush that they will have to learn about him. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thanks, Dan, very much. DAN BALZ: Thank you. |
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end of the trip, Bush had collected a reported five million dollars.
In fact, the Texas governor has become the most prolific fundraiser
in presidential campaign history. Quarterly reports to the Federal Election
Commission this week estimate Bush raised more than $36 million during
the first six months of this year. No other candidate ever has raised
so much, so fast. And Bush has out-raised the other nine Republican
candidates 
combined.
Arizona Senator John McCain is a distant second having raised just over
$4 million. In comparison, Vice President Al Gore has been only half
as successful as Governor Bush. He reportedly has raised $18 million
during the first half of the year.
handsome,
and he is sexy -- your Vice President, Al Gore. (cheers)
LYNN
UTRECHT: I think the Vice President has clearly communicated to the
Gore 2000 staff that he wants everything done absolutely by the book,
and even beyond that. He's very much supportive of the compliance program
that the campaign has initiated, and that's a very important issue for
him.
ANITA
DUNN: The 20 to 25 million is the amount we'll need to be competitive
going into next year, and that because of the early calendar that we
need to raise it this year. And that's really the biggest change from
previous years is in previous years you had more time to raise it. The
front-loading of the calendars has put pressure on all campaigns to
spend more time fund-raising this year than normally would be.
was
one of his biggest fundraisers. He collected more than $2 million. Bradley
once was a New York Knicks basketball star and those at his side this
night were former teammates Dave Debusschere and Willis Reed. Another
prominent Bradley supporter is former Chicago Bulls Coach Phil Jackson,
who also played with Bradley and is a longtime friend. Jackson not only
contributed his own money but has convinced other stars of the sports
world to pitch in -- among them NBA 
great
Michael Jordan, who contributed a thousand dollars -- not a lot for
a multi-millionaire but under federal election rules, that's all Jordan
or anyone else is allowed to contribute to candidate in the presidential
primary. And all the candidates soon will have to decide whether to
limit how much their campaigns will spend. If a primary candidate opts
into the federal funding program, each contribution received is matched
up to $250. In return, the candidate agrees to limit overall spending
during the primaries to $33.5 million or less. The huge early fundraising
success of Governor Bush, leads many observers to conclude he will decide
to forego the 
matching
funds, freeing his campaign to raise and spend as much as it wants during
the primaries. And it's believed Republican Candidate Steve Forbes will
decide that as well. The multi-millionaire businessman spent $36 million
of his own money during his unsuccessful run for President in 1996.
MARGARET
WARNER: Dan, you've been out there all week with George W. Bush. First
of all, how did he raise so much so fast?
DAN
BALZ: Well, his finance chairman is a man named Don Evans, who's an
old friend. He's a Midland, Texas, businessman, who has come in to help
run it. But they have a huge network of people that they're able to
draw on. Most of the people that are helping them raise money have their
own fund-raising networks that they can tap. And, in addition, I think
what Bush has been able to do -- and I know they have tried to concentrate
on this -- is that they believe that there is a whole new category of
givers who exist in this country because of the strength of the economy,
that these are younger people of Bush's generation and younger, who
have never participated in presidential fund-raising, and they are going
after the very, very hardy.
important
about it. The first is that despite the fact that he doesn't have the
nomination yet, he did almost nothing with these other events that --
was aimed at the core or base of the Republican Party. This campaign
at this point though, we're 16 months away from the election, very much
has the look, the feel and the themes and message of a general election
campaign. Most of the events outside the fund-raising events put him
in situations where he was with voters who are non-traditional Republican
voters, specifically minority voters, a lot of children. On Tuesday
in San Diego he was with Latinos. On Wednesday morning in Los Angeles
he was seated next to a young African American girl. On Tuesday -- on
Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento he did a little shoot at a mini football
camp, mostly Latino and African American kids.
because
he has so much money at this point in comparison to his opponents because
he has such a lead in the polls, and because he has a significant amount
of institutional support from governors and others, that he can spend
his time looking toward the general election and reaching out to swing
voters, independents, moderates and that sort of thing. 
DAN
BALZ: Very much so. It -- it is an extraordinary thing to see actually.
Dee Dee Meyers, former White House press secretary to President Clinton
and who did the 1992 campaign with President Clinton, showed up in Los
Angeles where she lives, showed up at the Los Angeles event he did with
teachers on Wednesday morning and she took a look at what she saw and
said that they are running almost a White House level campaign in terms
of the way they are staging events, the way their logistics operate,
the camera angles, the shoots, the way the press is taken care of and
those sorts of things. Again, they have tapped into a broad network
of people who are very loyal to the Bush family. The core group of people
who are running this campaign are home-grown. They are Texans, but as
you go around and see this campaign move from city to city, what you
see increasingly are people who have been there before, who know how
to do these events, and they are -- they are willing to help right now
as volunteers to make this campaign run smoothly.
