Couple a' weeks back there was a big news flurry when quarterly Federal Elections Commission fundraising numbers came out, as Roxanne Conlin outraised Chuck Grassley for the first quarter of the year.
But no one other than O. Kay Henderson and myself seems to have picked up on the pitiful numbers out of the Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen campaigns: "Tom Fiegen raised $11,274 and Bob Krause raised $1,934 in the first quarter."
Part of that may have been lag time at the FEC web site, but those numbers are now posted.
But at least she's in the same approximate galaxy as Chuck. Bob Krause has a whopping $352 on hand and Fiegen has $582. No, I'm not missing some zeroes. Not hundreds of thousands - hundreds of dollars.
Fiegen also has a debt of $1240 listed, meaning he's actually in the hole. Granted, Fiegen's legal specialty is bankruptcy, but that hardly should be applied to campaign finance. Compare that to the $50k he raised and $30k of in-kind from one quarter of his 2002 legislative race to run in one fiftieth of the state.
I would say that this is an indication of just how poor of a campaign that Conlin has run to date. She seems to feel herself the inevitable "anointed" candidate because of the size of her checkbook. In fact her candidacy may be more symptomatic of the problems that have beset the IDP for a while, they prefer candidates who are a great match on paper to a candidate who is actually willing to do the work.
ReplyDeleteRoxanne Conlin does have a long and storied history with the Iowa Democrats. If she feels that this history entitles her to the nomination she may be in for a rude awakening.