House Democrats, panicked after Newt Gingrich and the GOP shocked Washington by winning the House in 1994, became so obsessed with raising money to take back the chamber they even sold off top leadership jobs, according to a longtime Democratic fundraiser.
In an explosive book out next month, Lindsay Mark Lewis said that former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt’s team set a price of $100,000 to be the top Democrat on every House committee, $100,000 on a trade deal and $200,000 for a tax proposal to be considered by the House Ways and Means Committee.
They also demanded that members raise money 12 hours a week and collect $1.5 million per election cycle or be put on a “deadbeat list.”
“For the first time in history, House Democrats had made money the central measuring stick of success,” wrote Lewis in “Political Mercenaries.” An advance copy, co-written by journalist Jim Arkedis, was provided to the Washington Examiner.
Now the executive director of the Clinton-aligned Progressive Policy Institute, Lewis said Democrats tapped House members because Bill Clinton, readying for re-election in 1995, was sucking up available donations, leaving little for House races.
It worked. By 1996, the average House Democrat — including challengers — raised $620,000, but the price was so high, he added, that only fat cats would jump in to run. “It was a new type of Democrat,” wrote Lewis, a former Gephardt fundraiser and finance director for the Democratic National Committee.
2016 PREDICTION: BAD FOR HILLARY CLINTON
Hillary Clinton, nearly appointed the next president by the media, actually will have a hard time winning due to the rotten economy, President Obama’s slumping approval rating and America’s desire for change after a two-term president, according to two political prognosticators.
The election “starts out in the Republican’s favor,” said John Sides, who, with Lynn Vavreck, wrote “The Gamble,” a study of the 2012 election that produced a model to predict presidential elections.
Lecturing at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, the duo said the economy has to register at least a 2 percent growth rate and Obama a 50 percent approval rating for Clinton to be a lock. The GDP is on the comeback, reaching 4.2 percent growth in the second quarter, but Obama’s Gallup approval is 42 percent.
Based on polling of 45,000 Americans, they added that Republican primary voters want a moderate with libertarian leanings. “You need a candidate that’s probably a consensus candidate and that’s probably not like a [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz,” said Sides, a George Washington University professor. He said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fit the bill better.
Vavreck added Ohio Sen. Rob Portman to the list. An unknown nationally, “he gets to come on to the national stage and tell his story for the first time,” she said. What’s more, she added, he is on the leading edge of the GOP’s shift on same-sex marriage, having endorsed it after his son said he is gay.
CONSERVATIVES GUN FOR CHRISTIE OVER JUDGES
Conservative critics of Christie are already out to block his path to the GOP presidential nomination, warning voters that he favors liberal, even Democratic, judges over strict constitutionalists.
The Judicial Crisis Network shared a poll with the Examiner showing, for example, that he is among the top choices among South Carolina Republicans. But when they are told that Christie has picked liberal judges for top slots back home, the support evaporates.
“Christie promised he would change the court by appointing judges who respect the rule of law. Over and over, he broke his promise,” said Carrie Severino, policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, which warns that the next president could have three picks to the U.S. Supreme Court.
FEC BOSS: RULES KILLING STATE PARTIES
Federal elections laws are so confusing and conflicting that donors and volunteers are giving up helping state and local parties, a trend the chairman of the Federal Elections Commissions is mounting a campaign to reverse.
Lee E. Goodman worries that if changes aren’t made, and fast, all but the national parties will go broke and die out, replaced by super PACs that operate under lax rules, thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions.
“We have knocked them out of the game completely,” said Goodman, a cheerleader for state and local parties. Consider: Tough rules have helped shrink state political party bank coffers to less than $45,000 in some states. A House race can cost $2 million.
While a Republican who worked with the Virginia state GOP and Ron Paul, Goodman has the support of Democrats to liberalize FEC rules to let state and local parties raise and spend more for their candidates, raising the possibility that Congress will OK some changes.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
