Money Money Money.....

Fundraising at second-quarter pole: All eyes on Bush

Candidates vie to show strength, viability — but one already has everyone beat.

By Eli Stokols

Hillary Clinton came first.

Then Ben Carson.

Over the next few weeks almost every White House candidate will be brandishing a dollar amount either to show off as a sign of strength, or hide for fear of weakness, as the first concrete measure of viability for most of the 2016 candidates.

For many longshots, either the number (a solid $10.5 million for Carson) or a rough estimate (a not-bad $8 million for Bernie Sanders) are already being bandied about. For more highly touted candidates such as Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, their standing in the fundraising race at second-quarter pole will be a signal to party leaders about who belongs in the first tier of candidates.

But there’s one candidate whose number matters more than the rest: Jeb Bush.

The combined total from his campaign and two supporting PACs that Bush posts before the end of July will be the number by which other GOP rivals will be measured against — and the number their major donors and even Clinton’s financiers will be reacting to over the next several months.

No one is better positioned to take advantage of the shifting terrain of campaign finance laws in the super PAC era than Bush. Drawing on a family network that goes back 50 years, his six months of fundraising for the super PAC that will undergird his official campaign has likely brought in at least $100 million in contributions.

“Historically, the person who raises the most has won,” said Charlie Black, a long-time GOP operative who has advised several presidential campaigns. “The important thing is not just raising more money than everyone else but knowing what to do with it. Most of his money is in the super PAC and [strategist] Mike Murphy and those guys know what to do with it, which should allow him to run effectively in a whole bunch of states.”

It’s not just the dollars that matter. Equally important is that Bush’s Right to Rise super PAC is set to reveal a list of several hundred high-dollar contributors, certain to be far longer than any of his rivals.

“If you have 200 people on your super PAC list, most of them can become million-dollar donors,” said a GOP operative who has run presidential super PACs. “It’s not just the big, shiny number, the total haul, that matters. The biggest tell will be the depth and breadth of your contributor list. That’s what shows you’re going to be successful over the long run.”

The other GOP candidates fighting for second place in fundraising — Rubio and Ted Cruz — are expected to bring in $30-50 million overall between their campaigns, both launched in April, and their super PACs; but they are almost certain to do with smaller numbers of mega-donors, although Cruz is expected to have raised a significant sum from small donors online.

Cruz has Robert Mercer, a Wall Street hedge fund magnate, underwriting much of his candidacy; Rubio has Norman Braman, the Miami auto dealer and former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles doing the same. Bush has big names, too — New York Jets owner Woody Johnson recently flew him across Europe on his private jet; but Bush is expected to have far more names overall, hundreds of donors capable of writing checks with one comma and dozens who can write them with two.

Carson, who reported contributions Wednesday from 210,000 individual donors mostly in small amounts, appears to have a powerful grassroots army; but his super PAC appears to have spent big on direct mail firms in order to access the lists needed to raise the cash online.

“There might have been a time in history where you’d prefer to have thousands of these small donors you can keep going back to, but now that we’re in a world without caps, you’d prefer to have those donors who can continue to write you $10,000 checks,” one Bush bundler said.

More than a single mega-donor, breadth among high-dollar contributors is what will likely set Bush — and perhaps others — apart.

“He won’t have any one person you can characterize as a co-investor,” Black said. “Norm Braman’s not going to ask Marco for anything; he just believes in Marco, not that it looks great. It’s better perception-wise for Jeb that he doesn’t have one big sugar daddy.”

Sheldon Adelson single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich afloat in 2012; and Foster Friess’s largesse enabled Rick Santorum to fight deep into April after getting hot in a handful of early state contests. But their efforts showed that mega-bucks can prolong a candidate’s time in the arena but don’t guarantee putting game-changing points on the board.

Scott Walker, who polls near the top of the field and is planning to officially launch his campaign in a couple weeks, won’t file his first report until October; and Chris Christie, by launching his campaign on the last day of the quarter, also puts off the pressure of having to post a number for another three months.

John Jordan, a California winemaker and Walker bundler who hosted a high-dollar fundraiser last month, doesn’t believe the Wisconsin governor’s supporters will be intimidated by what his rivals post in July.

“Money can’t buy you Iowa or New Hampshire,” Jordan said. “Where the money really helps you is when you come out of those first few states with momentum; and whatever Bush and Marco have on hand, you may as well subtract $30 million from both because that’s what it’s going to cost them to play in Florida.”

Given his steady polling position and the positive reactions he’s gotten from the donor crowd, Walker has the luxury of looking at fundraising as a longer game. Similarly, Bush only plans to pad his cash advantage over the rest of the year; Murphy, the strategist running his super PAC, has reportedly told donors a number he wants to have in the bank by year’s end and that he doesn’t plan on seriously spending money on advertising until then.

By comparison, Rubio, whose operation is far leaner than Bush’s, has already spent $7 million to lock up TV time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for ads that will start running in late November. Murphy’s plan, according to one source close to the effort, is only to spend money “once voters are actually paying attention.”

There’s far greater urgency for the other candidates polling outside the top ten nationally, the benchmark for participation in the first debate next month. For Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and others on the bubble, a $8-10 million haul in the second quarter isn’t about demonstrating long-term fundraising potential — it’s cash they’ll need to spend in the near term to put TV ads on Fox News, to fly themselves to Iowa and New Hampshire, anything to boost name ID in order to earn them a spot on the debate stage.

A few candidates who don’t make the first debates might not even be around by October, when the third quarter FEC reports come due. By most measures, that’s the quarter that will provide what one veteran Republican presidential fundraiser described as “the first big tactical test.”

By then, the race should be more fully engaged, with two debates in the books and the entrance of Gov. John Kasich likely drying up much of the money in his home state of Ohio. Bundlers and donors who have already written big checks will be asked to double down.

“Jeb is way out in front,” one operative said. “A lot of big donors who are still uncommitted are going to wait and watch those first debates. If we see them break toward Walker or Rubio after the third quarter reports, then you’ll have a better sense who’s going to be there at the end as the alternative to Jeb, which is really what all this is about.”