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GOP Is Ready to Roll Out the Klieg Lights for Craig
Sen.Larry Craig might find Idaho more comfortable than Washington, his GOP colleagues are hinting.
(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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This time around, however, the ante has been upped. While the highest rank in the Bush fundraising hierarchy was $300,000 -- the "Super Rangers" -- former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani already has two Texans committed to raising $1 million or more for his 2008 presidential campaign.
Tom Hicks Sr., who owns baseball's Texas Rangers, and Jim Lee, the newly appointed finance chairman for Hizzoner, are both "Team Captains," which means they have collected or will collect seven figures' worth of donations.
Lee will be charged with converting past Bush Rangers into Giuliani Team Captains, Most Valuable Players ($200,000 raised) and All Stars ($100,000).
Through the first six months of 2007, Giuliani raised $33 million, second only to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The third fundraising quarter ends Sept. 30 at midnight.
PLAYERS
Martha McKenna is taking over what might be one of the most attractive jobs in politics right now. McKenna, a longtime operative at Emily's List, is the new political director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. She succeeds Guy Cecil, who left the organization to serve as national political and field director for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (N.Y.) presidential campaign. McKenna inherits from Cecil a political landscape that Democrats could only have dreamed about a few years ago. Twenty-two Republican incumbents are up for reelection, compared with 12 for Democrats; three GOP incumbents -- Sens. Wayne Allard (Colo.), John W. Warner (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) -- have announced their plans to retire, and Democrats have recruited top-tier candidates in New Hampshire, Maine and Oregon, where Republican incumbents face tough reelection fights. McKenna knows her way around tough Senate races, as she was involved in the 2006 open-seat victory of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.).
20 days: Look to Louisiana for a bit of good news for Republicans badly in need of it. Rep. Bobby Jindal (R) continues to run far ahead of his Democratic (and independent) rivals in the governor's race. The only question is whether Jindal can top 50 percent on Oct. 20 -- thereby avoiding an unpredictable runoff on Nov. 17. A Jindal win would be sweet revenge for his narrow loss four years ago to Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D).
36 days: It's the last day to file for Congress in Illinois. The incredibly early deadline is the result of the state moving its primary to Feb. 5, 2008, to help native son Barack Obama in his presidential bid. With at least five House seats -- including three Republican-held open seats -- likely to host competitive races in 2008, Illinois voters are in for a very long campaign season.
