Arizona Republicans got a mixed bag at the ballot box this year. They picked up three legislative seats and cemented majorities in the state House and Senate, but the party also lost a congressional seat and failed to knock off Democratic incumbents in a pair of GOP-leaning districts.
And as the race for chairman of the Arizona Republican Party heats up in the weeks leading up to the party’s Jan. 24 organizational meeting and vote, supporters of incumbent Randy Pullen and challenger Lisa James are sifting through the results and trying to explain why the elections went the way they did.
Much as it was two years ago, when Pullen defeated James for the top party post by a slim four-vote margin, a major component of the race will be fundraising. In the run-up to the 2006 party leadership elections, James’ supporters said Pullen would be unable to raise enough money to mount an effective campaign in 2008, as many of the deep-pocketed donors from the business world were put off by Pullen’s zealotry on immigration issues.
That appears to be exactly what happened, as the Arizona Republican Party posted its worst fundraising numbers this decade in both individual contributions and overall dollars raised.
The party’s non-federal account, which is used to pay for things such as voter registration and campaigns supporting candidates for state office, raised $710,000. Of that, roughly $180,000 came from individual donors.
In the 2006 election cycle, the state GOP reported nearly $1.7 million raised for state races, with more than $1 million of that coming from individual contributions.
But the numbers change a bit when considering presidential election cycles. The state’s non-federal coffers in 2008 were overflowing compared to the numbers from the 2004 cycle, when the party raised only $425,000.
Yet the non-federal account makes up only half of the picture. State parties also operate federal accounts, which are regulated by the Federal Elections Commission. Contributions to the federal account, which is generally used to support federal candidates, are capped by federal law at $10,000 per person, per year, while contributions to the non-federal account are unlimited.
When contributions to the Arizona Republican Party’s two accounts are viewed together, the fundraising difficulties the party had this year are plain to see. Overall, the party tallied a little less than $2.5 million. In 2006, it received nearly $6.3 million.
The 2008 contributions are the worst of the decade, even falling well short of the $4.2 million the party raised in 2000.
An examination of campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission and the Secretary of State’s Office shows many of the party’s prominent donors and fundraisers opted to either reduce or withhold contributions to the Arizona Republican Party.
One of the state’s most well-known Republican fundraisers, Tucson auto dealer Jim Click, was among those who limited his contributions to the state party. In the 2006 cycle, Click gave more than $150,000 to the GOP’s state and federal accounts.
For the 2008 elections, he gave only $20,000 to the state GOP — during a hastily arranged fundraiser only weeks before the November election.
Instead, Click gave money directly to the McCain presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Pima County Republican Party.
Click and others like him are known in fundraising parlance as “bundlers.” Put simply, they not only have deep pockets, but they are well-connected and are able to solicit contributions from others and organize fundraising efforts. Their work can net the party hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond what they give as individuals.
Don Diamond, a Tucson developer, is a known bundler in the Jewish community. Multiple Republican fundraisers, who asked not to be identified, said Diamond was among the bundlers who did not work hard to raise money for the state party in 2008.
Lobbyist Mitch Menlove said Pullen’s critics will seize on those anecdotes and fundraising numbers, and for good reason.
“The money really is how everyone judges the chairman. It really is most important,” he said. “In Arizona, this is one of the most dismal showings.”
Republican officials are quick to acknowledge they had a tough time getting people to contribute.
State GOP Executive Director Sean McCaffrey said the party was admittedly “underfunded,” but said operations weren’t impacted much because McCain’s presence at the top of the ticket meant Arizona voters would turn out in droves, freeing up the party to focus its efforts on getting those voters to select Republicans down ticket.
“We reached more voters this cycle underfunded…than we did in the last presidential cycle,” he said. But Glenn Hamer, executive director of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the voter-contact McCaffrey boasts about is only a small part of the party’s role. Hamer, a former state GOP executive director, said the party really only has two jobs: to raise money and to conduct grassroots work.
While voter contact is certainly a part of the grassroots work a party should do, the Arizona Republican Party failed to mount a get-out-the-vote effort and register voters, Hamer said. There wasn’t a visible early-voting program, he said, and Republicans lost 50,000 registrations in 2007 and 2008.
“I would point to that as Exhibit A, as where the inability to fundraise hurt the party,” Hamer said.
Republicans in Arizona, McCaffrey said, actually contributed $10.5 million — most of the money went directly to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign or to other committees, bypassing the state GOP.
Menlove, who helps raise money for Republican candidates and serves as a precinct committeeman, said the reason that money was diverted from the state party is because the congressional delegation didn’t have faith in Pullen.
The delegation made it clear in Republican circles that donors shouldn’t support the Arizona Republican Party, Menlove said.
“Certainly, the impression went out that the delegation wasn’t supportive, and that information spread quickly,” he said. “This year, people were less comfortable having their names attached to contributions, which is the exact opposite of the past.”
That, combined with the reluctance of many of the party’s well-heeled donors to sign on to the anti-illegal-immigration platform Pullen supports, led to a drastic drop in contributions.
“Anybody who isn’t in full support of what (Pullen) does on that issue wonders, is that what my dollars are going toward≠” Menlove said.
There was no shortage of rumors during the past two years that the state’s congressional delegation was pulling whatever strings it could to dampen Pullen’s fundraising efforts.
For much of his term as state GOP chairman, Pullen has enthusiastically opposed efforts by members of his party’s congressional delegation to pass immigration reform measures at the federal level. In particular, he upset McCain by withholding support during the early portion of McCain’s run for the presidency.
Pullen did offer his support to McCain in the final months leading up to the election, but he made it clear that he was forced to chose between a Republican with whom he disagreed on some issues and a Democrat with whom he disagreed on almost all issues.
McCaffrey said the only fundraising category in which the par
ty didn’t meet or exceed its goals was in the major events it hosted. Typically, the party will line up a nationally known Republican figure to speak at a banquet as a way to attract fundraisers. This cycle, though, three such events never happened, as the keynote speakers — such as former Vice President Dan Quayle and U.S. House Republican Leader John Boehner — cancelled unexpectedly.
Rumors persisted in GOP circles that members of the state’s delegation had persuaded the political luminaries not to attend.
Pullen, who didn’t return a call for comment, said in an October interview that people who supported James two years ago were working to prevent him from raising funds.
“I can flat guarantee you that a number of elected officials purposely tried to prevent the state from successfully raising funds…” Pullen said in the Oct. 9 interview. “That was the concerted efforts of a number (of people) in this state to prevent that from happening.”
Still, Republicans managed to make gains in legislative races and defended well-funded campaigns from Democratic candidates. McCaffrey credits a $65,000 call center built earlier this year and the work of hundreds of grassroots volunteers. Money, he said, is not the end-all, be-all of campaign work.
“What we proved this year is that you can win races being underfunded if you have tools…and great candidates and wonderful things that go your way,” he said.
But Kevin DeMenna, a lobbyist and influential Republican fundraiser, said it is difficult to identify any legislative races in which the state party had any appreciable impact.
“How you explain (the gains) is that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then,” he said.