The second-quarter numbers are in and people who pay attention are paying attention. It’s not the haul that’s so impressive — $866,000 is a robust figure but Romney’s PAC did more than a million in April and May alone and SarahPAC itself did better in the last half of last year than the first half of this year — but rather what she’s doing with the money. What kind of ex-governor-turned-commentator spends several hundred thousand dollars developing a direct mailing list?
One who’s keeping her options open.
The committee, SarahPAC, also spent nearly twice as much – $742,000 – as it had in any previous quarter, the lion’s share of which went to the type of list-building and fundraising (including its first major direct-mail campaign) that typically undergird top-tier political committees. It also reported its biggest-ever round of donations to candidates – $87,500 – and its highest outlays for travel costs, including $17,000 on private jet fare to crisscross the country for high-profile political speaking gigs, and speechwriting. It also showed continued payments for that speechwriting as well as foreign and domestic policy consulting, and its first ever payments to a scheduler…
But perhaps most indicative of a more traditional, robust political operation were the $330,000 in fundraising costs reflected in the report, including $154,000 to HSP Direct, a direct-mail vendor that put together SarahPAC’s first direct-mail campaign. Palin had previously used primarily online fundraising techniques, which tend to have lower overhead but cannot necessarily equal the return rate of a well-targeted but more expensive traditional direct-mail campaign. HSP’s campaign for SarahPAC, which started in earnest in April, sent glossy fundraising solicitations to more than 500,000 conservative households, asking them to help the PAC support conservative candidates in 2010, according to SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford.
Attorney General Eric Holder. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
By a margin of more than two to one, according to a new Gallup poll, Independents oppose the Obama administration’s lawsuit against the new Arizona immigration law that requires local law enforcement officers to determine the immigration status of someone they have stopped if there is reason to suspect the person might be in the United States illegally.
The Justice Department contends the Arizona law usurps federal authority to regulate immigration.
The poll, conducted on July 7, asked: “As you may know, the U.S. federal government yesterday filed a lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law. Do you favor or oppose the federal government’s lawsuit to prevent the Arizona immigration law from taking effect?”
Read the rest.
William Temple attends a Tea Party rally in the desert outside Searchlight, Nev. Saturday, March 27, 2010. (AP)
The NAACP reportedly is about to take up a resolution to condemn the Tea Party movement for “explicitly racist behavior.”
The Kansas City Star reported that the organization plans to vote as early as Tuesday on the language at its annual convention in Kansas City. The resolution reportedly will call on “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties” and stand against the movement’s attempt to “push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”
Thanks largely to a controversial immigration law in Arizona, political observers agree that immigration will be a key issue for state and federal candidates in November’s election.
And, thanks largely to the federal Department of Justice’s decision last week to challenge Arizona’s law – known as S.B. 1070 – those observers say Republicans will likely get a bump at the polls.
“The Department of Justice has made this a federal issue, which drags it into every congressional race in the country,” said Douglas Johnson, a researcher with Claremont McKenna College’s Rose Institute of State and Local Government. “The decision to sue Arizona will certainly help Republicans more than Democrats.”
As evidence, he noted that three of Arizona’s five Democratic members of Congress asked the Obama administration not to sue the state over S.B. 1070, which requires law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of people they come across in the course of duty and suspect might be in the country illegally.
The law sparked not only the Justice Department lawsuit, but also a presidential address earlier this month.
Renee Van Vechten, a political science professor at University of Redlands, said she is surprised President Barack Obama opted to speak about immigration reform, saying the move could “add fuel to the fire.”
“He’s making it into a hot-button issue,” she said. “It just surprised me he would even attempt to tackle this issue. It doesn’t create a whole lot of winners or a whole lot of payoff in the short term.”
Read the rest.
Sheriff Arpaio Gets Help in Rooting Out County Corruption
FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY BOB BARR TO ASSIST IN FIGHTING BOARD OF SUPERVISORS ACTION TO MEDIATE CLAIMS
(Phoenix, AZ.) Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, while at the forefront of the national illegal immigration debate, is now having to taking aim at an equally tough challenge: rooting out what may end up being one of the worst and most bizarre public corruption cases in Arizona. In a press conference today, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas introduced the man they believe can help sort it all out: Bob Barr has agreed to be an expert witness in matters pertaining to the Board of Supervisors. Barr, former U.S. Attorney, Congressman, and chief federal prosecutor in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, has been retained as an expert witness in matters facing both Thomas and Sheriff Arpaio. Not only has Barr directed a number of high profile public corruption investigations, he also chaired the Public Corruption Subcommittee of the U.S. Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of United State Attorneys. He is a registered arbitrator and mediator.
While the weak economy dominated the official agenda at the summer meeting here of the National Governors Association, concern over immigration policy pervaded the closed-door session between Democratic governors and White House officials and simmered throughout the three-day event.
At the Democrats’ meeting on Saturday, some governors bemoaned the timing of the Justice Department lawsuit, according to two governors who spoke anonymously because the discussion was private.
“Universally the governors are saying, ‘We’ve got to talk about jobs,’ ” Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, said in an interview. “And all of a sudden we have immigration going on.”
He added, “It is such a toxic subject, such an important time for Democrats.”
