The Wall Street Journal aptly sums up in one sentence the reason why this relatively obscure bit of news is spreading rapidly along the right side of the blogosphere: “Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina will help Senate Republicans raise money ahead of next year’s election to do what she couldn’t in the last one: win seats held by Democrats.”
Ouch.
As to the merits of hiring her; if Fiorina’s being brought in just to help with bringing in big-donor fundraisers, that’s actually not a bad call – although the fifteen million that the WSJ reports that she brought in against Boxer last term is sorta-kinda contradicted by this Hill article, which gives as a not-self-funded number something more like eleven, twelve million. Either way, the NRSC’s showing a current 1.7 million cash on hand (and no debt) to the DSCC’s 7.8 million (and 3.8 million debt); like everybody else out there right now, the committee kind of needs good fund-raisers.
The real question, though, is whether or not this hiring is strictly financial. There’s some deeply skeptical people out there who are right now wondering whether this move has anything to do with Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s boneheaded one regarding the debt ceiling…
Moe Lane
It’s worth pointing out that under Senator Cornyn last cycle, the NRSC closed what had been a $70 million fundraising gap with the DSCC in 2008, down to a $12 million gap in 2010.
And already this year, the NRSC’s fundraising is 43% ahead of where the Committee was in the last presidential cycle, while the DSCC’s fundaising is 18% below where they were four years ago. So under Senator Cornyn’s chairmanship of the NRSC, the Committee is moving in a good direction on the financial front.
We appreciate Carly volunteering her time to help raise money across the country as we continue to work on closing the gap with the Senate Democrat majority, and putting Republicans back in the majority in 2012.
Regards,
Brian Walsh