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Presidential Candidates Notes – Six months to the primaries
By Jason Pancake

With one year to go until the official nominations, the Presidential race for 2008 is in full swing. With so much news already being made about this election, it is easy to see how important raising money is in the election process. It’s still too early to be making bold predictions but here are some of my observations along with some interesting articles. For an excellent view of where candidate’s money comes from and who donates to them, check out Opensecrets.org.

The dollar amounts below refer to how much the candidate has raised and spent as of 6/30/07. Full reports can be found here.

Democrats

Hillary Clinton
$63 million raised /$18 million spent

Hillary has been rolling and has the current lead in the polls thanks to: brand recognition and slick political experience. Everyone knows who Bill and Hillary are and that has helped immensely with the name recognition. By not having to put out ads saying who she is, they can save a huge chunk of cash to be used for things like traveling and hiring more consultants. The Clintons also have ties to the big campaign contributors, so money won’t be an issue. Hillary is a seasoned politician and has been more polished so far. She doesn’t get in the news for saying what the media calls “controversial” things the way Barack Obama does. However, all of these make it difficult to not think of her as part of the political system. Her voting record isn’t horrible, but her speeches and moves give the impression of being calculated and that she wouldn’t risk political power to create large scale changes to help the people who aren’t important politically. Hillary has said that big campaign contributions from lobbyists won’t influence her, but can that really be the case? In this cycle, she has received more from lobbyists than even the Republican candidates. If she is the Democratic nominee, she will be a huge target, but her savvy and the fact that things are going so wrong with the Republicans should help her and doesn’t necessarily hurt her electibility.

Barack Obama
$59 million raised/$23 million spent

Ultimately the Democratic nomination should come down to Hillary vs. Barack. Political Machine vs. Rising Star. The only way that his opponents can try to attack Barack is by calling him naïve or inexperienced, because he is solid otherwise. If the national election comes down to Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania again, I really like his chances. One key to his success though will be with the youth. He has incredible support among young voters, but that group is also the least likely to vote or be active about politics. It also kind of tells you something when the daughter of the Republican front-runner, Caroline Giuliani, supported Barack Obama. At least she did on Facebook.

John Edwards
$23 million raised/$10 million spent

Of the major candidates, John probably has the best platform and message, which is to fight poverty and inequality. However, he still has manner of communicating like a trial lawyer, which might work on juries in a specific court case, but is harder to pull off in a Presidential election. John used to be a trial lawyer who worked on class-action and personal injury cases and earned millions of dollars. Since then, he has had a change of heart, but he is finding out that helping the poor and fighting for financial equality isn’t exactly a popular platform for raising corporate contributions or for reaching out to the average middle and upper class citizens who aren’t stuck in poverty.

Dennis Kucinich
$1.1 million raised /$902,000 spent

Based on the issues, Dennis remains one of my favorite candidates. Look him up. He knows what he’s talking about. Here is an interview he did on the environment . Yes he will never have a chance, but anyone with the campaign slogan “Strength through Peace” receives my respect.

Republicans

Rudy Giuliani
$36 million raised/$17 million spent

The fact that Rudy is the front-runner of the Republicans is a joke. He is a pro-choice, twice divorced Republican candidate whose only claim to fame is being in New York during 9/11. He’s also famous for dumping his second wife during a news press conference. While firefighters and workers who worked at Ground Zero got strange illnesses and now oppose him, Rudy got incredibly wealthy thanks to cashing in on 9/11. Keep in mind he left the Mayor’s office only a few months after 9/11 on 12/31/01. At that point, he had assets of between $1.16 million and $1.83 million. Then he formed a corporation and in the last five years has earned over $100 million by speaking and consulting about 9/11! And there’s a lot more. Here is an article about his misleading crime statistics and article with all kinds of info on Rudy’s friendship with ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who had free renovations from a construction company with ties to the mafia and who cheated on his mistress with another woman, all while being married to a third woman in an apartment donated rent-free to assist in the 9/11 Ground Zero efforts. Wow, that is some leading candidate the Republicans have.

John McCain
$25 million raised/$22 million spent

It is amazing how far McCain has fallen. He continues to be screwed over by Bush and by the “Republican base.” In 2000, Bush’s campaign spread rumors that McCain’s adopted daughter (who is black) was actually an illegitimate child, and he lost South Carolina and the momentum. Then in the last few years, John decided to become Bush’s best friend and one of the few remaining supporters in Senate of the Iraq war, and that has further destroyed his chances in 2008. The old maverick in Washington DC gradually became the corporate and pandering politician that what he was supposed to different from.

Mitt Romney
$44 million raised/$32 million spent

He has the most money but he is still having trouble trying to explain his Mormon faith. It’s pretty sad that according to a poll in July, 32 percent of those who said they leaned Republican described themselves as "uncomfortable" with the idea of a Mormon president. See my column a few months back for more on Mitt.

Fred Thompson
Though he hasn’t officially filed for the race, this Law & Order actor has the GOP base stirred up. Unfortunately not enough to raise any money .

Ron Paul
$3 million raised/$655,000 spent

Not too bad for a Republican. He has run as a Libertarian candidate in the past and actually voted against the Iraq War, but don’t get too excited. He votes against pretty much ANYTHING at all that involves government spending. He’s also still an old school Texas Republican who is anti-choice, very conservative, and who has published personal newsletters (that he apparently didn’t look over) that had interesting things to say about black people, including that “we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in [Washington DC] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” Maybe he wouldn’t really like being President after all, since he would have to live in DC.