Long Way for Large Field To Run in Presidential Race
April 20, 2007

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

The 2007 “March Madness” which marks the annual collegiate basketball championships has just concluded with another ’Gator title. Sports fans will have another frenzy of March Madness in 2008 before the next presidential election is decided. In the meanwhile, there will be a Super Bowl to pick the top NFL team, two Stanley Cup Hockey finals, and two Kentucky Derbies.

I use these sports references to illustrate just how long a race lies ahead for the legions of announced and unannounced candidates for the 2008 White House trophy. It’s a big field and it may grow larger before very many contenders run out of energy and money.

Money, of course, has a lot to do with victory, defeat and scratches in presidential races; in fact, it seems that each successive four-year competition requires much more money than the last. Thus, it is no surprise that political journalists pay attention to the fund-raising success of the candidates and use sports jargon to track their progress.

For instance, in a recent rash of news reports about how much campaign money various candidates of both major parties raised, The Los Angeles Times headlined a story breathlessly so: “Hillary no longer front-runner.”

“Hillary Clinton (junior senator from New York) is no longer the clear front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008—and former Republican favorite John McCain has dropped to third in fund-raising among GOP candidates,” The Times reported.

“A year ago there was a clear Clinton scenario, a clear McCain scenario” for winning the nominations, Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a nonpartisan campaign newsletter in Washington, told The Los Angeles Times.

Clinton Trailing?
Clinton set a fund-raising record with $26 million in contributions in the first quarter of this year. But that figure barely surpassed the $25 million raised by opponent Barack Obama—and his money came from twice as many donors compared to Mrs. Clinton.

Clinton now trails John Edwards in the polls in Iowa, the first caucus state, The Times reported.

On the Republican side, John McCain has raised $12.5 million for his campaign, but Mitt Romney has collected nearly $21 million and Rudolph Giuliani has received $15 million in donations.

The Times quoted Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University, who told the newspaper: “I don’t see a clear front-runner for the Republicans, simply because I think all of them have serious liabilities in terms of appealing to Republican primary voters.”

Various newspapers and wire services as well as broadcast journalists have been trying to measure the candidates by their financial contribution success almost since the race began on the morning after the November 2006 congressional elections.

I mentioned that it’s a big field this time, certainly one that could not be accommodated by a single starting gate at Churchill Downs. And the field could grow. For example, New York City’s Republican billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, could decide to run, and if he does, he can out-finance every other candidate right out of his own pocket.

Pro-Gun Masquerades
But so far, the anti-gun Bloomberg has shied away from suggestions that he run. But gunowners can take little comfort from his decision. There are plenty of other anti-gunners in the race—from both major parties, but mostly among Democrats—and few that have a solid pro-gun record, even among Republican front-runners. That hasn’t stopped the candidates from claiming to be either gunowners or hunters, including such veteran anti-gunners as Rudy Giuliani, whose record on the gun issues I can trace back to the Reagan-era Justice Department. There’s a lot more to Giuliani’s anti-Second Amendment history than his role as mayor of New York.

Let’s look at the whole field of announced and unannounced candidates.

The Democrat candidates include: Sen. Joe Biden; Gen. Wesley Clark; Sen. Hillary Clinton; Sen. Christopher Dodd; former Sen. John Edwards; former Sen. and ex-VP Al Gore; Mike Gravel; Rep. Dennis Kucinich; Sen. Barack Obama, and Gov. Bill Richardson. Out of that lot, the only one with any pro-gun credentials is Richardson. Politicians like Biden, Dodd, Gore, Obama and especially Clinton can try to run from their past gun records but they cannot hide. Showing up for a quail hunt or even a SHOT Show walk-around like Jimmy Carter did years ago, with Secret Service in tow, is not likely to fool anyone any more except a handful in the media.

The Republican candidates include: Sen. Sam Brownback; former Rep. Newt Gingrich; former Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former Gov. Mike Huckabee; Rep. Duncan Hunter; Sen. John McCain; former Gov. George Pataki; Rep. Ron Paul; former Gov. Mitt Romney; Rep. Tom Tancredo; former Gov. Tommy Thompson, and former Sen. Fred Thompson.

Several of the GOP contenders have some more or less believability on the gun rights side, including Brownback, Huckabee, Hunter, Paul, McCain and Fred Thompson. However, any credentials McCain might have on the gun issue are sorely tarnished by his liaison with Americans for Gun Safety and his commercial for background checks for secondary, private sales at gun shows.

But McCain is a front-runner of sorts, while much more pro-gun Republicans like Paul or Hunter, to name two, are running far back in the pack.

Surprisingly, even veteran anti-gunners like Giuliani are trying to masquerade as pro-gunners. He professes to support the Second Amendment, but like Bill Clinton, he doesn’t spell out what he means.

Romney’s Hunting?
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, having strolled the floor of the SHOT Show in Orlando earlier this year with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, tried to present himself as a hunter and came off about as credibly at Sen. John Kerry.

The matter became an issue with gunowners because Romney had earlier stated that he was “a hunter pretty much all my life.” He also claimed to have bought a gun when he was a young man, but subsequently acknowledged that he does not own a firearm today and admitted that he had only been hunting twice in his lifetime. Nonetheless, Romney is reported to have joined the National Rifle Association in an effort to broaden his appeal to gunowners.

The Salt Lake Tribune quoted Romney campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom, who stated, “Gov. Romney’s support for the Second Amendment doesn’t come from the fact that he knows how to handle a firearm; it comes from his appreciation of the Constitution and the rights enshrined in it, including the right to keep and bear arms.”

Nice phrasing, but I’m not sure that dog can hunt. Just like Steve Forbes endorsement of Giuliani is not likely to win him much traction among gunowners.

For the moment, Romney’s out front in the cash cow department, with Giuliani is second and McCain third. But raising campaign money is not the only part of the race. Clinton has already discovered that her ability to raise big, big money didn’t scare Obama or anyone else away.

The people who will contribute to the candidates are usually the hard core people of each party. The Democrats largely get money from liberals. The Republicans from conservatives. People don’t just hand over their dollars because they “like” a candidate. They give money to the people who are likely to carry forward an agenda they like if they win office.

What’s really interesting about this race for 24/7 Secret Service protection is that most Americans haven’t even started to pay much attention. Sure, a few journalists, including myself, are following the race this early, but most Americans—especially likely voters—haven’t focus in and won’t for many months to come.

If you’d rather just follow the sports championships, I should mention that there will be two World Series before another president is elected.
Return to Archive Index