“Giving Made Easy:” Vice President Cheney, out West for some party fundraising, pictured here as he waited to pay for items at a bookstore in downtown Washington this week. Cheney will raise money for the party in Los Angeles today, in Las Vegas tommorow, and in Wyoming on Friday. AP Photo by Lauren Victoria Burke.
By Naftali Bendavid
As the Sept. 30 campaign fundraising deadline approaches, both parties are looking for clever ways to squeeze those last few dollars out of their supporters, so the next fundraising reports to show them looking as rich and successful as possible.
That helps explain the fundraising note e-mailed out by Democratic consultant today headlined “Cheney Does Vegas.”
“Here’s how Dick Cheney does it,” Begala writes to his fellow Democrats, using one of the Democrats’ favorite bogeymen. “He travels the country with little or no media attention and raises millions of dollars at posh fundraisers to fund GOP attack ads.”
The next stop on the “Get a pic with Dick” tour, the letter goes on to explain, is a Las Vegas fundraiser at which Republicans can pay $2,500 for a photo with Cheney. “At least this time Dick is shooting pictures with his cronies instead of shooting them in the face,” Begala, a CNN talking head as well as Democratic consultant, writes in his trademark sharp-tongued style.
Now that he’s presumably gotten the Democratic faithful stirred up, Begala makes his pitch for a donation (before the Sept. 30 deadline) for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), saying House Democrats will triple any contribution.
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And–in what has become an increasingly common fundraising tactic–the DCCC will pick five contributors who get to meet with DCCC chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and past chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) “And you even get to have lunch with me,” Begala ads.
For once, Democrats are faring better in the money-raising race. Both parties are sending out these missives with growing urgency, as Republicans hope to close the gap and Democrats seek to maintain their lead. Yesterday, the GOP sent one out an appeal over the signature of President Bush.