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- Just Equally Speaking….
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Campaign contribution limits hurt Republicans
Submitted by MrLuigi on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 3:04pm.
From the DN:
In a telephone interview yesterday, Taubenberger said the city's new campaign finance rules "will make it very difficult for a Republican to mount a significant challenge" in a citywide race.
"In this town, with fewer Republican donors, you need more dollars from them to be successful," Taubenberger said. "A lot of people believe that as long as you have transparency, why have limitations at all? I'd be in favor of raising them or doing away with them."
In an article citing how despite record fundrasing Nutter actually ran the "cheapest" succesful mayoral camapaign in recent Philadelphia history - including reelection campaigns for incumbents.
Thoughts?
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Al's Right
Sam Katz was a serious candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia because he had many, many contributors willing to give $100,000 or more. With those large contriubtions, he was able to match or surpass Mayor Street's fundraising.
Of course, the effect of this kind of contributing was to make the winner--whoever it would turn out to be--far more dependent on campaign contributors than would otherwise be the case.
$6.8 million is still a vast sum of money. Contributors and potential contributors are not going to have feelings of powerlessness. I would hope that we could see some of the $20 million or more that was not spent on the mayoral campaign in 2007 be spent on dealing with Philadelphia's many, many urgent problems.
Re: Katz
Sam Katz was also a serious candidate for Mayor b/c, by and large, he was far more liberal than John Street. Katz is a perfect example of what some in the GOP call a RINO- Republican in name only.
As for funds being important, I would note that the person with the most to spend in the Mayoral primary was Tom Knox.
-Z
"Liberal" Is An Extremely Elastic Word
Sam Katz was stronger on gay rights than Street. But to say that loyal Reagan/Bush Republicans were pouring many millions of dollars into Katz's campaign because they viewed Katz as a liberal (which is not precisely what Z said) would be stretching things.
Katz was a Bill Green Democrat who switched to the Republican Party in or around 1986. A list of Democrats he has supported in the past twenty-one years would be pretty small at best. So would a list of liberal organizations that Katz joined or participated in.
Hope springs eternal that this Republican or that Republican will prove to be a liberal if elected to office. The number of Republicans who actually meet that criterion in elective office is rather sparse by any reasonable definition.
Katz as RINO
I suspect that the national GOP poured money into Katz' campaign the same reason they did so for Reardon (LA), Giuliani + Bloomburg (NYC): it's a propaganda coup to say that an overwhelmingly Democratic city has elected a Republican mayor, even if that Republican doesn't match up w/the national GOP on many issues.
-Z
Maybe he shouldn't have
Maybe he shouldn't have conceded the election on day 1, telling people that he was running to make Michael Nutter a better mayor. His webpage was a single page, with a note to Phil Goldsmith saying that he would eventually write a policy paper, which he never did. So Al, don't complain about campaign limits; no one took your candidacy seriously because YOU did not take it seriously.