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 Money, money, money
By John Mercurio
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Summoning all the restraint we could muster, the Grind will resist diving head-first today into the burgeoning White House scandal, which we're confident will be sufficiently scrutinized elsewhere today. We're doing so to focus instead on one of the most important days in the '04 Dem primary, the deadline for third-quarter fund raising. Today begins with Joe Lieberman's breakfast fund-raiser in New York at 8 a.m. EDT and ends here in Los Angeles, where Howard Dean speaks to 1,000 supporters as the clock strikes midnight EDT and his campaign coffers hover close to the magical $15 million mark. Between those two events, plenty of checks will change hands. Kerry is holding a $5,000-a-head fund-raiser in Washington tonight with lobbyists. Wesley Clark is planning a Los Angeles fund-raiser for tomorrow, when he comes here to campaign with Gray Davis, but he's hoping to collect many of those checks tonight. For his part, Dean won't spend any time with Davis during this trip to California. But fear not, anti-recall advocates, Davis suffers no lack of out-of-state guests. Eagerly awaiting a Los Angeles Times poll tomorrow that he hopes will breathe new life into his prospects, Gray Davis does a get-out-the-vote event at 2:30 p.m. EDT with DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. McAuliffe then heads to Oakland for a labor rally with state Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres and other party leaders. Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who unlike Davis is more than happy to embrace the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll numbers -- makes his first trip to San Francisco as a candidate. He's holding a press conference at 8:30 p.m. EDT at the Fairmont Hotel. Maria Shriver will be speaking at the Inglewood Preparatory Academy Charter School at 5 p.m. EDT in Los Angeles and will speak with reporters afterwards. Get out your calculatorIt's risky, of course, to rely too heavily on '04 Dem fund-raising estimates. The motivation to release them tends to be about 20-percent accuracy, 80-percent spin. But it's the best information we have available today, so here we go. According to those projections, the money landscape next month will look like this (give or take a few million): • To no one's surprise, Dean will be the runaway front-runner, taking in approximately $15 million since July 1. As of 8 a.m. EDT today, he had raised almost $13.5 million, according to a running tally aides are updating hourly on their Web site, www.deanforamerica.com. • John Kerry will report a significantly smaller Q3 haul, taking in between $4.5 million and $5 million. The Senator raised just over $7 million during the first three months of 2004 and $5.8 million during Q2. • Joe Lieberman will raise "around $4 million," less than the $5.1 million he raised in Q2 but enough to escape speculation that his campaign is foundering. If Lieberman hits that target, he will have raised about $12 million in '03. • John Edwards, once a fund-raising leader, will take in "less than $4 million," the smallest three-month haul this year, aides said. That's about half of what Edwards raised during the first quarter, when he took in $7.4 million. One aide characterized the Q3 sum as "right on target," as Edwards focused less on fund raising and more on stumping. The strategy has paid off, he said, brandishing a new Harrison Hickman poll that showed Edwards holding a double-digit lead in South Carolina. Edwards takes 23 percent among respondents to that poll, followed by Clark with 13 percent. • Bob Graham will report raising $2 million during the three-month period, which would be a lot more impressive ... if the Senator were, say, running for re-election in Florida. • For his part, Wesley Clark's spokeswoman, Kym Spell -- formerly of the Kerry campaign -- dismissed an Associated Press report yesterday that said Clark has raised $2 million in the 13 days since he joined the race. Clark aides have confirmed raising $750,000 during the first week. But in what could be a prime example of pre-October 15 efforts to lower expectations, Spell said $2 million would be a stretch. • The Other Three -- Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton -- are expected to raise less than $1 million each. Or combined, for that matter. The Gephardt factor
The biggest question mark here, of course, is Dick Gephardt, whose aides have steadfastly declined to release fund-raising estimates this month. Gephardt had raised $9.8 million through June 30, including just $3.8 million during Q2. What Gephardt's campaign can't control, of course, is the spin and speculation that will take place in political circles, whether the candidate wants to participate or not. With that in mind, we predict that Gephardt, having raised just $3.8 million in Q2, will have to report at least $5 million to avoid another round of criticism. And Meanwhile, President Bush will surpass them all, collecting around $50 million for Q3. Bush will spend today raising about $2 million at events in Chicago and Cincinnati, inching closer to his $200 million fund-raising goal. OPA: Obscure Political AnniversaryAlso today, the Grind launches the first in an occasional series in which we'll try to make note of obscure political anniversaries. Today, we'd like to note that it was one year ago that Sen. Bob Torricelli ended his already-sinking political career by leaving the New Jersey Senate race in disgrace. Doug Forrester, remember him?
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