Politico reports GOP will abandon recruits
By Lisa Vorderbrueggen
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 4:56 pm in 2008 November election, Congress, congressional district 11.
This isn’t good news for congressional District 11 Republican challenger Dean Andal.
A Politico.com story today quotes national GOP sources saying the party lacks the resources to fight for their prized recruits and must, instead, focus their money helping incumbents now fighting for their political lives elsewhere.
Andal is challenging freshman Democrat Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, who beat seven-term incumbent Richard Pombo in 2006.
On the other hand, it’s unclear whether or not the National Republican Congressional Campaign ever planned to dump big bucks into Andal’s campaign. Rumblings from Washington in recent weeks revealed private frustration over the Republican’s fund-raising numbers.
Tomorrow is the next deadline for campaign finance reports but it seems unlikely Andal will catch up with his opponent and the NRCC’s cash-strapped state means he will very likely be on his own.
Here are the first few paragraps of the Politico.com story:
Darren White and Erik Paulsen were prized Republican recruits, House candidates poised to be the new face of the GOP on Capitol Hill.
But as the two head into the homestretch of their campaigns, GOP operatives say they’ll probably have to win — or lose — on their own. The money national Republicans earmarked for White in New Mexico and for Paulsen in Minnesota will likely go instead to protect GOP incumbents who once looked like locks for reelection.
GOP Reps. John B. Shadegg of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina and Dan Lungren of California are all fighting for their political lives, a reversal of fortunes that has caught even the most astute campaign observers by surprise.
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October 14th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
The Republican Party is dead! Or dying quickly. The NRCC is very low on cash because of the failure and corruption of the previous Republican congress. I recieved several calls from the NRCC and I told them to drop dead before I would give them another dime. Now rather than suppport recruits who can change the foolish Republicans in Congress they are proping up the same people that ran the GOP into the ground in the first place.
Check out the article on the end of the Reagan era.
http://halfwaytoconcord.com/renegade-republican-says-farewell-to-the-reagan-era/
Andal has been toast for a long time. Now he just gets toastier. The funny thing is who will run in 2010?
Maybe it will be a contested primary. That would be a lot of fun to watch.
October 15th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
[...] still at something of a competitive disadvantage. And as my colleague Lisa Vorderbrueggen noted in her blog earlier today, it looks as if the National Republican Congressional Committee well has run dry for Andal and [...]