This floors me: Charles Schumer has more cash on hand ($24 million) than the entire Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ($21 million). I sure hope Chuck plans on giving a good amount of that money to other campaigns this year, because he’s got about the safest seat in the Senate. He won his last election with 71% of the vote, and nobody with any name recognition has stepped up to challenge him this year.
Chuck’s Bucks
by $8 blue check mistermix| 14 Comments
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M.
cleek
here he is on opensecrets.
the guy sells a lot of influence, don’t he…
Dork
2buckChuck?
Money may help, but nothing’s stopping this mo’ in November. Repubs gunna roll Dems everywhere. May as well save this coin for 2012.
schrodinger's cat
I is in your Senate, taking munniez from Wall Street!
burnspbesq
@schrodinger’s cat:
The political corollary to Willie Sutton’s Law. You can only raise money from people who have money.
Bill H
I have an idea. Let’s just turn the election into a money race. Set a deadline for the fundraising and, at that deadline, whoever has the most money wins the office. Saves all that cost for holding elections.
Two choices for the money a) turn it over to the government and reduce the deficit or b) use it do do things like clean up the environment and feed hungry people. Either one would be better than spending it on election advertising.
kindness
Chuck is an odd duck. While in the past there have been those I haven’t liked but respected, I find myself often at odds with Chuck. I find I often like him but don’t respect him. That’s an unusual twist for me. I don’t respect him at times because I think he’s too coy on issues. For instance, I believe the corporate world needs regulations they don’t like. Look at 2008 for god sakes. Chuck mouths support but then does everything he can to gut the regs behind the scenes. I support Israel, but not everything Israeli politicians do. I feel the Palestinians deserve equal treatment, even though they pull bone headed stunts all too frequently. Chuck is a through and through JDL’er. Chuck presents himself as a progressive, but caves too quickly in ‘negotiating’ settlements.
In short, the guy has power and uses it poorly. But I like him. What can you do?
August J. Pollak
My guess is he was holding onto it before the Nevada primary. He might just sit on it now that Angle’s the Republican nominee, making it far more likely that Harry Reid will keep his job and therefor stay Majority Leader.
Only a month or so ago Schumer was probably stockpiling, realizing that with Majority Leader up for grabs he’d need to start spreading a lot of money around.
But yeah, now it’s ridiculous. Unless I’m just missing restrictions in campaign laws or something there’s no reason he shouldn’t be handing that off to valuable races across the country.
Norwegian Shooter
Schumer is in the Tom Daschle mold (corporate whore), but with more charisma. He’s willing to fight, which makes him unusual, but he’s fighting for the wrong side on FIRE and Likudniks. In my limited view, Durbin seems like a great potential majority leader. Beyond the backup-QB love-fest, is there a record of substance with him? He had the great “the banks own the place” quote, but would he be an improvement over Reid?
CalD
Oh, I imagine he’ll be spreading some of that wealth around. That’s one of the primary ways that members of congress campaign for leadership positions. Also, when you get a fundraising solicitation from the DNC or one of the congressional campaign committees saying someone will match your contribution if you respond by thus and such a date, the personal war chests of some of the more flush members of congress are often where those matching funds come from.
Martin
@Dork: I’m still missing the evidence for this. The generic congressional ballot is pretty even. Big changes in seats have pretty much always show big differences in that survey, and it’s just not there this year. Hell, Gallup showed Dems with a 6 point *lead* this week.
Dems will lose seats just as a function of having so many more to lose, but I’m not seeing evidence voters excited about the GOP – certainly not excited enough for a shift in power.
shortstop
@Norwegian Shooter: Hard to say. Durbin’s center-left (like virtually all Illinois Democrats who’ve been in the U.S. Senate for the last 30 years–this is a blue state but only Chicago and a few union towns in the south are really deep blue), and he’s come down on the wrong side of key issues a few times. On the other hand, he sometimes surprises with his spirited defense of progressive legislation.
He certainly wouldn’t be any more conservative than Schumer and probably a little less so, and he’s well respected among other senators. Fun fact: Durbin and Schumer share an apartment in DC.
CalD
@Martin:
You’re absolutely right. The midsummer generic ballot is worse than useless when it’s within 10 points of even. When you consider the question they’re asking, what it properly should be predicting is the percentage share for each party in the next congress and it’s often not even within single digits of that (ah, gerrymandering). As for it’s predictive value in forecasting net gains or losses for one party of the other, you could do about as well by flipping a coin or picking petals off a daisy and it’s been stuck at pretty well dead even for months in any case.
Gallup’s “enthusiasm gap” turns out to be a little problematic as well. They’ve done OK with that question so far in blow-out years but it did suggest Republican gains in 1998, when Democrats picked up 4 seats. I also noticed last week that ABC/WP asked the question a little differently and found no particular difference between Democrats and Republicans this year. However ABC/WP just asks a straight up question about how enthusiastic people feel about voting, whereas Gallup asks you to how enthusiastic you feel this year in comparison to previous elections. And you have to admit that in the last couple of election cycles, it has kind of sucked to be Republican.
I actually spent a good part of the day Saturday compiling poll numbers from previous congressional elections though (yes, I’m a geek) and as strange as this may sound, the best predictors I could find for relative gain or loss of House seats from 1994 – 2008 would seem to point to a small net gain for Democrats at the moment. Some poll questions that seem to correlate more reliably with overall gains or losses in the House in last several elections (near perfectly in fact) were net job approval for each party and it’s leaders in congress, which party voters think can to do a better job handling the “main problems” the nation faces (ABC/WP), and which party they trust more on the economy, specifically (ABC/WP). All of the above are currently holding in Democrats’ favor.
I should mention that I couldn’t find a complete set of data for all of three of those I questions in every election year. For 1996 and 2004 I had to settle for only one of the three, and two out of three for 2000 and 1996. For 2008 and the mid-term years though, I had all fields populated and multiple sources for the job approval by party question. With that said though, I didn’t see a single instance from 1994 – 2008 where either party was in negative territory relative to the other on any one of those questions and ended up with a net gain in House seats. And right now the Republican party looks to be south of the border on all three.
flounder
I heard he got most of it via $5 donations from sharecroppers.
Norwegian Shooter
@shortstop: Which key issues?