Fred! Luring Leaders and Raising Dough

This must be the week for thoughts on Fred Thompson. There are two recent themes being kicked around in media which are perfectly positioned from my earlier post on "Fred! 101":

1. Attracting Leaders:

A candidate can't win a campaign by himself. It takes an incredible team of workaholics, true believers, glory hounds and connected leaders. If I had to take any of the above, give me the connected leaders. There are plenty of the others to be found if the vision is motivating and the message is clear.

Party nominations and Presidential campaigns are won by knitting together a state-by-state strategy - across 50 dynamic, individual states. Only leaders with deep local connections can lead an efficient, effective campaign tailored to the people, the issues, the powerful interests and the funding sources in each state.

This is why I wrote: "Will the Thompson campaign emerge from the Summer with clarity, vision, disciplined execution? One early indicator is to see what seasoned veterans are jumping on board."

In seeming answer to this question, two big fish bounded onto the deck of the USS Thompson:

Spencer Abraham:

After an initial hissy induced by media reports that Spencer Abraham was the new Campaign Manager for Fred!, the campaign was finally able to calm the fomenting waters of reporting from the nation's left-leaning media. Abraham will be the "ambassador" to Washington. Something tells me he's this an more.

Spencer was in Bush's original cabinet, was a member of Congress, runs a successful DC-based consultancy, is an expert on Energy Policy and. . .

He was Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party for much of the 1980's. Who's Co-Chairof the party today? Jane Abraham, Spencer's wife.

Do you see what's so important about luring leaders with deep connections in influential states?

Randy Enwright:

Will the real campaign manager please stand up? Come on down, Randy Enwright!!!!

What, no applause? Haven't heard of him? Well, you must not be from Florida or Iowa. Randy Enwright has been the executive director of the Republican Party in both Iowa and Florida - both incredibly important states in the first round of Primary voting (more on that in a future post - soon).

Poke around a few Florida blog sites and it is easy to see that this elevation of Mr. Enwright has been warmly received.

Cudos! to Fred! for landing big fish which may help deliver important states. An encouraging sign for avid Fred-heads.

2. Raising Dough:

The venerable candidate in waiting had to announce the results of the fund raising efforts for his "testing the waters" not-yet-a-campaign "thingie". I had written: "But the Thompson campaign will need to perform well when compared to the numbers of Rudy and Mitt in Q2 and Q3. If not, the smart money won't come his way when it starts entering the race. If he does well here, it is very likely Fred! could exponentially attract more donors come Q4."

So, how does Team Thompson stack up against the 2 leading GOP'ers, Mitt & Rudy?

Mitt:

Q2 Contributions: $13.8M

Spent: $20.7M

Burn Rate: ~150%

(Mitt loaned 6M of his own cash during Q2. With that included, the burn rate is pretty close to a perfect 100%)

Avg Monthly Contributions: $3.45M

Rudy:

Q2 Contributions: $17.2M

Spent: $11.2M

Burn Rate: 65%

Avg Monthly Contributions: $4.3M

Fred:

Q2 Contributions: $3.4M (only for June)

Spent: .6M

Burn Rate:18%

(Sometimes it is nice not to have a hungry campaign to feed!)

Avg Monthly Contributions: $3.4M

Not bad. June is probably the hardest of fund raising months (w/ summer vacations, expendable cash is a bit more scarce and focus on politics is all but gone). Team Fred sill isn’t much of a team. And there is no developed structure to speak of in most states for a true ground-up swell of fund raising.

Oh yeah, and he's not a candidate yet. . .

My guess is still that most GOP donors are still waiting for him to actually declare candidacy before they part with their hard earned lucre (see comments here and here). If so, things may be looking pretty good for Thompson. Time will tell. Q3 donations will be a far better indicator of Mr. Thompson's viability.

Also, this is still just an early glimpse of but 2 indicators which MAY indicate the strength of candidate Fred! None of them will mean much until heading into Oct.

On Principle,

CBass