Next Steps For John McCain

First, he has to raise money.

John McCain's presidential campaign is virtually broke, raising and spending about $25,000 a day. To do that, he will turn to a cadre of big-name fundraisers recruited way back when the campaign was projecting $120M budgets and renting high-class office space in Los Angeles.

Then he has to win Michigan -- an accomplishable task, although he needs to play tournament-quality politics.

Then he has to add staff -- lots of them. The campaign proudly runs on well-worn shoes, but the 22 contests on February 5 are not congenial to politicians with special retail politics skills. McCain has no absentee ballot program to speak of in Florida; Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney hope to bank thousands by the day of the election.

Then he has to figure out how to build momentum in Feb. 5. A win in South Carolina is possible, providing that Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson split the votes of mainline conservatives. Rudy Giuliani is superficially strong in Florida now, but there is no evidence that an accumulation of victories by McCain could erase, almost overnight, the modest groundwork that Giuliani is building in the state.

Illinois and California are McCain's top Feb. 5 targets. New York and New Jersey give all their delegates to the winner, and there's no reason to spend millions to try and soften Rudy Giuliani's home state and adopted state support.

Comments

Hello, Marc-

I publish a McCain-focused site... and so naturally I found this to be of great interest.

I'd like to note that this was a great post, chock-full of the nuts-and-bolts campaign news that we saw throughout 2007. Obviously, this sort of info has taken a back seat to Iowa and NH and horse-race coverage. But this remains more relevant than ever, and so I found it very informative...

I understand that they were taking all of their cash and betting it on NH, a strategy with which I completely agreed. It stands to reason that there is not much left in the till. However, I would speculate that the victory last night in NH probably will open the floodgates in terms of online fundraising. I find it particularly impressive that the campaign ultimately did not need to tap into federal matching funds, with the tight spending caps they would have imposed on a state-by-state basis.

I'll be putting all of this material into a post on my own site soon.

Posted by ElectionNightHQ.com Publisher | January 9, 2008 2:03 PM

The sooner Mccains campign comes to an ugly end the better the GOP will be.

Posted by Petes | January 9, 2008 5:25 PM

Too bad that McCain's supporters are all Demo/Indies trying to take down Romney.... No money in that mix..... How much $ came pouring into McCain's camp today after his BIG NH win??

It's been reported that Mitt Romney brought in over 5 MILLION DOLLARS TODAY, Jan. 9th, in Boston with fund raisers and supporters rallying behind him. I know I did. Even McCain's home state of Arizona donated around $146,000.00 to Romney's campaign. There must be some substance behind all that support---hmmmm, maybe it's because Mitt has an unbeatable resume and platform that is comprehensive, intelligent and not just 1" deep like McCain and Huckabee's.

Do you know why McCain and Huckabee can't illicit that kind of support? It's because McCain's support comes from Democrats/Indi's who vote against Romney. Voters aren't impassioned for a candidate that will be a lame duck president (80 years old in his second term!!). Huckabee has Evangelical pastors compelling their congregations to vote with their religion, and not with their heads. Scary, very scary.....

If Mitt doesn't win the Demo/Indie's vote in Michigan next week---it won't concern me at all. With the kind of support (and true conservative platform) like he received today....Mitt can outlast Huckabee and McCain to the end..

Go to a TRUE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN WEBSITE - rushlimbaugh.com and see what he says about liberal candidates McCain and Huckabee and the state of the race. It's just beginning.....

Posted by Coco | January 9, 2008 10:21 PM

If a "True" conservative thinks its ok to be as dishonest as Mitt then I would like to turn in my card. Sorry pal but charachter counts and the "true" conservatives will just blow their credibility with Mitt no matter how many millions he pours in. The $5M is a drop in the bucket because he has to sell so hard. All for nothing.

Posted by Peter from Dover NH | January 10, 2008 7:14 AM

Rudy wants to increase our Navy by 500 ships costing billions of dollars... Why???!!

Because two 30 foot speed boats cause the people to tremble when Hanity tells them it’s a real threat.

He says he is not at war with the Middle Eastern people yet if you watch his commercials you see something very different.

Fact is we are 9 Trillion in debt (almost 10 now) and....

We have 2 choices from all the fools running in both parties.

1) Socialized medicine
Or…
2) War machine spending

They cost the SAME folks, they in theory create the same amount of jobs (crap ones at that), one may be more noble than the other sure but ----

WE CANT AFORD EITHER ONE!

Watch the debate on Fox tonight - our economy is going to crap and these so called conservatives are going to tell us spending TRILLIONS more on war somehow works.

Posted by Jim S | January 10, 2008 3:57 PM

As John McCain's profile rises among his Republican rivals, his close and deep relationships with lobbyists are certain to haunt him despite his carefully-crafted image as an "independent" and a "maverick." In an election year charged with anger at Washington insiders, McCain is the ultimate insider, with more lobbyists working on his staff, advising him, or raising funds for his campaign than any of his rivals. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis is a former lobbyist who has represented major telecom interests, with which McCain's dealings as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee have drawn particular concern (These include actions by McCain in 2003-2004 favoring Cablevision Systems Corporation while soliciting $200,000 in contributions from Cablevision for his "Reform Institute."). McCain's senior adviser is Charles Black of lobbying firm BKSH & Associates, which has also represented telecom interests as well as drug companies and defense contractors, among others. While most candidates deal with lobbyists to some degree, McCain outdeals them all.

Posted by Mark C. Eades | January 10, 2008 10:21 PM