With attention focused on the Democrats' infighting for the presidential nomination, Senator John McCain is maneuvering for the spotlight. But as he looks ahead to the general election, he has yet to sign up one critical constituency: the big-money people who powered the Bush fund-raising machine.
As he reintroduces himself to voters this week, with stops like one at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi, where he was a flight instructor, McCain will also attend to another pressing task by courting donors in Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee.
Building up his fund-raising apparatus is essential at this point for McCain, who struggled for much of last year to raise money. To prevail in the general election, he will need to raise substantial amounts of money to cut into the vast fund-raising edge the Democratic presidential candidates have shown over the Republicans this election cycle.
Even though he all but secured the Republican nomination by mid-February, McCain has so far managed to enlist only a fraction of the heavyweight bundlers of campaign contributions who helped drive President George W. Bush's two runs for the White House, an examination of McCain's fund-raising network shows. ...
Several former Bush fund-raisers said in interviews that they believed many more Rangers and Pioneers would mobilize for McCain, now that he is the presumptive nominee. But some also said they might not, citing reasons like personal circumstances, a lack of enthusiasm for McCain (especially compared with Bush) and exhaustion.
Therein lies the problem - enthusiasm. The big money Pioneers and Rangers are conservatives and they don't see a candidate in McCain who shares their conservative views. It's hard to get excited about the - especially if that excitement includes breaking out the checkbook and writing checks with lots of zeroes.
This problem isn't going to go away.
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