Editorials

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” – the late Jess Unruh.

Jess Unruh, the California politician, had it “spot on,” as the Brits would say, when he described the influence money has on politics. Naturally, political campaigns need lots of money. Campaigns without a healthy amount of cash in their treasuries are quickly dead in the water. And if you want to know the state of a campaign or predict its outcome, you merely have to look at the amount of money the candidate has raised and spent to get a good idea of how things are really going as opposed to how they say things are going. (Check out http://www.OpenSecrets.org.)

Take former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s bid for the Republican nomination for president for example. While Huckabee has had huge success in garnering nationwide publicity and is now viewed as a legitimate candidate, he has raised only $2.3 million, according to the latest report. This puts him way behind my favorite candidate, Rep. (R) Ron Paul of Texas (he has no chance) who has collected $8.3 million. Looking at the other Republican candidates in the field, we find that Mitt Romney’s campaign has collected $63 million while Rudy Giuliani has received $47 million and John McCain, $32 million.

By looking at these numbers, which could change dramatically at the next public filing near the end of January, absent a huge injection of cash, you can see that the Huckabee campaign will go dark fairly quickly. One thing Huckabee has done is parlay his success in Iowa into a public perception that he is a viable candidate. But given the fact that he has no money in his campaign coffers and no personal wealth to fall back on, he will be unable to defend himself against media attack ads which will define him in the months ahead. Huckabee’s campaign is running on empty.

Over on the Democrats side, Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are neck and neck. She has raised $91 million, he has collected $80 million. By any measure, the campaign of Barak Obama is a huge success. Obama has come out of nowhere to establish himself as a formidable candidate for president of the United States. While Clinton is touting her experience, Obama is tapping this nation’s hunger for a change in the direction this country is heading.

Clinton is getting the majority of the women’s vote as they see a chance to elect the first woman president. Black people have a quiet pride and a desire to see the first black in the White House and they are supporting Obama in a big way.

The stakes are huge for both candidates because Democrats sense they have a real chance to take back the White House. Former President Bill Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas, used to say he would fight hard to get 100 percent of the black vote which is about 15 percent of the total in our great state. In order to defeat him, his opponent had to get 51 percent from the remaining 85 percent, which is difficult to accomplish. Republican strategists are saying if Hillary wins the nomination, disgruntled black voters may stay home on General Election day. At the end of the day, the same black bloc that made Bill Clinton’s political career in Arkansas successful may come full circle to end his wife’s bid for the White House.

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