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More than $4M debt looms as NRCC chairman Cole enters crucial quarter |
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By Aaron Blake
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Posted: 07/13/07 07:12 PM [ET] |
House Republicans’ campaign committee is taking longer than it hoped to retire this cycle’s $15 million in debt, but the chairman sounded notes of optimism about 2008 yesterday, including keeping retirements down and dropping the albatross that has been President Bush.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters, National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) said the committee remains more than $4 million in debt after the second quarter, which ended last month.
He told The Hill in January that he hoped to retire the committee’s steep debt by spring or early summer. At its current pace, the debt won’t be gone until late in the third quarter; House Democrats, meanwhile, have increased a large cash advantage, starting with less debt and raising about $7 million more than their counterparts this cycle.
Cole downplayed the debt problem.
“It doesn’t affect what we’re trying to do today,” Cole said. “What really matters is where we’re at next year. … We run a very lean operation.”
Cole recognized the importance of the quarter ahead, calling it crunch time for retirements and praising House Republicans who have stuck to their guns by continuing to support the war in Iraq.
Cole, who took the committee’s helm after the 2006 election, was positive about the historically low approval ratings for the new Democratic-controlled Congress. But he also acknowledged that people don’t like Republicans any more than they did last year.
Perhaps the most pressing issue for Cole is convincing longtime members, who just lost the power they enjoyed for 12 years, to run for reelection with scant hope of a new majority.
Prime retirement possibilities include former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and former Chairmen Ralph Regula (Ohio) and Bill Young (Fla.).
“People will make life decisions, and we’ll lose some, but I think not a particularly high number,” Cole said. “We certainly don’t see any indication of that right now.”
Cole made the case that members won’t be tarred by links to the unpopular presidency of Bush to the point where it is a decisive factor in the 2008 election.
He said the party soon will have a “new face,” because its presidential nominee won’t be from Bush’s administration, and argued that Democrats are wasting their time by continuing to attach vulnerable Republicans to Bush.
In the same vein, he said Congress’s low approval ratings don’t inherently favor Republicans but rather hurt all incumbents. Since Democrats have more incumbents — they hold roughly a 30-seat majority — the anti-incumbent environment should, on balance, favor the GOP, he said.
Cole said Democrats have been forced into difficult votes in the majority and mentioned several issues the GOP will be able to use against Democrats, including their budget, their appropriations bills (on which he expects veto battles) and “card check” for union members.
“The one advantage of being in the minority is that you do tend to get an issue agenda that works to your advantage,” Cole said. “The American people put a special charge on them to get something done.”
Though Democrats have been forcing difficult votes on the Iraq war, Cole said he admired members for maintaining views that might be unpopular.
“Is this an easy political issue? Of course not,” Cole said. “But do the American people punish you because you’ve got conviction and you’ve got a belief? Usually not.”
On the recruiting front, Cole said the committee is in better shape at this point in the cycle than in any election in the past decade.
He compared the recruits’ decision-making process to the 1992 election. In that cycle, he said, potential candidates such as former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) and Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) entered the fray by making “rational decisions” based on the make-up of their districts and the environment, as opposed to political passion.
The NRCC will have two more installments of its so-called “candidate school” this month and in the fall. The sessions seek to educate would-be and declared candidates.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sought to dampen Cole’s recruiting sentiments yesterday, issuing a release stating that the GOP was losing highly touted potential candidates because of its lack of money and the political
environment.
Republicans have been rebuffed by top potential candidates in several top targets, including the seats of freshman Democratic Reps. Ron Klein (Fla.), Chris Carney (Pa.) and Nick Lampson (Texas).
In response, the NRCC called the release “nothing but the DCCC’s pathetic attempt to divert from the reality that they are facing a real threat to their majority.”
Cole stressed that he didn’t blame his predecessors for racking up so much debt, saying that it is better to try and keep seats than to need to win them back.
In January, he told The Hill that he hoped to eliminate the debt by early summer.
“If you get a third of it now, a third around the [Republican National Committee] Gala, and a third at the President’s Dinner in late June, you’d be done and then you can start looking at next year,” Cole said in January. “But it’s hard to know what the temperature will be like.”
An NRCC spokeswoman said the committee is on an aggressive pace.
“This is good progress and we are confident that the more our base conceptualizes the consequences of a Democrat[ic] majority, the more engaged they will be,” spokeswoman Julie Shutley said.
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