Fundraising is down dramatically nationwide for the Republican Party, but things are especially bad here in California, where the state GOP is in such dire straits that its ability to compete in both state and federal races could be affected.
If it passes, this last-minute, unilateral change to the rules will almost undoubtedly hand the presidency to the Republican nominee next year.
But while the state party is cutting programs and considering layoffs, hundreds of thousands of dollars are flowing in from out-of-state fatcat supporters of Rudy Giuliani — funds the state GOP can’t touch because they are earmarked specifically to promote a ballot initiative that would, if passed, give Rudy 20 or so of the state’s 55 Electoral College Votes, even if he loses the state to the Democratic candidate.
The California GOP has been in a death spiral since the 1990s when, under former Gov. Pete Wilson, the decision was made to make illegal immigration its signature issue. It’s way too soon to send for the embalmers but the current crisis couldn’t be worse:
According to state records, the California GOP was $1.7 million in debt at the end of October, the most recent figures available. Its federal committee was nearly $430,000 in the red, records show.
An e-mail sent by regional vice chairman Jon Fleischman to other party officials, which was obtained by AP, pointed to a shortage of cash.
“I don’t know how to sugarcoat this,” Fleischman wrote in the e-mail. The party “is going through a very fiscally challenging period.”
Warned by the party’s chief operating officer that state GOP layoffs could follow if the county funding was continued, “I was forced to vote to end a program that I believe is a good one, simply because we are faced with a situation of limited resources,” Fleischman wrote. He later predicted finances would improve.
And:
At the end of the year the state party will eliminate what is called its county executive director program, which distributed about $260,000 a year among about a dozen counties to assist with fundraising activities and grass-roots organizing.
Its finances are so shaky, the state party faced the choice of ending the funding or possibly laying off workers from its staff, according to one official.
While the the California GOP struggles to pay its workers, the ballot initiative is awash in funds:
Backers of a California ballot initiative that would drastically increase Republican chances of retaining the White House in 2008 have raised $1.2 million, including $316,000 in eight days this month — and supporters say they’re on pace to qualify for the vote in June.
The group, California Counts — Make Your Vote Count, reported [earlier this month that] it had raked in $855,000, mostly from a handful of huge contributions, according to a filing with the California secretary of state’s office.
That doesn’t include $350,000 in contributions which are either below the reporting threshold of $5,000 or which arrived in the past week, campaign manager Dave Gilliard said.
He had predicted it would cost $2 million to collect the signatures to earn a spot on the state’s ballot in plenty of time to affect the 2008 election.
An earlier effort to get this same bogus initiative on the ballot failed because its backers couldn’t raise the funds required — and because of the revelation that its single anonymous donor was Paul Singer, one of Giuliani’s fundraising chairmen.
This is just one more example, as if any more were needed, that Republicans are so crazed for power that when they can’t win on the issues or the merits of their ideas, they will not hesitate to lie, cheat and steal.
Funny how the Electoral College reform initiative is painted by Democratic operatives in California as a big Republican conspiracy to steal the presidential election when the Democrats have proposed the same idea in several other states.
In 2004, the Democratic Party backed an initiative in Colorado to do exactly what the initiative will do in California (unfortunately Colorado voters turned it down). This year Democrats were attempting something similar in North Carolina until Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean quietly convinced the North Carolina Democrats to stop, saying he “did not want to set a precedent Republicans could use to justify their efforts in California.” Perhaps Doctor Dean sensed that Democrats might gain as many as 7 electoral votes in North Carolina but could lose as many as 22 in California.
While we are at it, one of things we need to do is re-examine how the Electoral College votes are apportioned by the census which includes illegal aliens. The question we need to ask ourselves is should illegal aliens be counted in a census to determinable how many Electoral College votes each state is allocated.
I have no problems with the ballot initiative as long as the rest of the states do the same and we take the voting machines out of the hands of the corporations that contribute heavily republican and have promised to deliver particular states to the republicans.
The key is that this initiative needs to be done nationwide if it is to be fair and effective. If only a handful of states do it, then the results of the election will only become more skewed and unfair.
Since Rudy’s initiative only affects California, the results on our electoral process would patently unfair.