As President Bush paid a fundraising visit to Bellevue on August 27,
three telling scenes unfolded. The first, and the most closely watched,
took place inside the Bellevue Hyatt, where Bush was the big draw for a
$1,000-a-plate (and $10,000-a-photo-with-the-president) event designed
to fill up the campaign coffers of Republican Congressman Dave
Reichert.
Most significant about this fundraiser was the fact that Reichert
allowed it to happen at all. After being attacked repeatedly in his
2004 reelection race for his support of the president’s unpopular Iraq
war strategy, Reichert could have declined the Bush visit, scored some
political points in a moderate district that he won by only 3 percent
last November, and helped out his own long-running efforts to cast
himself as an independent thinker.
Instead, he hugged Bush at the fundraiser, posed for yet another
picture with the president (adding to the Democratic stash of
Bush-Reichert photos that’s sure to get lots of airtime next fall), and
allowed the man with the 32 percent approval rating to describe him as
the right guy for the job.
“He’s tough when he needs to be, compassionate when he needs to be,”
Bush said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Why risk being praised and financially supported by the same
president who a lot of up-for-election congressional Republicans are
trying to distance themselves from this year? Reichert seems to have
concluded that in the long run, the money matters more than the moment
itself.
The Bellevue fundraiser reportedly took in between $250,000 and
$500,000. If the past is any guide, some of that cash will go to the
state Republican Party, some will be used to cover the cost of the
event itself, and the rest will be used by Reichert to buy lots of
airtime next fall—airtime that will be filled with campaign
commercials designed to cultivate his image as an independent, while
ignoring the Bellevue event and his indebtedness to Bush.
* * *
A few blocks away from the Bush-Reichert event, liberal blogger
David Goldstein was in a conference room at the Bellevue Westin
watching some political counterprogramming by Democrat Darcy Burner and
doing a few money calculations of his own.
Burner, who is trying for a second run against Reichert, was sitting
on a low dais with a panel of Iraq experts, speaking about the problems
of Bush’s war strategy for a webcast “Town Hall Meeting.” As Burner
discussed the need for a “responsible exit plan for Iraq,” Goldstein
did some math. Taking the low estimate of Reichert’s haul from the Bush
fundraiser ($250,000), and subtracting the state party’s cut and the
cost of putting on the event, he figured Reichert’s campaign might net
around $100,000. That, Goldstein pointed out gleefully, was about the
same amount that Burner had raised through a counterfundraiser she’d
launched with the help of some of the nation’s top liberal
bloggers.
Goldstein called the response from the liberal blogosphere
“unprecedented.” Burner spokesman Sandeep Kaushik told me, “We’re very
pleased.” While the Reichert event in Bellevue reportedly drew about
300 people, Burner’s online appeal drew over 3,000 contributors from
around the country who had given a total of $122,000 as of August
28.
Burner’s online haul offered a telling indicator of which liberal
blogs currently have the most money clout. By Goldstein’s calculations,
links from the hugely popular blog DailyKos led to around $40,000 in
donations to Burner—the most of any blog participating in her
fundraiser. The blog Eschaton was second, delivering about $25,000. And
Goldstein’s blog, HorsesAss, was fifth, bringing in about $5,000.
The counterfundraiser also served as another body check to Burner’s
opponent in the Democratic primary, state senator Rodney Tom. While
Burner was raking in the online donations, at one point at a rate of
$100 a minute, Tom was reduced to joining the protest outside the Bush
event—nice symbolism, perhaps, but not very lucrative.
* * *
Those Bush protesters, who numbered in the hundreds on a warm Monday
afternoon, created the last important scene from the president’s visit.
As Bush’s motorcade whisked him into the Hyatt, the demonstrators held
aloft signs celebrating the resignation that morning of Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales and called for the heads of Dick Cheney and
Bush next. The dominant theme of the protest, however, was fury at the
continuing cost of the Iraq war—a reminder to both Reichert and
Burner, as if they needed another, that the coming campaign, like the
last one, is probably going to revolve largely around a single,
volatile issue that is unlikely to be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction
by next November.
