(The following report by James Drew appeared on the Toledo Blade website on September 12.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Although President Bush held an 8 to 9-point lead in Ohio over Democrat John Kerry in polls released recently, Mr. Bush’s chief strategist said he expects the race to “tighten up some.”
“Remember, we won by three points in 2000,” Matthew Dowd reminded reporters.
But in one race, Mr. Bush’s backers expect they will continue to hold a large lead over Mr. Kerry – and that is the battle for campaign dollars from Ohio.
Mr. Bush’s campaign collected $6.6 million in Ohio, compared to $2.1 million for Mr. Kerry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based group which tracks campaign finance issues.
Now that the political conventions are over, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are using $75 million each in public financing, and contributors have shifted their efforts to party coffers.
The Bush campaign has 221 “Rangers,” fund-raisers who have collected at least $200,000 in individual contributions, including 11 from Ohio.
Among them is M. Keith Weikel, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Toledo-based HCR Manor Care, which has more than 500 nursing homes and other facilities for the elderly.
The Bush campaign also has 323 “Pioneers” who have raised at least $100,000, including 19 in Ohio.
The sole “Pioneer” from northwest Ohio resident is Tom Noe, a Toledo area businessman who is a member of the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Turnpike Commission.
Mr. Noe said he plans to focus his fund-raising efforts this fall to help Lucas County Republican candidates. His wife, Bernadette, is chairman of the county GOP.
Ohio’s 30 “Rangers” and “Pioneers” rank only behind those in Texas, Florida, New York, California, and Virginia.
“Think about how popular our President was after 9/11, the power of incumbency, and the ability to raise hard dollars over a longer period of time,” said Catherine Turcer, who does database and research work on campaign finance for Ohio Citizen Action. “Hard dollars” refers to contributions to candidates, which are limited to $2,000 to a federal candidate for each campaign.
Another major factor is the 45243 ZIP code.
Major Bush fund-raisers who live in the Indian Hill and Madeira communities near Cincinnati include Mercer Reynolds, Mr. Bush’s chief fund-raiser; financier and Cincinnati Reds principal owner Carl Lindner, Jr.; Richard T. Farmer, chairman of uniform rental and industrial laundry company Cintas; and William DeWitt, Mr. Reynolds’ business partner, who bought Mr. Bush’s failing oil company and helped the future President buy a share in the Texas Rangers baseball team.
Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry relied this year on “bundling by deep-pocketed” Democrats, with 564 collecting at least $50,000 for his campaign, said Frank Clemente, director of Congress Watch for Public Citizen, a consumer group based in Washington, D.C.
“President Bush is the master at this game, but Senator Kerry has shown he can play the game too,” Mr. Clemente said.
Mr. Kerry’s campaign has 266 “vice chairs” who have raised at least $100,000.
But there is only one Ohioan on that list: Lana Moresky, the former president of the National Organization for Women’s Ohio chapter.
Five Ohioans have collected individual contributions totaling $50,000 or more. They are Cleveland attorney John Climaco; Cleveland area businessman Peggy Zone Fisher, wife of former Attorney General Lee Fisher; Cleveland attorney Bob Rawson, Mahoning County Commissioner Ed Reese, and John Tolman, assistant to the president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
By contrast, there are 158 “bundlers” from California, 105 from New York, 57 from Mr. Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts, and 49 from Washington, D.C. Ohio’s ranks 12th among campaign bundlers for Mr. Kerry’s campaign, according to the Public Citizen analysis.
The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, enacted in 2002, bans the political parties from collecting large “soft money” contributions from businesses, unions, trade groups, and wealthy individuals.
Although the Bush campaign raised three times more in contributions from individuals donors in Ohio than Mr. Kerry, Republicans assert that Democrats have used “527” committees to close the gap. These committees are tax-exempt organizations that engage in political activities, often through unlimited soft money contributions.
From 1998 through this year, the third-highest contributor in both “hard” and “soft” money is Peter B. Lewis, an executive with Cleveland-based Progressive Insurance Corp. He is the nation’s largest contributor to 527s, which are named after the section of the Internal Revenue Service code under which they are formed. Mr. Lewis has contributed about $14 million to groups including MoveOn.org and Americans Coming Together.
“Peter Lewis is funding groups on the left that are supporting Kerry’s campaign, and these groups will have a big impact,” said Steven Weiss, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “But the biggest impact has been made by a group he has not contributed to, and that is the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They raised a few hundred thousand dollars, but their ads have been talked about so much in the media.”