Republicans concerned over RNC fundraising

GOP strategists and party leaders are increasingly worried that the party’s run of bad news over the last month and a half is set to continue this week as the Republican National Committee (RNC) prepares to release what are expected to be markedly low fundraising numbers on Friday.

The RNC has consistently outraised the Democratic National Committee on a month-by-month basis. Observers say that streak is likely to end this month.

{mosads}New RNC Chairman Michael Steele has committed gaffes that may embarrass his party in the short term, but Republican insiders say they are worried several of his actions will hit a fundraising trifecta: wounding party efforts to attract big donors, small donors and those who give on the Internet.

Continued low fundraising numbers would add yet more pressure to Steele, who has already faced criticism for his public gaffes and his private elimination of dozens of RNC staffers.

One RNC member has called for Steele to resign, though most committee members agree that scenario is unlikely. On Monday, the right-leaning Manchester, N.H. Union Leader stopped just short of calling on Steele to step down, instead saying it is “increasingly clear” Republicans could find people better suited to chair the party.

Steele already had a high bar to meet; in January, under former Chairman Robert “Mike” Duncan, the committee raised more than $13.1 million, including about $7 million in transfers from Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign.

But Duncan was out of a job on Jan. 30, when Steele took over the RNC reins. And while it is to be expected that Steele would want his own employees atop key departments, including the fundraising department, observers said the layoffs he instituted went too deep.

Given Steele’s public statements about the party’s fundraising and the normally slow pace for February, GOP observers say they expect Steele’s RNC to report between $3.5 million and $4 million raised in February when reports are filed Friday.

Officials at the RNC did not dispute suggestions that February fundraising would be low.

Even now, as Steele enters his seventh week as chairman, the RNC has no finance director, and several staffers in the finance division were among those who got the ax during the course of Steele’s top-to-bottom review of RNC operations.

“They don’t have a finance director. That may have an impact on fundraising,” deadpanned one prominent Republican fundraiser. “The lack of having a finance division, that might have an impact on fundraising.”

The lack of a fundraising staff with institutional knowledge and relationships with key donors will affect the party’s big-dollar donations, observers said. Larger donors account for between 20 and 30 percent of the party’s donations, but without a stable of long-term professional fundraisers, that number could drop off.

“They’ve done a big disservice to their major donors by not having staff, and not empowering their staff to service their donors,” the fundraiser said.

The majority of RNC donors hand over smaller checks, largely as a result of the committee’s vaunted mail and phone programs. But Steele jeopardized the party’s standing with those donors as well, thanks to a public spat with radio host Rush Limbaugh and a flub on a question about abortion, which drew criticism from major voices in the social conservative movement.

“Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the RNC and they want nothing to do with the RNC and when you call them asking for money they hang up on you,” Limbaugh said in a March 2 monologue directed specifically at Steele.

Of the abortion comments, which Steele made to GQ magazine and in which he seemed to suggest that abortion is a personal choice, one RNC member said the more widely the comments are disseminated, the more of an impact they will have on fundraising.

“It’s just like throwing a bomb inside the party,” the RNC member said, asking that his name be withheld because he didn’t want to be seen criticizing the new chairman. “It’s one more notch in fundraising.”

Fundraisers and party insiders also repeatedly pointed to the departure of Cyrus Krohn, perhaps the most widely respected technology specialist in the Republican Party.

Krohn, a former Yahoo! and Microsoft software guru whose signing-on at the RNC was hailed as a major coup, left the committee in early March after Steele’s team tried to revamp the party’s Internet operations.

Krohn’s departure will hamper the party’s Internet fundraising efforts, an area in which they already trailed Democrats. Internet fundraising numbers rose throughout 2008, according to those involved in the effort, but now former officials say the party will have to start from square one.

Any drop-off in small-dollar and Internet donations, thanks to the gaffes and to Krohn’s departure, will not become evident until March fundraising reports are released on April 20.

As Republicans lament the new chairman’s bumpy first months, Steele could come under pressure to produce some kind of win. Committee members and outside watchers will increasingly look to a special election to fill Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) vacant House seat on March 31, a race on which Steele has pinned hopes of a party comeback.

But even that may not go according to plan; recent polls have shown the Democratic candidate gaining steadily on his GOP rival, and the Republican candidate has publicly distanced himself from the national party.