No regrets for wealthy new minority

How much would Senate Republicans pay to get their majority back? To hear them tell it: not a penny more.

How much would Senate Republicans pay to get their majority back? To hear them tell it: not a penny more.

After watching their party lose six seats while the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) raised $30 million less than its Democratic counterpart, several GOP party leaders with millions still in their own campaign accounts say the funds are better unspent.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who won her race by 26 percent, gave $250,000 to the NRSC this year (based on publicly available figures), but said she hasn’t considered giving more of the $7.3 million still sitting in her war chest.

“Not at all,” said Hutchison. “I’m in the top three of my caucus. I certainly did my fair share.”

Hutchison’s donations put her among the elite NRSC donors in her party’s ranks, but eight senators across the aisle gave more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) — up to and including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) $2.1 million. That helped the DSCC raise nearly $119 million, compared to the NRSC’s $88 million, in a cycle when Democratic senators as a whole gave some $6 million more to their campaign committee.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said “not a thing” would have changed his $50,000 NRSC donation to include more of the $2.8 million on hand as of his last reporting period. “They basically had everything they needed and money wasn’t a determining factor.”

Outgoing Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), though, said the disparity in committee fundraising was one of many factors that could have tipped the roughly 7,000 votes that sealed his fate.

“Heck, when you lose a race as close as ours was, by three-tenths of one percent, it’s like a close football game when you lose by one point,” Allen said of the urge to play Monday-morning quarterback. He noted, though, that the DSCC’s financial upper hand brought an overwhelming number of attack ads into his Virginia race. “I know that they did pour in. They just inundated us. They were not flattering.”

One senior GOP aide said message rather than money made the difference in Virginia and across the country, but hoped this year would serve as a wake-up call. “Hopefully this is a lesson learned for some of these chairmen who are now ranking members,” said the staffer.

A number of Republicans who lost their gavels gave time and money to individual colleagues, but never made a direct contribution to the NRSC, including Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Olympia Snowe (Maine), who won 74 percent of the vote in her reelection.

Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) gave $15,000 to the NRSC, leaving $11.5 million in his account even though he will not face reelection until 2010.

“We cannot afford to get out-raised by that much,” said incoming NRSC Chairman John Ensign (R-Nev.) of the committee fundraising race, which will “absolutely” be a priority for the next cycle. “We need to be very aggressive,” he said.

Several Republican senators emphasized the importance of other campaign efforts, including joint fundraising dinners, leadership PACs, campaign appearances with colleagues and contributions directly to candidates. When it came to unrestricted transfers from their own reelection accounts to the NRSC, though, they saw no reason to give more.

“In terms of my own campaign funds, my obligation to the Republican conference is to get reelected,” said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), who gave $25,000 and still had $2.3 million on hand at the end of September, citing a tough 2008 race in his center-left state.

Smith is one of 21 Republicans in a challenging cycle for the GOP, with only 12 potential Democratic seats available to pick up.

And while many Republican senators and staffers insist that funding was not a deciding factor this year, the key races that cost the GOP its majority were close. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), for example, lost by fewer than 3,000 votes in the inexpensive Montana media market.

“At the end of the day,” said the GOP aide, “Republican senators should be cutting checks.”