Political outfits associated with top prospects raised at least $86 million last year. '16ers off and running in money race

Prospective 2016 candidates say they’ll wait until after this fall’s elections to decide their plans — but their allies are already building the foundations for campaigns and ramping up outreach to the super-rich donors who will be called on to fund them.

Political outfits associated with 10 top presidential prospects in each party raised at least $86 million last year for committees that could help launch or support campaigns the minute they announce, according to a POLITICO analysis of recently filed campaign reports and interviews with the prospects’ allies.


Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is headed to Dallas this week for a reelection fundraiser with rich Texas Republicans at the mansion of billionaire real estate titan Harlan Crow. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas invited Foster Friess to be his guest at last week’s State of the Union. Rick Santorum met last month in the Northern Virginia offices of his political guru John Brabender with top advisers, several of whom are on the payroll of his political outfit Patriot Voices. And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who recently started a nonprofit that can accept unlimited donations, last week met some of the right’s most prolific donors at a Koch brothers’ retreat in the California desert.

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Many of the biggest Democratic donors and top campaign operatives are aligning behind Hillary Clinton. But that hasn’t stopped prospective rivals from assembling their campaign-style operations and working the circuit, including Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who recently hired a top New York fundraiser to solicit big checks from Wall Street.

The early money is flowing into state and federal reelection campaign committees, leadership PACs, super PACs and nonprofit groups created to boost pet causes. These outfits spent more than $50 million last year paying consultants and staff, funding political travel, donating to allies and buying ads.

This new pre-exploratory phase is critical to launching a presidential bid in the Citizens United age. Prospective candidates need a stable of rich allies to bolster their efforts well before the campaign starts — and fend off attacks from opponents who also have wealthy friends who can destroy a candidacy before it even launches with a single mega-donor check.

“It takes an enormous amount of time and work,” said Paul Begala, a top strategist to Priorities USA, a super PAC and sister nonprofit group that recently pledged its allegiance to Hillary Clinton. Begala said readying a presidential campaign in the Citizens United age reminded him of an old saying, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. And this is 20 years ago. This is why we’re starting now.”

The 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is widely considered Hillary Clinton’s for the taking. The infrastructure that’s arisen around her — without either her involvement or any surefire indication that she is even going to run — dwarfs anything any other Democrat could possibly muster and is unique in the annals of modern campaign finance.

Clinton’s inner circle has been keeping close tabs on a network of groups that together form a sort of Hillary shadow campaign that combined to raise more than $12 million in 2013 to build a voter database and a grass-roots army, and later to air ads for a presumptive 2016 run.

On the second to last day of 2013, the billionaire currency trader George Soros — who had already given $25,000 to the Ready for Hillary super PAC that is spending big money building a voter file and grass-roots donor network for Clinton — stroked a $500,000 check to the American Bridge super PAC, which is defending Clinton against attacks from Republicans.

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While Clinton has not been personally soliciting campaign dollars, all the members of Congress generating presidential buzz are actively raising smaller money into campaign committees and leadership PACs that, unlike super PACs, are beholden to federal contribution limits.

Sens. Cruz, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, along with Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin are stretching the potential of such so-called hard-dollar fundraising through an innovative twist — joint committees that merge their various accounts and increase the maximum size of the donations they can accept to $10,000 a pop.

Rubio and Ryan, favorites of GOP establishment donors, raised $8 million and $4.8 million last year, respectively, through their various accounts. Both men spent heavily on digital operations, while Rubio spent $120,000 on ads defending the gun control stance of fellow GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, whose opposition to expanded background checks had come under attack in ads funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Ayotte, who is up for reelection in 2016, could be a key presidential endorser in her state’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Cruz, a favorite of the anti-establishment tea party, pulled in $4.1 million primarily from small donors, but he has worked of late to make inroads with deeper pockets who could subsidize a 2016 presidential run. He took as his guest to last week’s State of the Union the Wyoming investor Friess, whose $2 million in super PAC spending helped lift Santorum to a surprisingly strong showing in the 2012 GOP primary.

Asked by Fox Business Channel’s Neil Cavuto whether he was “jumping ship from Rick Santorum to Ted Cruz,” Friess laughed. “I am just so impressed with Ted Cruz,” he said, “but I am a Rick Santorum guy through and through.”

In addition to his super PAC largesse, Friess spent time on the trail with Santorum’s 2012 campaign, though it struggled to raise hard money, and still owes $512,000 to various vendors, including $383,000 to Brabender and $10,000 to a NASCAR team he paid to sponsor. In the run-up to 2016, Santorum is building a more robust operation through Patriot Voices, which last year raised $2.7 million into a federal PAC and a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — cash that went toward a political staff, travel and boosting candidates in key early states.

Yet it’s the sugar-daddy courtship that has been especially competitive on the GOP side of the ledger. Call it the Friess effect, wherein big checks are seen as a more efficient way to jump-start a campaign.

Supporters of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who raised $5.6 million into a super PAC supporting his 2012 campaign for the GOP nomination, recently transferred $200,000 in leftover cash into a nonprofit expected to set the stage for another presidential campaign.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is leading early GOP primary polls, suggested to The New York Times in December that, as part of his 2016 considerations, he wanted to see if he could find rich donors to offset the lack of a wide financial network that hindered his 2008 bid. While his leadership PAC raised only $383,000 in 2013, a single rich hedge fund manager named Sean Fieler has donated nearly $400,000 to the American Principles Fund, a super PAC run partly by Huckabee’s daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The group is focused on social conservative issues like opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage that dovetail nicely with Huckabee’s political agenda.

Fieler described Huckabee as “a really interesting candidate in the context of the Citizens United decision,” but he said he was still evaluating the prospective 2016 candidates. “Gov. Huckabee’s record on the social issues is unquestionable and he’s a hero for many because of that. And I think his instincts economically are very oriented towards Main Street, not Wall Street,” Fieler said. “But I think he needs to distill that down into policies that are going to bring both the base and the elite of the Party together. And I don’t think he was able to do that last go round. I’m very hopeful that he’ll be able to do that.”

Most major Republican donors have yet to choose a candidate, the Dallas developer Crow said. “I am happy to learn more about potential candidates, but I am not ready to cast my lot with anyone at this point,” said Crow, who donated $2.3 million to super PACs supporting Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

A few months ago, Crow held a private donor luncheon for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who had been a favorite of major donors. But Christie’s 2016 prospects have dimmed substantially since he became embroiled in a scandal over revelations that his staff was involved in lane closures at the George Washington Bridge that were allegedly politically motivated and caused massive traffic jams.

Crow on Tuesday is hosting a fundraiser for Walker’s 2014 reelection campaign, which last week reported receiving checks of at least $10,000 from a slew of top GOP donors, including Crow, Friess, Minnesota media mogul Stan Hubbard, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and various members of Michigan’s DeVos family.

In all, Walker’s campaign, which stressed that nearly 75 percent of its contributions came from supporters who gave $50 or less, reported raising $8.6 million in 2013 and stockpiling $4.6 million. That’s more than twice as much as he had in the bank at this point in his 2010 campaign, according to state filings, which show payments totaling more than $400,000 over the past six months to well-connected national Republican vendors including the phone banking firm FLS Connect, the Tarrance Group pollsters and the opposition research outfit America Rising.

While Walker is locked in a fairly tight reelection fight with his Democratic challenger, a reelection victory, combined with a major fundraising showing would leave him well-positioned for 2016 with top tier data, research and talent.

It’s the blueprint that George W. Bush used to launch his 2000 presidential campaign, springboarding from his landslide 1998 reelection as governor of Texas. And it’s the one Christie seemed poised to use after his landslide 2013 reelection, during which he outspent his overmatched Democratic opponent $11.5 million to $2.1 million on TV and radio ads.

Likewise, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is seen in some quarters as a potential liberal challenger to Clinton in a Democratic primary, raised $13.2 million last year into his 2014 reelection campaign, and has already stockpiled $33 million, according to state filings. That’s $5 million more than what he spent on his entire 2010 gubernatorial campaign, despite the fact that he lacks a top-tier opponent this time around. Yet, Cuomo — like most of the Democrats discussed as possible challengers to Clinton — has done little in the way of 2016 legwork.

Even Vice President Joe Biden, who continues flirting with a 2016 bid, and has no dedicated political infrastructure to speak of, and is unlikely to inherit President Barack Obama’s vaunted campaign apparatus. Its data has been allocated to the Democratic National Committee, while its talent is increasingly aligning behind Clinton.

One notable exception is O’Malley, who is term-limited out of the Maryland governor’s office in January 2015. He has established a leadership PAC and unlimited-money 527 nonprofit group both called O’Say Can You See PAC that in the last six months have paid more than $25,000 to the Obama-linked firms Revolution Messaging and Blue State Digital to build a robust digital operation, and dole out contributions to candidates across the country, including a few in Iowa and New Hampshire.

While such PACs are supposed to be about helping the party, they’ve become a prime way for wannabe presidents to build their donor bases and travel around the country. As Democratic fundraiser Daniel Goetzel explained to associates in an email obtained by POLITICO last year when he went to work for O’Malley: “I will be focused on the Governor’s Maryland fundraising efforts while working to expand his national donor network through his leadership PAC, O’Say Can You See PAC.”

O’Malley also used his position as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association in 2011 and 2012 to build relationships with some of the country’s biggest donors, and the DGA and his PACs last year paid for him to fly around the country meeting with them. In addition to Goetzel, the PACs pay accomplished fundraisers Adam Goers and Jackie Brot, a leading New York finance operative with ties to top Democratic Wall Street donors, as well as Obama-veteran spokeswoman Lis Smith. And they paid $37,000 over the past few months to stage and cater events at D.C. establishments ranging from swank steakhouses like Capital Grille and Bobby Van’s to sometimes-dodgy bars like Adams Morgan’s since-shuttered The Reef.

In any other year, that type of preparation and infrastructure would mark O’Malley as a potentially serious contender for the Democratic nomination. But the combination that Clinton’s shadow campaign and the polling showing her obliterating other Democrats in a 2016 primary makes her a prohibitive favorite for the nomination if she seeks it.

That said, no amount of financial or infrastructure advantage will be sufficient to prevent a robust primary, if circumstances align, Begala asserted. Pointing to 2008, when Clinton was similarly regarded as a prohibited favorite, but was upset by Obama, he predicted a strong Democratic challenger would emerge.

In addition to Clinton, Cuomo and O’Malley, POLITICO’s analysis included the 2013 finances of political committees associated with Democrats Howard Dean (whose affiliated committees raised $2.6 million), Russ Feingold ($655,000), John Hickenlooper ($1.1 million), Amy Klobuchar ($622,000), Deval Patrick ($439,000), Mark Warner , who is up for reelection in 2014 ($4.7 million) and Elizabeth Warren (more than $2 million).

“If Hillary runs — and I have no insight about whether she will — I think there will be a real fight for the nomination. It’s just the nature of Democrats,” he said. “I think one of her biggest concerns ought to be what happened the last time. Democrats do not like an inevitable, invincible machine.”