Katherine Harris Buys White House Silence
According to one of her new campaign staffers, 2000 election villain and 2006 Senate hopeful Katherine Harris had gotten the word, loud and clear: She had to raise at least $1 million in the fourth quarter or the White House would again try to actively recruit a Republican to run against her for the Senate nomination in Florida.
Here was her problem: She was nowhere near that number. It is unclear just how far she fell from that level, but it apparently was quite a distance. So, when she realized her anemic fundraising might cost her her chance, she cut a check. She took money out of her personal fortune and dropped it into her campaign kitty. Voila! Suddenly, she had raised $1 million for the fourth quarter. We still don't know exactly how big that personal donation was, since the FEC has not yet posted the numbers, which were due to them by Jan. 31st; my guess...and it's just a guess, is she probably had to put in about $400,000.
Here's the bad news for Rep. Harris: What Harris heard isn't what she was told. Her former campaign manager said the White House told Rep. Harris she needed $2 million in the fourth quarter to get them off her back. Which means they may go shopping for a candidate again. On the bright side, Florida Republicans seem resigned to the Harris campaign ever since Harris said she is willing to sink up to 20% of her personal fortune into the race. Now, her US House of Representatives financial disclosure tells us she's worth in the neighborhood between $10 to $39 million. That's a pretty nice neighborhood.
But $2 million (20% of $10 million) can't begin to buy enough negative ads to drag the incumbent Senator Nelson's negatives into the same cellar where Rep. Harris's negatives live. Nor is $4 million. If she is going to be a serious candidate, she'd better actually be worth about $39 million, because she's going to need $10 million in cash just to run a bare-bones campaign across Florida. She had less than five hundred grand at the end of September...so her fundraising isn't going to get her anywhere near that number.
Once before in this blog I mentioned Rep. Harris's physical resemblance to the Wicked Witch of the West; that comparison turned out to be more apt than I dreamed, since ever since she declared for the Senate, financial support for her has been...melting.
11:06:48 AM 
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