Clinton Bests Obama in Money, Polls

With third quarter fundraising numbers released -- by at least some of the campaigns -- New York Senator Hillary Clinton has opened up an advantage in fundraising over Senator Barack Obama, though the Illinois Democrat continues to perform well, even if his poll numbers seem to have stalled everywhere except Iowa. Despite the summer doldrums -- the New York Times this morning said "well-heeled donors get out of their offices and off the fund-raising circuit to go on vacations and to their summer homes" -- Obama raised more than $20 million, bringing his 2007 take to nearly $80 million. He has raised money from 352,000 donors.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who in the first two quarters trailed Obama by a small margin, raised $27 million, according to a blog post today by Patrick Healy in the New York Times. Healy reports that Clinton has raised about $60 million for use in the primaries (money has to be identified either as primary or general election money, and Clinton has raised a higher percentage of her total for the general than Obama). Adding an additional $10 million from her 2006 Senate campaign fund, Clinton has amassed about $70 million for the primary season, versus $75 million for Obama, Healy reported.

The other Dems trailed the frontrunners significantly -- former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (who now say he will take public matching funds, restricting his primary spending flexibility state-by-state) raising $7 million and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, about $5.2 million.

The Republicans, as they have all year, trailed the Democrats by a significant spread. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney raised about $10 million, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, more than $8 million (but remember -- this is his premier quarter raising money, so he did not have the launch splash that others enjoyed), and Arizona Senator John McCain, just over $5 million.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has not disclosed his numbers, saying only he would "do as well as the other Republicans -- maybe we will do better than some"... whatever the heck that means.

Clinton, however, is strengthening her polling numbers, both nationwide and in New Hampshire, though Obama appears to have a slight lead right now in Iowa.



First the numbers in Iowa. In an October 1 story, the Boston Globe reported:

The survey -- conducted for Newsweek magazine and released in the current issue of the magazine that has Romney on the cover -- has Romney with the support of 24 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers, compared to 16 percent for Fred Thompson, 13 percent for Rudy Giuliani, 12 percent for Mike Huckabee, and 9 percent for John McCain.

Obama has 28 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers, ahead of 24 percent for Hillary Clinton, 22 percent for John
Edwards, and 10 percent for Bill Richardson.

Besides the horserace numbers, the poll includes some other interesting findings:

• Two-thirds of both Democrats and Republicans said they think America is ready to elect an African-American president.
• 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats said they themselves would be willing to vote for a Mormon, but only 45 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said they think America is ready to elect a Mormon as president.
• 78 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers had a favorable opinion of Romney, 77 percent said that he is able to get things done, 49 percent said he can bring needed change, and only 25 percent said that he flip-flops his positions too much on important issues.
• 77 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers said they had a favorable opinion of Clinton, 79 percent said it would be a good thing if former President Clinton were back in the White House, and a majority said that her position on the Iraq war does not affect their support.
  

The poll of 1,215 registered voters was conducted on Sept. 26 and 27 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The margin of error for likely Democratic voters is plus or minus 7 percentage points and for likely Republican voters is plus or minus 9 percentage points.

And in New Hampshire, a press release from Newsmax/ Zogby reports that though Clinton leads overall by a comfortable margin, Obama has the edge among voters under 30. Clinton, however, leads in the critical category of independents who are allowed by state law to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary:

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has extended her lead in the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in New Hampshire, capturing 38% support as the contest enters the crucial fall phase, a new NewsMax/Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has slipped slightly but retains a strong grasp on second place with 23% support, while former senator John Edwards of North Carolina faded to 12%, the survey shows. Ten percent said they remain unsure about who to support in the race.

The telephone survey included 505 voters likely to participate in the New Hampshire Democratic primary election. It was conducted Sept. 26–28, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/– 4.5 percentage points.

Clinton jumped a full 10% since Zogby polling this spring, solidifying an edge she has built nationally heading into the fall campaign. She enjoys a dominant 44% to 22% lead over Obama among women, and holds a healthy 31% to 22% lead over him among men. Edwards is mired in third place among women with 11% support, and is fourth behind New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson among men. Richardson wins support from 14% among men, while Edwards gets backing from just 13%.

Democrats in New Hampshire – 2007	Sept. 28	May 16	Apr. 3	Feb. 7	Jan. 17
Clinton	38%	28%	29%	27%	19%
Obama	23%	26%	23%	23%	23%
Edwards	12%	15%	23%	13%	19%
Richardson	8%	10%	2%	3%	1%
Kucinich	3%	4%	1%	1%	1%
Biden	2%	1%	2%	2%	3%
Dodd	2%	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
Gravel	<1%	<1%	<1%	<1%	<1%
Someone else	4%	-	-	-	-
Not sure	10%	15%	17%	23%	22%

Obama leads among likely Democratic primary voters under age 30 with 38%, compared to 30% for Clinton. The two are closely matched among those age 30–49, but Clinton holds a strong advantage among those over 50. Among those age 50–64, she holds a 45% to 18% edge over Obama, with Edwards at 17%, and she wins among those age 65 and older, 45% to 14% for Obama. Edwards wins just 10% among those age 65 and older, typically one of the strongest voting demographics in primary elections.

Clinton has solidified her leads across the ideological spectrum in the Democratic Party, leading Obama by a 33% to 21% edge among progressives, 42% to 23% among liberals, and 36% to 25% among moderates. Edwards finishes a distant third in all of those categories.

Among independent voters who said they plan to participate in the Democratic primary election in New Hampshire, Clinton also leads, winning 33% support, compared to 25% for Obama and 13% for Edwards. Richardson wins 8% support among independents.

Among Democrats, Clinton’s lead is larger – she wins support from 41%, compared to 21% for Obama and 11% for Edwards.

As news begins to break on how the candidates did at fund–raising for the third quarter of the year, the latest NewsMax/Zogby survey shows that Hillary Clinton’s fund–raising connection to indicted contribution bundler Norman Hsu has had little effect on her overall standing. Hsu raised more than $850,000 for the Clinton campaign and is now under investigation for allegedly violating federal campaign finance laws, but just 11% said that information makes them less likely to support Ms. Clinton. Further, 11% said that association with Hsu makes them more likely to support her. The vast majority – 78% – said it makes no difference to them in their support of a candidate for President.

Moderates and younger voters appeared to be slightly more concerned about the matter than others, but only marginally so.

For a complete methodological statement on this survey, visit:
http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1215

Click the link below to view the full news release:
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1364

Be Careful Who You're Calling Dear

When the Brooklyn Democratic machine and the often-gay friendly borough president Marty Markowitz got behind the candidacy of Noach Dear -- a harsh foe of gay rights in his years on the City Council who was handed a post on the City Taxi and Limousine Commission by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani just as the pair were leaving office due to term limits -- critics sprang into action.

Tom Robbins in the Village Voice took a look at Dear's history of corruption, his collusion with the former apartheid government of South Africa, and his use of his influence on the Taxi and Limo Commish to raise $$$ for his judicial run (thank you, Mr. Giuliani).

Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an LGBT group, did a nutrition content send-up of Dear's career, at the same time ripping into Markowitz for his two-faced embrace of the homophobic judicial hopeful, and Brooklyn's Lambda Independent Dems, also a gay club, ripped into Dear as well.

And then WCBS' Andrew Kirtzman, one of the fraternity of out gay reporters in town, tried to talk to Dear, only to find the candidate backing his car down a one-way street to avoid having to meet the press. Kirtzman's report focused largely on Dear's failure as well to appear before the judicial screening committees of the New York and the Brooklyn Bar Associations.

Finally, in a September 14 story in the newspaper City Hall, John DeSio writes that Democrats in Brooklyn support Dear in this race to keep him from an expected primary contest between State Senator Kevin Parker, an African American who will likely be challenged next year by City Councilman Kendall Stewart, who is also black. The thinking, at least in the analysis of Rock Hackshaw, a blogger at Room Eight, on whose reporting DeSio relies in part, is that Dear could enter the race and win if the African-American vote is split.

The most remarkable revelation from DeSio's story, however, is a comment from Matt Carlin, president of the gay Stonewall Independent Democrats, who seems willing to give Markowitz a pass for the most part: "Markowitz has a great record on LGBT issues. This is definitely a smudge on that record, but it's still a great record."

Question for Markowitz: How do you justify co-signing Dear's homophobia -- especially for a civil court seat -- when you have spent so much time in years past courting gay voters? Do you think it's okay to have a different set of principles depending on the community you are addressing? Would you possibly even think of pulling a stunt like this with a candidate with a racist or anti-Semitic history?

Fred Hurts Rudy

A new CBS News/ New York Times poll holds bad news for Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor. In the past month, his support among GOP primary voters has fallen from 38 percent to 27, while numbers for Fred Thompson, an ex-Tennessee senator and thoroughly unconvincing Manhattan DA on "Law and Order" virtually untested on the campaign trail or in anything approaching a policy platform, rose from 18 to 22. John McCain has regained some ground, rising six points to 18 percent (ALERT: expect a spate of McCain on the mend stories, first because of his showing in the New Hampshire debate last week and second because that's all that can be written about the Arizona senator at this point). Mitt Romney, the former one-term governor of Massachusetts, is steady at 14 percent, despite persistent reports that he has comfortable leads in Iowa and New Hampshire.

One finding the poll touts is that respondents don't look at being a big city mayor as providing the same level of experience that serving as a governor or US senator does. Likely GOP primary voters also appear fuzzy on Rudy's views on abortion, his record on crime, and his relations with New York's people of color communities (though that last measure, if better known, seems doubtful to hurt Giuliani in a big way in the primaries). With uncharacteristic pragmatism, respondents by a two to one margin said they would support a less conservative candidate if that helped the Republicans hold onto the White House, a feeling Rudy is likely to do his best to exploit.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's nearly 20-point lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama (and more versus North Carolina's John Edwards) remained steady from last month. What factors, if any, might shake up the Democratic contest remain unclear.

Poll: Giuliani Tumbles; GOP Race Tightens

A Decidedly Half-Hearted Deeper Look Into Rudy

On the sixth anniversary of the eve of 9/11, Jeff Greenfield, writing on CBS.com in a piece called "The Giuliani of September 10th," joins the growing chorus of pundits acknowledging that Rudy's highly visible response to the attack on the World Trade Center salvaged a political reputation well past its prime:

If you ask a lot of New Yorkers, "What did you guys think of Rudy Giuliani the day before September 11th," you may well get an answer along these lines: "We were ready to say goodbye; we liked the job he'd done in making the city safer, cleaner, more confident, but we'd had enough." If you pursue the idea a little further, and ask those who cover politics about the Mayor's approval rating, they're likely to guess that it was somewhere in the mid-30s or low-40s.

But after touching on that that point, Greenfield goes on to assert that the situation was "more complex" than that. The only evidence he is able to point to on that score, however, is that the former mayor's approval rate was back above 50 percent by early September 2001. On that basis, he concludes Giuliani could have been re-elected in November 2001 had it not been for term limits.

Curiously, Greenfield goes on to quote three New York observers who know Giuliani well -- longtime critic Wayne Barrett from the Village Voice, WCBS' Andrew Kirtzman, and Fred Siegel, a Rudy cheerleader from Cooper Union. All three, who share precious little common ground in their view of Giuliani, essentially substantiate the simpler explanation -- New York's romance with Rudy was pretty much spent by mid-2001.

Crises, the three said, are when Giuliani is able to shine, and if he needs to create enemies to go after to rally his base he can and will do so. Osama Bin Laden, of course, he did not need to conjure.

Having promised a complex analysis, Greenfield brings his musings to a rather abrupt close by making only glancing reference to the most commonplace of chinks in Giuliani's 9/11 armor -- the placement of the city's emergency command post in the World Trade Center complex, despite the first attack in 1993, and the mayor's negligence in protecting the health of recovery workers at Ground Zero, and then rushing to restore Rudy's bona fides:

But for most New Yorkers, the doubts that had grown up around Rudy Giuliani by September 10th, were overwhelmed by their reaction to what he said and did the next day.

We are still in the first half of a presidential contest that will have gone on, when it's all over, for 23 months. The nation deserves serious pundits who will dig a whole lot deeper in examining the credentials and claims of the leading hopefuls.


Jeff Greenfield's "The Giuliani of September 10th," on cbs.com.

Straw Horse in Rudy the Crusader Profile

Matt Bai in the September 9 New York Times magazine looks at Rudy Giuliani's appeal to voters as the anti-terrorism crusader. The piece is probing and perceptive, and asks the critical question whether the former New York mayor's reputation as the tough guy ready to take on Bin Laden is deserved (though it largely accepts the celebratory view of his campaign against crime in New York).

But at a key point in the article, Bai sets up a contrast between Democrats and Republicans on their approach to the terror threat for which he provides no solid evidence -- and it's a comparison that that works to the advantage of the GOP in arguing that it remains the US's daddy party. It's difficult to discern what led Bai to his paradism, and he really needs to flesh his thinking out in some reasonable degree of detail:

Democrats now openly question the entire premise of a “war on terror” (or, as Giuliani likes to call it, a “terrorists’ war on us”), and, privately, at least, they are increasingly willing to argue that Islamic radicals do not represent the same kind of existential threat that the Stalinists did, with their vast military machinery. There is a growing, though not unanimous, feeling in liberal policy circles that remaking the nation’s entire foreign policy around terrorism is an overreaction to what is, essentially, a serious but manageable threat. As one senior Democratic policy aide put it to me recently, the terrorist attacks that claimed some 3,000 innocent American lives were indescribably tragic, but if you had gone to sleep on Sept. 10, 2001, and woken up sometime in 2006, surely you would have thought, to hear the political rhetoric, that several American cities had been wiped off the map. In this view, Al Qaeda is not a defining ideological adversary so much as a stateless, lethal criminal enterprise without any real historical antecedent, and Bush’s war in Iraq has nothing to do with the campaign against organized terrorists — except perhaps to swell their ranks by recklessly throwing around America’s military might.

The Crusader, by Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine, September 9.

Times' Gail Collins Smacks Down Rudy

Gail Collins, the former editorial page editor of the New York Times, now back in the paper's regular op-ed columnist rotation, took direct aim at former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's record at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, not for how he handled himself on 9/11 or how well prepared his administration was for such a catastrophe in the first place, but rather for lethal missteps in protecting the health of those who spent months doing recovery work there.

The degree to which recovery workers, including firefighters, will inject their views into the 2008 presidential race, remains uncertain, but it is not inconceivable that a Swift Boat-style attack could be unleashed on Giuliani. He might well, of course, have better instincts for responding than did John Kerry in 2004.

On September 8, Gail Collins wrote:

Rudy Giuliani is going to be at ground zero next week, taking part in ceremonies to remember the victims of Sept. 11. That was inevitable — the man has so identified himself with 9/11 that it’s amazing he hasn’t tried to patent it.

It’s also a terrible idea.

After the attacks, Giuliani did his best work in front of a microphone, speaking simply and honestly to the city and the nation. Ground zero, on the other hand, is the site of his worst failure.

Read "Giuliani's Ground Zero Legacy" in full.