Immigration Costing RNC Cash
Small donations are down at the Republican National Committee according to recently-fired telemarketers. Immigration is the reason:
Faced with an estimated 40 percent falloff in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, fired staff members told The Times.
Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.
“Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue,” said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee.
A spokeswoman for the committee denied any drop-off in fundraising.
“Any assertion that overall donations have gone down is patently false,” RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt wrote by e-mail yesterday in response to questions sent by The Times. “We continue to out-raise our Democrat counterpart by a substantive amount (nearly double).”
…
“Last year, my solicitations totaled $164,000, and this year the way they were running for the first four months, they would total $100,000 by the end of 2007,” said another fired phone-bank employee who asked not to be identified.
Previous Republican donors have given RNC solicitors an earful about the proposed immigration measure.
“We have not heard anyone in our donor calls who supported the president on immigration,” said a fired phone solicitor, who described himself as a Republican activist.
This reduction in contributions is making tangible what Peggy Noonan wrote in her Wall Street Journal column. President Bush has completely alienated his base. I hope to write more on Noonan’s essay later.
Immigration is radioactive with conservatives. Anyone who talks about anything beyond stopping the flow of illegals will meet the fiery rage of the conservative base. That’s why Mitt Romney opposes the McCain-Kennedy bill while refusing to get into the details of a possible alternative.
“RNC Faces Donor Falloff, Fires Solicitors”
UPDATE: A vacationing James Joyner takes the RNC’s explanation at face value:
I’d have to see the numbers but both parties’ fundraising continues to set record highs. The 2008 presidential campaign has started roughly a year before any other in history and already record amounts are being raised. Furthermore, the GOP candidates who are the toughest immigration hawks, Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback, are statistically tied with my dog in the polls. It’s therefore highly unlikely that the Republican party has suddenly found fundraising to have dried up and that immigration policy is the cause.
Beyond that, firing low level phone bank employees would seem an odd response to those events were they actually transpiring. Why not just fire the managers? Or, backpedal on the policy?
My guess is that the RNC has contracted out their phone bank services and are simply terminating the contract. Perhaps direct mail and Internet solicitations have simply obviated phone solicitations?
We’ll have to see the RNC’s numbers to see how much the immigration bill is hurting fundraising efforts.
