Marco Rubio: big spender

July 29, 2010 · Posted in Elections, Marco Rubio, News and Current Affairs, People, Political News, Politics

Take that, little people!

Marco Rubio is running for the U.S. Senate as a “fiscal conservative.” But his campaign is spending like … well, it’s spending like House Speaker Marco Rubio.

From the Palm Beach Post, word that while Charlie Crist is spending about 30 cents of every dollar raise, Team Rubio is burning through twice that — about $0.63 for every donor buck. From the article today:

TALLAHASSEE — Republican Marco Rubio collected $4.3 million from April 1 to June 30, a record for a U.S. Senate candidate in Florida. But he spent $4 million during the same period.

Rubio’s supporters say it was money well spent. He pushed his top primary opponent out of the Republican Party by the end of April and by June 30 had built a base of 75,000 donors who can continue giving to the campaign.

But Rubio needs a better return on his fund-raising investment — $1.7 million last quarter in direct mail, phone calls and online outreach — or he’ll risk being outspent by Gov. Charlie Crist, who left the GOP to run with no party affiliation.

Since Rubio started raising money in February 2009, he’s spent 63 percent of every dollar he’s collected.

If he continues on that pace, he would need to raise $6.2 million in the third quarter of the year just to match the $8.2 million Crist had in the bank as of June 30.

The Post analysis finds that Rubio spent a substantial wad of cash in the lead-up to Charlie Crist’s April 30 decision on going independent, because he viewed that event as “his real GOP primary.” The pricetag for that belief? $1.2 million in TV ads “to push back at Crist, who had gone on television in March.”

But here’s the thing: Crist stopped advertising on April 8th, which led just about every political analyst in the state to determine that he was going to exit the party. Meanwhile, as it became clearer that Crist was going to veto SB6, even initial skeptics like me figured out that his leaving the GOP was a done deal. How I could figure that out, but not the Savior of the Republican Party is … well … interesting. Either way, Marco kept spending. A bit more:

Rubio started his underdog campaign on a shoe-string budget, joking at the time that his only campaign aides were “Mr. Garmin and Mr. SunPass.”

But as he’s risen from long-shot to front-runner, so have his expenses.

In the second quarter he spent $402,000 on seven political consultants, two finance consultants, one legal consultant, a compliance consultant and creative consultant for his direct-mail, The Post found.

“I thought he was just going from pine tree stump to pine tree stump generating an upwelling to sweep him into the Capital, said Republican operative Mac Stipanovich, who is supporting Crist in the race. “That kind of money for consultants isn’t really consistent with his image.”

Rubio’s campaign also spent $153,000 on hotels, plane tickets and rental cars last quarter, including a $601 bill at the Luxe Hotel on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Food and beverage cost the campaign $32,000, including $2,770 to cater an event at the Pelican Yacht Club in Fort Pierce.

There were $115,000 in credit card payments, $38,000 in bank and credit card fees and $188,000 in payroll expenses.

Rubio’s political opponents have previously tried to label him as a “big-spending politician” by pointing to his personal use of state party credit cards and his double-billing of state taxpayers for flights when he was Florida House speaker.

Team Rubio insists they had to spend that way because Charlie Crist gets so much free publicity as governor. That’s true, and I’ve heard estimates that Crist is getting more than $1 million a week in “free media” based on the amount of coverage he’s gotten from the oil spill alone.

But Rubio no longer has a serious primary (there are a couple of minor candidates on the ballot, but none with any money.) He has locked up the support of the right, and isn’t even trying to woo the center. When his campaign does hit Crist, they often do so in a weird, counterintuitive way — playing up the fact that he will caucus with Democrats, for instance, when that’s exactly the argument that’s helping Crist build his poll margins — by wooing Democrats; then whiplashing back to reminding voters how conservative Crist used to say he was — a fact that has been so thoroughly covered, it’s clearly being discounted by Democrats, who not for nothing — aren’t going to accept ANY message delivered to them by the detested Mr. Rubio.

So I don’t get why their burning so much cash.

Except that burning through donor cash is kind of what Marco does best.

The only thing I can figure is that Team Rubio sees their current cash base as bank to be used to build a donor list, maybe even for a future campaign. He knows he won’t be without resources, because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Club for Growth, along with Turd Blossom’s new 527, are likely to kick in big-time with the bucks near the finish.

But the profligate spending Team Rubio is doing speaks volumes about his alleged fiscal conservatism, and the one group who might be paying attention, and might not like it, are his tea party supporters, who I can’t stress enough, have someplace else to go: namely, Libertarian Alex Snitker.

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