Recent political history shows that Democratic presidential contenders who lead the pack at the start of the fundraising race often lose the early caucuses and primaries.
This is the cautionary tale being discussed by campaign strategists for some of the top- and second-tier Democratic candidates as well as by veteran election analysts and fundraisers who think the press has exaggerated the importance of who is ahead in the money race — long considered the mother’s milk of politics.
Ask Joe Trippi, the campaign manager for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in the last presidential election. At this point in the 2004 election cycle, Mr. Dean was the fundraising leader and appeared to be the prohibitive favorite for the nomination.
Although Mr. Dean led his rivals in the money-raising contest right up until the end of 2003 and just days before the Iowa caucuses, he was defeated by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who went on to win the nomination.
“Historically, the amount of money raised in the preprimary cycle has not been a good indicator of who wins the nomination,” said Mr. Trippi, an adviser to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
“Why so much attention by the press?” he said. “They can only report on two things at this early juncture in the race — polls and who’s winning the fundraising race, neither of which, by the way, is a good indication of who wins.”
In the 2004 Democratic race, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut “led in all the early polls in 2003 and Dean led in the money race by a wide margin, but neither of them came in first or second in the number of delegates at the convention in 2004,” Mr. Trippi said.
“In 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale had all the money in the world and a guy by the name of Gary Hart, who had message and not much money at all, beat him in the primaries and actually won more convention delegates. It took the party’s superdelegates to put Mondale over the top,” he said.
Mike Lux, a veteran Democratic campaign fundraising consultant, has similar doubts about the importance of money at this early point in the race.
“I do think that the role of money is exaggerated. Since 1972 when the presidential nominating process was opened up to the primaries, the person with the most money in the early going has not gone on to win,” Mr. Lux said.
“What presidential candidates need in the campaign cycle right now is enough money to run a strong enough campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, and beyond that, if they do those two things well, momentum can take them the rest of the way,” he said.
“I’m more convinced than ever that if anyone wins Iowa and New Hampshire, they are going to win the nomination,” Mr. Lux added.
This is not to say that strategists and analysts think money is an irrelevant factor in who wins next year’s caucuses and primaries. Rather, they argue that the amount of money raised this early in the two-year marathon process is not a reliable basis on which to forecast who will be the strongest candidates in the state-by-state contests to come.
“Is there someone out there who really thinks second-quarter fundraising numbers — or even third-quarter numbers — have a great predictive value in guessing which candidates will win the nomination?” campaign tracker Stuart Rothenberg wrote last week in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill weekly newspaper.
“Money is clearly relevant to competitiveness and the perception of competitiveness. Yet there are lots of examples of people who have trumped their opponents in the money race but failed to do it at the ballot box,” said Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
As of this month, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois led Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the money race, $58.5 million to $52.5 million. Mr. Edwards is in third place with $23 million raised.
Among second-tier candidates, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was keeping his hopes alive with $13.2 million raised so far this year, followed by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut at $7.3 million and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware with $4.5 million.
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