Arkansas Sen. Pryor’s Early Fundraising Outshines White House Hopeful Huckabee

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics.com - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s political ambitions for 2008 are set as high as they can go: He is seeking the Republican nomination for president. Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor (news, bio, voting record), on the other hand, wants to stay right where he is, in the U.S. Senate.

Nonetheless, Pryor was the candidate who showed more fundraising muscle during the first three months of this year.

At the start of April, Pryor’s cash-on-hand in his Senate campaign treasury was more than five times the cash reserve that Huckabee reported for his presidential campaign committee.

First quarter fundraising totals reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) this month show that Pryor, who is running for a second Senate term, raised $1.8 million from Jan. 1 to March 31 and had $2.1 million left on hand at the start of April. Huckabee raised just $544,000 over the same period for his national campaign and had $374,000 remaining on hand.

Huckabee continues to draw 5 percent support or less in early national presidential preference polls of Republican voters. This has him trailing well behind the front-running GOP competitors, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has raised $23 million since October with $12 million on hand as of March 31, and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who raised $18 million and had $12 million on hand.

More than half of Huckabee’s itemized individual donations — 55 percent, to be exact — came from the state of Arkansas, where he served as governor for more than 10 years and previously as lieutenant governor.

Huckabee’s background as a Baptist pastor and his conservative positions on many issues, such as abortion and the teaching of creationism, have the potential to spark the interest within the strongly conservative Republican voting base. And as Huckabee demonstrated in Arkansas, his conversational “everyman” style has in the past enabled him to win over many moderates.

But thus far, Huckabee has not been able to translate his homestate popularity to a national audience.

From the start of his campaign, Huckabee has argued that money should not be the main focus of the 2008 presidential race, and said in February that he wasn’t envious of the presidential front-runners because they had only “one direction” they could go, “and it’s not a good one.”

But Pryor is employing a typical incumbent’s strategy of using strong early fundraising to build up a formidable campaign treasury — and perhaps to dissuade potentially threatening challengers to eschew the race. So far, no well-known Republican has announced plans to take on Pryor next year.

Along with money and other advantages of incumbency he enjoys, Pryor has significant name recognition across Arkansas. He is the son of long-serving Democratic former Sen. David Pryor, and has the support of his colleagues and the national party at his disposal.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20070423/pl_cq_politics/arkansassenpryorsearlyfundraisingoutshineswhitehou sehopefulhuckabee [link]