Democrat Lord’s Work at Fundraising Draws Rare Look at Arizona District

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics.com - It is bound to draw attention when a veteran member of Congress reports below-average fundraising numbers, even for the first quarter of a two-year election cycle. Eyebrows raise further when the incumbent’s receipts trail those of a previously unheralded challenger.

That is the case in Arizona’s usually non-competitive 3rd Congressional District, at least quite early in the run-up to the 2008 election. Republican John Shadegg (news, bio, voting record), an outspoken conservative activist who took 59 percent of the vote to win a seventh term in 2006, reported $19,000 in receipts during the first three months of this year — to $138,000 for would-be Democratic challenger Bob Lord, a Phoenix tax attorney and neophyte politician.

There was a similar disparity in cash reserves. According to their reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Shadegg had $12,000 on hand as of March 31, while Lord had $129,000 on hand.

Shadegg’s numbers are well below his typical money levels at the same point in previous elections. Shadegg had $76,000 in cash as of March 31, 2003, and $102,000 on hand after the first quarter in 2005.

The money donated to Lord, meanwhile, included $97,000 from in-state contributors, $47,000 of which came from Phoenix residents. Some $17,000 of his funds was routed to Lord’s campaign through ACTBlue, a Democratic fundraising organization that allows contributors to earmark funds for particular candidates nationwide.

The 3rd Congressional District would not be an obvious spot for a Democratic pick-up. It encompasses parts of Phoenix and its northern suburbs in a segment of Maricopa County and is slightly more conservative than the state as a whole. District voters gave President Bush 58 percent of the vote in 2004, while he garnered 55 percent of the statewide vote.

And Shadegg’s camp is confident that the congressman, coming off a 2006 campaign in which he brought in about $1.1 million in campaign funds, will be able to easily make up for lost time. Campaign aides say the reason Shadegg currently has so little cash in his treasury is because he distributed much of the money he raised in the past election cycle — $573,000 in total, according to FEC records — to other Republican candidates in what turned out to be a futile GOP effort to maintain its control of the House.

“We didn’t have what we felt like was an overwhelmingly competitive race, and so we pulled out all the stops to help keep the majority,” said campaign spokesman Sean Noble. “So there’s not much there right now, but there’s no question that we’ll have whatever means we need to run our race this year.”

Shadegg swept into the House during the 1994 Republican takeover campaign that produced the party’s “Contract With America,” a platform of conservative ideals to which Shadegg remains committed today. The congressman is a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee and for the past two years has received a 100 percent score from the anti-tax Club for Growth, a conservative, Republican-allied political organization.

Shadegg also has deep roots in the region. His father, the late Stephen Shadegg, was a longtime adviser to the late Barry Goldwater, the five-term Arizona senator and the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.

Frank DuVal, a Arizona Democratic fundraiser, said it is somewhat audacious for his party to target Shadegg in 2008. But he added that the Democrats have been emboldened by successes in 2006, which included Democrat Janet Napolitano’s easy re-election victory for governor and the party’s takeover of two formerly Republican-held House districts: the 5th, where Harry Mitchell (news, bio, voting record) unseated six-term Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth and the 8th, where Gabrielle Giffords (news, bio, voting record) won the seat left open by the retirement of 11-term Republican Jim Kolbe.

“Democrats in Arizona are feeling an enormous sense of empowerment and possibility coming off winning two additional seats in the last cycle and a gubernatorial landslide” he said. “So we’re sort of reaching up higher up on the food chain.”

Democrats looking to pick up the seat are counting on independent voters — who constitute a quarter of the district’s electorate — to swing their way. Independent voters are a key constituency in Arizona, as 27 percent of registered voters do not affiliate with either major party.

Lord’s fundraising numbers are unprecedented for Democrats in the district. Democrat Herb Paine, a business consultant who challenged Shadegg in the 2006 election, raised $102,000 throughout the entire cycle, less than Lord raised in the first quarter.

“While he is not particularly publicly known — which means it will take a lot of money to run — he is known among social, civic and community activists, which is a good place to start raising money,” DuVal said of Lord.

Lord said he expected to continue raising money at the accelerated pace of the first quarter. “These are all people I know,” Lord said of his contributors. “But they didn’t have to write me checks at all; they didn’t have to write me the size checks that they did, and what I think motivated them is they really want to see a change.”

Lord said the idea to run was planted by his sister-in-law last summer while they discussed their dissatisfaction with the political leadership and the need for qualified candidates to run.

“She suggested that I do it. And I just sort of took stock of the situation and decided that I had the capability of doing it . . . I said to myself if I’m not going to do this I can’t expect anyone else to, and I believe we have challenges that we need to meet in the next 10, 15 years or our whole way of life is at stake,” he said.

Julie Shutley, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, disputed whether Lord would make inroads in the 3rd District, calling Shadegg a “tremendously effective member.”

Shadegg has won “overwhelmingly large numbers, even last year in a horrible election cycle for Republicans,” Shutley said. “He is a proven candidate and a proven member, and you can’t buy that kind of respect.”

Noble, Shadegg’s spokesman, gave a more confrontational response: “To any of the Democrats who think they might want to take on Congressman Shadegg, he says he’ll crush them in votes and he’ll crush them in fundraising, and bring it on!”

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20070423/pl_cq_politics/democratlordsworkatfundraisingdrawsrarelookatarizo nadistrict [link]