Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty is introducing his supporters to his finance team this morning, and it caught my attention that one of his finance consultants, Andrea Evans, is focusing on Arizona.
Evans is based in Phoenix and worked on McCain's 2008 campaign as Arizona's finance director, so it's not surprising that the Pawlenty campaign assigned her to this turf. But I don't automatically think of Arizona as an important state for presidential fundraising, and the other consultants on Pawlenty's list are attached to states like Texas and California -- places that traditionally shell out in a big way during election season.
This map from the Center for Responsive Politics tells a different story about Arizona's potential as a font of campaign cash, however. In the 2008 election, Arizonans contributed more than $10 million to presidential candidates, putting it in the top tier for political fundraising. And even though the totals that came out of states like California and Texas dwarfed the $6.85 million that McCain raised in Arizona, it was one of the only big money states where McCain beat Barack Obama in the money race.
To a certain extent, that should be expected: Arizona is McCain's home state, and just as New Mexico turned out its pockets for Bill Richardson and Tennessee for Fred Thompson, Arizona should have been supporting its very own presidential contender. But the prevailing narrative in 2008 argued that Arizona's top donors weren't psyched enough about McCain to give him their wholehearted support. Two of George W. Bush's top bundlers in the state took a pass on McCain, and although the candidate eventually recruited more than 135 bundlers, few were raising truly big dollars.
Even so, Arizonans' total political giving (to presidential and congressional candidates and to PACs) just about doubled from 2004 to 2008. And although the amount of money in politics in this country is growing, it's not growing that fast. Plus, most of the money McCain raised ($5.1 million out of that $6.85 million) came from Phoenix, one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country.
I'm guessing Pawlenty's team thinks that it can raise a significant amount of money in Arizona, which is why Evans is on board. And I think we can expect in the future for Republican candidates to be spending ever more time shilling at fundraisers in Phoenix.