Republican Fundraisers Shift Focus to Congress

With the presidential race in turmoil, Republican fundraisers and strategists are increasingly turning their attention to congressional races. The thinking is they might do better to focus on elections where they know they can have an impact, rather than a presidential campaign that is fraught with uncertainty, Politico reports.

 

While front-runner Mitt Romney is viewed as likely to get the nomination, it’s likely to be a long, bitter slog to the convention in August, and that process could well strengthen President Barack Obama. Meanwhile Republicans are eager to maintain their 2010 gains in the House and to hopefully gain control of the Senate.

 

Newsmax columnist George Will and others urge the GOP to target Congress.

 

“There’s little doubt that there is increasing focus on the House and Senate, given the fact that if you look back a year ago, I think most Republicans and most business people said, ‘We’re going to beat Obama because he’s going to beat himself, and we just need a decent candidate,’” Tom Bell, a top Republican donor and former Chamber of Commerce chairman, told Politico.

 

The Romney bundler said, “It’s pretty obvious that there is a significant portion of conservative voters who aren’t completely comfortable with Mitt. If the presidential contest is going to be very close . . . we’d better make sure that we’ve got the House. And in a perfect world we’d get the Senate too.”