Upcoming McCain Event Will Test Appeal to Indies, Conservative Democrats and GOP Base’s Enthusiasm

John McCain will be back in NM for a private fundraising event next month.

Joe Monohan reports in his June 12 blog post that:

GOP warhorse Ken Zangara is back in the saddle and preparing to host a July 14th ABQ fundraiser for the man he hopes will be the next President. The well-known ABQ auto dealer, who has raised big dollars for Bush, has started shaking the money tree for soon-to-be GOP presidential nominee John McCain. Zangara has been named McCain’s state finance chair and we’ve confirmed that his first big money raising effort will be a McCain fundraiser at Zangara’s ABQ NE Heights home. The invitation lists several suggested giving levels:

Event Co-Chairman: Raise/Contribute $25,000; Name listed on invitation; Private Dinner with Senator McCain; Photo opportunity with Senator McCain; 2 tickets to general reception

Event Host: Raise $10,000 / or Contribute $4,600 per couple; Name listed on invitation; Photo opportunity for 2 with Senator McCain; 2 tickets to general reception

Individual Ticket: Contribute $1,000; one ticket to the General Reception

(SNIP)

With the economy shaky and the demand for campaign contributions high because of all the open congressional seats, Zangara will have his job cut out for him raising money for McCain. The July 14th fundraiser may offer the first clues on how enthusiastic the GOP base is for McCain who also banks on his appeal to independents and conservative Dems.

In spite of the rapturous interviews on TV from the “selected” vets attending Obama’s closed event on Memorial Day, the once “exclusive” event for vets was transformed into one including other supporters. Only about 100 vets were in the audience of 300 and there were complaints that vets couldn’t get tickets. I suspect Bill Richardson, who organized the event, had a hard time coming up with enough dutiful Obama supporters who were vets and had to bring in other supporters who were not vetrs. And, he apparently thought better of actually running a real “town hall” exclusively, as had been originally announced.

Obama chose to sneak in a visit to the Bataan Memorial just before the planned ceremonies but didn’t stick around to meet any vets who would have been attending. After his ridiculuous comment about the primaries being like “the Bataan Death March” I didn’t expect anything more from Obama than the easy photo-op to make it appear that he actually cared about this horrible piece of history.

I don’t think Obama will sell well here in CD-2 this fall which has a very large military population of personnel stationed at White Sands and Ft. Bliss as well as a large number of military retirees. We’ll see…

Note: My archived series on Obama’s Memorial Day visit to Las Cruces ran from 5/23 -5/28/08.