Moran Raises Over a Million and Spends It?

This report from the WaPo can't be right.  Brian's balance in his old committee was over 500K in December, this report is saying he transfered over 400Kish, so that is 100K in spending.  Combine that with a million raised in the new account and a balance of 800K, and that means with the 400K transfer that another 600K was spent.

That's $700,000 in spending, over $100,000 a month over a year before the election.

I don't think these numbers are right- not sure how that much money could be spent.

UPDATE:  Hmm... RTD is reporting this also... if that is a record intake, it also has to be record spending for this point in the cycle. 

Comments

One word for this spending level... unsustainable.

Wow. What exactly is he spending it on??

[GOPHokie]

How much of that is donations to various dem related committees/candidates?

[Not Hussein (formerly Not Ben)]

Anon 9:39--he probably spent it on a high-level security service designed to keep his brother silent between now and November 2009. Sounds like a good investment.

You are all missing the obvious, and Ben, I think this deserves a Moran Bubbles alert. The guy's hair is never out of place. Surely he's been paying for $2k hair cuts.

[Johnathan Bravo]

You’ve missed the point. Moran made a great tactical decision to staff up early and erase advantages of Deeds and McDonnell from running statewide. They brought on Mame Reiley, Jean Jensen, Steve Jarding and Jerome Armstrong. It’s not cheap but it’s working. Clearly he’s the front runner. There was even a recent poll that said Moran wa tied against McDonnell – Moran had erased any of Deeds lead from last time. Deeds spent $3.5mil in statewide AGs race, Moran spent $500-700K in first period and erased all that. Not a bad gamble.

So Johnathan, are you saying that Moran's name ID has jumped in a meaningful way in the past six months? I don't think so.

NONE of the candidates, McDonnell, Deeds or Moran are particularly well-known among the non-blogging electorate. What most polls this far out are really registering are basic partisan leanings. What the polls DO indicate that is more telling is that Democrats in Virginia have seen their stock rise some in the past few years.

Now I'm sure you are someone who believes Deeds' campaign for AG would give him some sort of edge. Personally, I doubt it. That was three years ago. The average voter could not tell you who ran for LG or AG and didn't make it. Most people are just not that focused on these things. Hell, I'll bet that McDonnell's and Bolling's hard name ID are not much more than 50% and I'll wager that their unaided name ID ("Can you tell me the name of the current Lieutenant Governor/Attorney General?") is no more than 20%. In that environment, the couple of weeks of TV Deeds ran three years ago is not going to be permanently etched in the minds of many voters.

So no, I don't think Moran "erased" anything because there was nothing to "erase" at this stage of the game.

Moran's problem, especially in a general election, is that no amount of money is going to erase the fact that he looks, sounds and has the left-leaning record of someone running for Governor of Massachusetts who took a wrong turn on I-95 and ended up in Virginia. How Moran is going to connect with anyone outside of the bedrock base Democrat voter south of the Rappahannock River remains a mystery to me.

Anon 2:18 you just came up with the solution to the problem of having both Deeds and Moran running. Nobody can run for AG because Shannon is already running for AG.

Moran should move to Massachusetts and run for Governor there. He would be a much better fit! Then Deeds can win in VA without a bloody primary!

[novamiddleman]

Easy he runs like Tim Kaine did

Ride on Obama/Warner coattails from 2008

just like Kaine rode on Warner in 2005.

This is McDonnell's race to lose. As long as he keeps his mouth shut (Allen) and he doesn't come across as a backwoods hillbilly (Kilgore) and hopefully the RPV/campaign won't run any stupid attack ads in the closing weeks (Allen and Kilgore).

Anon 2:18 nails it!

[Sean Holihan]

"How Moran is going to connect with anyone outside of the bedrock base Democrat voter south of the Rappahannock River remains a mystery to me."

And yet, at the most recent event for Moran in Virginia Beach, electeds and the heads of many local democratic committees were in attendance. Also, I seem to remember Moran winning Vivian Paige's straw poll by a large majority.

I keep on hearing that Brian Moran cannot connect to those south of Nova, and yet, he continues to do so.

Just because McDonnell and Deeds supporters say it is so, doesn't mean that it is.

[Dan]

It's off topic in this thread, but Jim Webb's office just released a statement that he isn't interested in the Vice Presidency and won't seek it under any circumstances.

[Tatum]

It's really hard for me to see Caroline Kennedy selecting Jim Webb for VP. A Marine who served in the Reagan administration, it just won't happen.

[Dan]

Caroline is hardly the one doing the selecting. That would be Sen. Obama.

Although, as far as I know, she has nothing against either Marines or Ronald Reagan.

You are talking about core Democrat primary voters. That's a whole different ball game. If you want to try and tell me that the views and perspectives of primary voters in EITHER party are reflective of the overall general electorate, you are plain wrong. Perhaps the chairman of the County Committee in a place like Brunswick might be for Moran, but do you think that the average voter is going to feel the same way?

I will even concede that Brian may do OK in Hampton Roads, although McDonnell will be well organized there and will win the Beach, Chesapeake and a number of other localities there. But what about the Shenandoah Valley? Metro-Richmond? Southside? Southwest? Do you really think Brian is going to do as well as Deeds or McDonnell?

It is not that he is an an out of stater. That unto itself is no big deal. Allen, Kaine, Robb, and Warner were all born in other states. But Moran just comes across as SO Boston. And unlike Kaine, Robb and Warner, none of whom served in the General Assembly, Moran has a very long and very liberal record in the House to defend. Now that will be very appealing in the primary and probably makes him the favorite, but it will be a lodestone when he gets to Labor Day. He's going to get hammered on taxes. He's going to get hammered on guns for flip-flopping every which way over his career. His 94% lifetime AFL-CIO rating is going to be tough for small business to swallow. His restrictive enviro record will not sell well with farmers or with coal miners. His opposition to parental notification and his support of gay marriage will not exactly endear him to faith voters.

He's just going to be a very tough sell in a general election against someone like McDonnell, especially beyond NoVA. While there are a lot of votes in NoVA, in the rest of the state he will be lucky to get 40% of the white vote. And if McDonnell does not get demolished in NoVA, that's not enough to get Moran over.

Not that Deeds is a better choice. He's incredibly dull and does not have the force of personality to be a top flight candidate. His record will only be slightly-less of a problem in the general election, but he will not do as well in NoVA as Moran. In '03, he only outpaced McDonnell by about 10,000 votes in the 11th Congressional while Byrne and Kaine were winning by 20K-25K vote margins. He underperformed the ticket by about 20K votes in Fairfax County. He's just weaker in the heart of the rising Democrat vote than other candidate's of the party.

She may have something against selecting a guy who needs anger management classes...

[Dan]

Ah, the old anger management canard!

Seems to me Webb worked quietly and effectively to pass the new GI Bill. And wasn't the vote 77-29? So he got wide bi-partisan support too. Doesn't sound like an angry man to me.

And he accomplished this against the opposition of President Photo Op. You know, the president who likes to use the troops as political props, but doesn't seem to think we owe them much after multiple deployments in harm's way.

I guess some folks like presidents who dress up in flight suits and senators who dress up in cowboy costumes.

Some of us prefer statesmen who quietly get things done.

how arrogant can one get? isn't interested? who said he would get asked? I suppose this way he does not look like a loser..

btw, I am not interested in serving as obama's V.P. so tell him not to ask.

dan
you forgot to mention that some like senators who lie, are racist, hate our military, have done no real work in their life, are arrogant, weak and think they are the second comming.

did i miss something?

[Dan]

It appears we have a genuine Webb hater here.

Let's see. He was obviously on the short list. He has been mentioned prominently for months. He isn't the first such person to publicly state they are not interested, so please don't consider me.

Perhaps in your fevered brain this is interpreted as arrogance. I don't imagine it is seen that way by reasonably objective folks.

I, for one, am pleased with Sen. Webb's anouncement. I would rather he remain serving us in the Senate.

I'm sorry you dislike Webb so much. Perhaps if you imagined him dressed in a cowboy costume and throwing a football you might warm up to him.

[Dan]

anon 4:14,

Since I can think of no one in the United States Senate in either party that would remotely fit that description I am certain that I have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps you have no idea what you are talking about either.