Dean fund-raising lie persists among conservatives

Media Matters

The conservative media continues to falsely assert that Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean is an ineffective fund-raiser. In the past week, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, New York Post columnist John Podhoretz, and Washington Times chief political correspondent Donald Lambro all cast Dean as a fund-raising failure. In fact, when compared with fund-raising in the most recent non-election year, Dean has raised more money in raw dollars, and more in comparison to the Republican National Committee (RNC), than did his predecessor.

As Media Matters for America has documented (here, here, and here), Dean raised $14.8 million between February and April 2005, versus $8.5 million raised by former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe during the same time period in 2003. Dean has also raised more money than McAuliffe relative to RNC fund-raising. The RNC raised $32.4 million between February and April 2005, about 2.2 times the rate of the DNC; over the same period in 2003, the RNC's $25.7 million was more than three times what the Democrats raised. An article in the June 20 edition of Newsweek by chief political correspondent Howard Fineman and national correspondent Tamara Lipper noted how Dean has been effective at soliciting smaller donations:


Officials estimate that $12 million of the $14 million the Dean regime has collected so far this year has come from those who gave less than $250. "For people who really look hard at the numbers, he's wowing people," says Elaine Kamarck, a respected DNC member.