Month: February 2016

Carson Accuses Cruz Campaign of Dirty Tricks

Buck Banks

At many of the precincts, the information was disseminated that I was suspending my campaign, that I had dropped out. And anybody who was planning to vote for me was wasting their vote and therefore they should reconsider.

— Ben Carson, accusing Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign of telling voters at Iowa precincts that Carson had dropped out of the race, TPM reports.

Trump Spent More on Hats than Consultants

Buck Banks

$450,000

Amount Donald Trump spent last quarter on his iconic hats bearing the campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” “That’s more money than the campaign paid its data vendor L2 (which received $235,000 for “research consulting”) or than it spent on strategy consulting ($281,000). It’s almost as much as the campaign spent on field consulting ($551,000) or payroll ($518,000). Trump’s campaign did spend $793,000 on expenses related to the mega-rallies that have become his campaign’s hallmarks, as well as $459,000 on expenses related to having his name appear on primary election ballots,” according to Ken Vogel in Politico.

Sanders Is Hauling in Grass-Roots Donations

Buck Banks

$20 million

Amount Bernie Sanders’s campaign has raised over the last month, “an enormous haul that backs up the campaign’s assertion that it will have enough money for a long, hard-fought nominating fight against Hillary Clinton,” the New York Times reports. Politico: “More than 770,000 people gave to the Vermont senator’s bid in January, with online contributions averaging just $27, the campaign said. And Sanders has so far received more than 3.25 million contributions — more than any presidential campaign at this point in the cycle ever.”

Brokered GOP Convention Looks Ever More Likely

Buck Banks

At this point, my gut sug­gests that by the time we get deep in­to the pro­cess, Trump will ap­pear to have the sup­port of the pop­u­list, less ideo­lo­gic­al third of the GOP, roughly where he is now; Cruz will have con­sol­id­ated con­ser­vat­ives and roughly one third of the party; a con­ven­tion­al can­did­ate (Bush, Christie, Kasich, or Ru­bio) will be pulling about a quarter, with the re­main­ing fifth up in the air. That spells a con­tested con­ven­tion.

— Charlie Cook in National Journal