[CORRECTED] Allen West Continues Torrid Fundraising Pace

• I'll support Allen West! He's certainly better than any of the Liberals who complain about Bush and continue to lead us into record deficits, record unemployment, record bank failures, record spending, record corruption, record business failures, foreign policy disasters, secret backroom deals to hide their intentions from the people, the continuation of two wars which have spread into two more countries (Waziristan and Pakistan), secret wiretaps, Gitmo still open, Lobbyists running the Congress, the worst division in the country since the sixties and a mad race to destroy our nation and rebuild it as a Socialist state.

• Question: Is that Mein Kampf in his hand? Cause it surely can't be the Constitution pocket edition...

• While Allen West had a good fundraising quarter if you look at his burn rate it doesn't appear nearly as good. West went from having $707K at the beginning of the quarter to $1100K now, meaning he kept only 49% of the money he raised. A burn rate that large this long before the election is pretty big: Klein by contrast went from $2371K to $2650K, meaning he kept 61%. To put it another way: West made a net gain of $393K, larger than Klein's net gain of $279K, but not nearly as large as the initial numbers would suggest. (Last quarter's numbers from http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/6431/4q-house-fundraising-reports-roundup) The reason for West's high burn rate is he employs a fundraising firm called Base Connect which is infamous for raising huge amounts for GOP candidates but letting them keep very little of it. This artificially inflates fundraising numbers: a candidate in Georgia for instance "raised" $5.3 million in a campaign but only netted $700K. http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_100/politics/43963-1.html?type=printer_friendly Much of West's fundraising is genuine and he is raising a lot. However, I think you should note in your story some of West's fundraising tactics make him appear to be raising much more money than he actually is.

• No problem!

• @factchecker: Thanks for the heads up.

• Boy did you get this one wrong, but only by a measly $1,000,000.00 http://www.postonpolitics.com/2010/04/burn-notice-gops-west-raises-and-spends-big-in-klein-challenge/

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