A freshman California lawmaker made a big splash but barely broke even at a glitzy and controversial January GOP fundraiser featuring country singer LeAnn Rimes, new campaign filings show.
Celebrity, it seems, comes at a cost.
Rimes and her entourage made out well at the Jan. 4 fundraiser that served as Republican Rep. Jeff Denham's big political debut in Washington. Between assorted fees, flowers, catering and other costs, Denham's special fundraising committee reported spending $212,250 on the Rimes event.
The committee, meanwhile, raised only $212,900 from outside contributors.
Add it all up, and Denham's special committee spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars to net a grand total of $650 in outside contributions.
"It's an industrial-strength waste of money, and the people who gave the money are going to resent it," said Michael Fraioli, a longtime Democratic fundraising expert.
Denham didn't respond Friday to requests for comment.
Dunham's district includes the suburbs of Fresno and Modesto and a median household income of $51,000 or so, so it's not like he's in a bad place to be raising cash as a California Republican, especially with Dunham being an Air Force veteran in an important aerospace state. Yosemite National Park is in his district too (CA-19) so being on a couple of environmental committees gives him some important purple district cred as well.
The problem is Jeff here seems to be really, really bad at math or at suckering rubes into giving him money. Either one is a serious liability if you're pretending to be Tea Party freshman and you're a purple district moderate. Even worse, he dragged in some 11 other Republicans into his big fundraiser...and they walked away with chicken feed. Oh, and I'm betting Jeff isn't too popular around the "No Socialists Allowed" couch fort the Tea Party kids have in the House basement, either.
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