Politico: SarahPAC steps into the big leagues

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Politico's Kenneth Vogel reports:

A new financial report filed Sunday evening showed Sarah Palin’s political action committee has taken its fundraising to a higher level – and suggests that she has begun building a more sophisticated political operation in place of a bare-bones organization powered mostly by her rock star status and scrappy on-line presence.

The report, filed with the Federal Election Commission, shows that Palin’s political action committee raised more money in the second quarter of this year – $866,000 – than it had in any previous three-month stretch since Palin formed the group in January 2009.

The committee, Sarah PAC, also spent nearly twice as much – $742,000 – as it had in any previous quarter, the lion’s share of which went to the type of list-building and fundraising (including its first major direct-mail campaign) that typically undergird top-tier political committees. It also reported its biggest-ever round of donations to candidates – $87,50 – and its highest outlays for travel costs, including $17,000 on private jet fare to crisscross the country for high-profile political speaking gigs, and speechwriting. It also showed continued payments for that speechwriting as well as foreign and domestic policy consulting, and its first ever payments to a scheduler.

In short, for the first time since the 2008 campaign when she was the vice-presidential running mate to GOP presidential candidate John McCain, Palin is supported by a political operation befitting someone considering a presidential run.

Sarah PAC, a so-called leadership political action committee, relied largely on small donors for its fundraising haul between the beginning of April and the end of last month, according to the report, which shows more than $1 million in the bank at the end of the quarter.

SarahPAC also conducted its first direct mail campaign during the second quarter. The PAC's treasurer Tim Crawford says that through the mail effort and continued online fundraising, Sarah PAC added about 8,000 new donors in Q2, raising its total number of contributors to more than 25,000. Crawford adds that the PAC also has more than 200,000 email address on its list:

“Essentially when we started last January, we started from scratch,” Crawford said. “We didn’t have a big base of people coming out of the presidential campaign. Everybody knew that there was this massive amount of support, but she didn’t have it, because all that stuff was property of the McCain campaign. But now, I think we’ve got a pretty formidable thing going on, and it grows every day,” Crawford said.

Sarah PAC reported $87,500 in second-quarter contributions, including donations to candidates Gov. Palin has supported in contested GOP primary victories this year in states that will be key in the 2012 race for the GOP presidential nomination, such as Nevada, where Senate candidate Sharron Angle received $2,500. In South Carolina, congressional candidate Tim Scott was the beneficiary of $5,000 from SarahPAC, and in Iowa, gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad also got $5,000. The PAC also distributed $5,000 in Iowa to the reelection campaign of Sen. Chuck Grassley, whose support the entire field of 2012 GOP presidential candidates will be vying for.

Palin’s endorsements and her PAC’s accompanying contributions have helped her forge a burgeoning reputation as queen-maker whose coveted support has been credited with helping a group of female Republican candidates – “mama grizzlies,” in her parlance – to victory.

But Sunday’s report shows more goes into her endorsement decisions than just her gut instinct.

In fact, the PAC continued paying a Sacramento-based researcher named Andrew Davis to vet most candidates before Palin endorses them.

The PAC also paid $5,700 for speechwriting to Lindsay Hayes, who previously penned speeches for the McCain-Palin campaign, and before that for former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. And Sarah PAC continued paying $10,000 a month to a consulting firm run by former John McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann to provide consulting on “national and international issues” to Palin.

Read the full Politico analysis of the SarahPAC FEC report here.

- JP