“It’s not at the top of the agenda for most folks right now,” said Brian Ballard, the Florida finance chairman for Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid, who has heard from all of the potential hopefuls this year but, like many of his associates, has yet to choose a 2012 candidate.
A result is the chicken-egg dynamic that is delaying the party’s urgent need to begin raising money to defeat an incumbent president whose fund-raising goals are as high as $1 billion. Potential candidates have been slow to get into the race without the assurance that they can raise the money necessary for a credible campaign, while donors are waiting to see how the field develops before making decisions.
Many prospective candidates “want to have more tangible evidence that the support will be there if they start out,” said Al Cardenas, a former Florida Republican Party chairman who now leads the American Conservative Union. “Then there are the donors who don’t yet have a candidate — they’re being more cautious to say, ‘You know what, I’m waiting it out to see what the whole field looks like.’ ”
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