The Republican Party of Illinois sure has found itself quite a Senate candidate, hasn’t it?
Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, said Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary was a “selfish hedonist” for being a lesbian. Keyes, who twice unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Maryland, is trailing Democratic State Sen. Barack Obama in the Illinois race. His comments came in an interview with OutQ, a satellite radio station for gays and lesbians.
Expressing support for a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage — an issue that the vice president has said is best left to the states to legislate, Keyes said: “The essence of … family life remains procreation. If we embrace homosexuality as a proper basis for marriage, we are saying that it’s possible to have a marriage state that in principle excludes procreation and is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism.”
Asked whether that meant Mary Cheney was “a selfish hedonist,” Keyes said: “That goes by definition. Of course she is.”
And speaking of the Senate candidate most likely to be committed to an institution, Sasha Issenberg had an interesting item the other day in The New Republic about Keyes in which she bucks the trend and argues that his campaign may end up helping Bush on Election Day.
Keyes’s hyperbolic oratory in defense of the nineteenth century can’t possibly damage Obama in Illinois — or influence that safely Democratic state at the presidential level–but the state’s geography gives Keyes a platform that extends through a broad swath of the heartland. Many of the state’s media markets lie near–or even across–its borders, a fact that has long tormented political consultants faced with the costly proposition of having to pay for access to a lot of eyes and ears who can’t vote for their candidate. “You just have to live with the waste of it spilling out,” says Democratic media consultant Kevin Lampe. But one man’s waste is another man’s base. The viewers exposed to Illinois political advertising include conservative voters in up-for-grabs Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
It’s not a bad argument, but there’s a small flaw.
In order for Keyes’ hyper-conservative message to bleed over into competitive Midwestern states, Keyes actually has to have the resources to disseminate that message.
Let me put it another way: Keyes doesn’t have any cash.
The Keyes campaign likes to boast of the $50,000 it allegedly took in immediately after their candidate entered the race. But that’ll hardly buy a radio ad campaign for a couple of weeks in Peoria.
As recently as last week, Keyes’ campaign manager didn’t know how much money they had, but was highlighting $100,000 in online donations. Again, for a statewide Senate race, that’s not a lot of money and it’s certainly not the kind of amount that will have an effect on neighboring states.
Indeed, Keyes backers are already preparing for a no-frills, no-money campaign.
“What Alan Keyes may lack in terms of the high-dollar, hard-money donors, he can make up for with the volume of grass-roots contributions,” said Joseph A. Morris, chairman of the United Republican Fund, which donates to conservative candidates in state and local races in Illinois.
[…]
Keyes will have few paid staff members, relying as much as possible on campaign volunteers, campaign officials said. It’s not known whether he will be able to afford polling.
Translation: No money, no money, no money.
Well, maybe the NSCC will come to Keyes rescue? Don’t count on it. The national party has competitive races to worry about and the Illinois campaign — in which Obama leads by 41 points — isn’t one of them.
Perhaps the Bush campaign will come sweeping in with some extra resources? With Keyes attacking Dick Cheney’s daughter as “a selfish hedonist,” I wouldn’t count on it.