Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Following up on yesterday’s Q1 fundraising reports, John McCain’s campaign announced yesterday that it had collected $12.5 million<\/a> in the first quarter of 2007, giving him the third best tally among the GOP candidates. According to The Politico, “McCain’s camp blamed his lackluster report on the senator’s relatively late official entry into the race and his attention to Senate business, particularly the war in Iraq. But Campaign manager Terry Nelson acknowledged that the campaign ‘had hoped’ to do better.” The late-entry excuse doesn’t much work (McCain’s been unofficially running for over a year), and the Senate excuse isn’t much better (official duties didn’t hurt Clinton or Obama).<\/p>\n * Possible presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said over the weekend that the U.S. should abolish bilingual education so that people aren’t speaking “the language of living in a ghetto.” Last night, on Fox News, Gingrich said his statement “did not refer to Spanish.” So, which language was he referring to? Gingrich said<\/a>, “Now, I’ll let you pick — frankly, ghetto, historically had referred as a Jewish reference originally. I did not mention Hispanics, and I certainly do not want anybody who speaks Spanish to think I’m in any way less than respectful of Spanish or any other language spoken by people who come to the United States.”<\/p>\n * Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), hoping<\/a> to cast himself as the candidate best positioned to end the war in Iraq, has unveiled a new website — Head to Head ’08<\/a> — to “contrast his statements on the Iraq conflict to those of his opponents for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.”<\/p>\n * Rudy Giuliani is the only top Republican presidential candidate not to endorse<\/a> a South Carolina measure that would force women to look at fetal ultrasounds before having an abortion. A campaign spokesperson said the bill “a good example of a matter best left to the states to decide.”<\/p>\n