The President's Dinner, which I briefly mentioned Wednesday, actually occurred. There were nearly 6,400 people in attendance and the Republican House and Senate campaign committees will split $30 million for this Fall's campaigns.
Most of the money raised was soft money - which Democrats pretend to hate . But when you add to Wednesday night's total another $30 million raised by the Republican National Committee a few weeks earlier, the DNC's Terry McAuliffe must be dusting off the "Clinton Fundraising Memo" file folder.
By the way, those two events were headed by brilliant women fundraisers: Margaret Parker did the RNC event and Gretchen Purser handled the Wednesday night festivities. The phrase "brilliant women fundraisers" is a redundancy in Washington where many of the top fundraising jobs - the Republican National Committee's finance director, Bev Shea, being another example - are headed by women.
In a previous life the Mullmeister made part of his living writing software. This was so long ago it was still referred to as a "computer program." Isn't that quaint? Anyway, one of the computer programs I wrote does only one thing: It does ticketing and seating for large political dinners.
This was the software which did the seating, for instance, at the Candlelight Dinners
which led off Inaugural Weekend in January 2001. There were 5,700 people at three different
locations which was a little like playing three dimensional chess with chess pieces which could
forget where they were supposed to go. (For a great story about a Hollywood bigwig running headlong
into the wrong guy, go to the Mullings of January 19, 2001)
The President spoke to lead off the event. When I finally made it upstairs to where the dinner was being held, I looked across the sea of 600 tables and saw there was no one moving around, no one visiting, no one doing anything but listening to the man they had come - and happily paid - to see.
Even in the Washington Post, which feels a corporate responsibility to say bad things about political fundraising events, reporter Linton Weeks wrote,
"At the simply named President's Dinner, sponsored by the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, there were soft lights -- red, blue and yellow; soft music -- Steve Wariner crooning the national anthem, and Gill's wife, Amy Grant, singing a lovely hymn; and soft money -- lots and lots of soft money ..."
The Mullings Director of Standards and Practices sat with Vince Gill and Amy Grant and pronounced them gracious and warm people.
We had the President, the Speaker of the House as well as the rest of the Republican leaders and members of the House and the Senate, and half the population of South Dakota coming into the Washington Convention Center and, sure enough, protesters showed up.
You know that a group of whales is called a pod. And an assembly of lions is called a pride. And a bunch of badgers is called a cete.
The protesters were from Common Cause, the self-proclaimed public watchdog group which wants to know everything about every person who donates every nickel to every political party, organization, or candidate and yet has never released a list of its own donors. And won't.
There was a time in Washington when even a two or three million dollar dinner would attract all kinds of interesting fauna, and not just the campaign finance reformers. We would get anti-fur people, anti-meat people, anti-people people ... People came from all over to demonstrate. Maybe they're all going to the World Bank meetings.
There were no more than three or four protesters for The President's Dinner. They marched around in front with a couple of signs but when they realized that (a) no one who had paid $2,500 to come to the event was going to suddenly decide THIS IS JUST WRONG and race headlong for the taxi line and a quick trip for a Black Tie Big Mac, and (b) no television cameras were going to cover a demonstration of four people, they left.
A dejected paucity of protesters.
The Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to a page with more "pride of lions" things, a link to the Washington Post story, and the usual things.
If you are working at a lobbying firm, a government affairs office, a coalition, or a PAC you should take a
look at this page to see how advertising in Mullings might serve your organization very well:
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