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Robert Farmer

Robert Farmer, a Democrat, was the treasurer of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and the treasurer of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. In 1994 President Clinton named him to be U.S. consul general in Bermuda, a post in which he served until 1999. Previously he was a top fundraiser in the presidential campaigns of John Anderson in 1980, John Glenn in 1984, and Michael Dukakis in 1988.

John W. Mashek interviewed Farmer on August 3, 2007.

Let’s go back to the start.

I was born and bred Republican.

Really?

I was from Ohio, Cleveland, and in 1979 I was watching the Republican debates in Iowa. And there was one guy who really attracted my attention. And that was John Anderson. And for the first time in my life — no, the second time — I had sent a check to [Richard] Nixon earlier — I sent the thousand-dollar check to John Anderson. And, in fact, I leaned on a friend of mine to do the same thing. And as a result of that, I got an invitation to a downtown boardroom at some banking firm.

And you have to understand, I was a publisher. I was a golfer. I was a bridge player. And that was my life. I wasn’t at all involved in politics. But I went down to this meeting.

The meeting was in Cleveland?

No, no, it was in Boston.

Because you were in Boston by then, yes.

I had gone to Dartmouth [College] and Harvard Law School and never left Boston. Anyhow, we get there, and among the people there was David Thorne, who [was] John Kerry’s brother-in-law.

And we were talking about fundraising. I was in the publishing business, direct mail, and I made some comments about direct marketing. And David Thorne said, “Why don’t we ask Bob Farmer to serve as the finance chair for John Anderson in Massachusetts?” Now I had never done that before. And everybody thought that was a great idea, because they didn’t have to do it. And so the first thing I did is, I called the national headquarters and told them of the role that I had agreed to undertake. I said, “Do you have a list of people in Massachusetts who have given a hundred dollars or more to John Anderson?”

And they said fine. There was a list of 400 people. So after I reviewed it, I didn’t know anybody on the list. I called them back and said: “Look, he has got to come through Boston on the way to New Hampshire. Why don’t we do an event? And we’ll do it in my backyard.” And they all agreed that would be fine. So I arranged a hundred-dollar event in my backyard. And I called the first hundred people on the list. And my pitch was: “Look, would you agree to serve as a co-chair of this event for John Anderson? You don’t have to pay anything. You already [donated]. But we’d be happy to take another check. You can give up to a thousand dollars. But what I’d like you to do is try and bring three or four friends with you to see him and so forth and write a check.” And 90 out of the first 100 people agreed to do that.

So now I was in the direct-mail business, and I am a pretty good direct-mail person, so I wrote a letter to the other 300. I hadn’t heard of phone banks at that point, or I hadn’t figured it out. And on the other 300, I got 45 people to agree to serve as co-chairs. And that’s 90 percent of the ones I talked to, 15 percent of which was considered very good for direct mail, on the direct-mail piece. And it taught me a very important lesson about fundraising. And that is, it’s a very personal business.

It’s the personal appeal and so forth. And then the other thing of great interest in that campaign was that people could loan money to the campaign. So I wrote a letter to everybody in Massachusetts and said: “Look, you have given a hundred dollars. Loan the campaign $900. If we get over 6 percent or 7 percent, we will get retroactive matching funds for that in the general election, and you’ll get your money back.”

And I got a whole bunch of money. The people in Washington were very excited about that, so they had me send it out nationwide. And every day the campaign manager would call me up and say, “How much do you have?” And I would say, “Well, it’s four inches thick.” I was measuring it in inches, not in money.

Anderson wound up with what, about 9 percent of the vote?

Yeah, 7 or 8 percent. And that’s an interesting story there. We got the matching funds. And I won’t mention any names, but I get a call from one of the campaign officials, and he said, “We now are entitled to ‘X’ millions of dollars.” And he said, “We thought we should pay you a commission on what you have raised, and we have got a lot of bills coming in from other people — consultants and that kind of thing.” And I said, “Wait a minute — how much do you have coming in?” And well, it was like $2 [million] or $3 million. And I called John Anderson wherever he was on his vacation after the election and I said, “These sons-of-guns are trying to take the money that we promised the people we’d pay them back if we got the 8 percent and charge campaign expenses.” And he went ballistic.

I’ll bet he did.

That money was paid back, to the penny, if you follow me.

Anderson became an Independent, as you recall, and asked me if I would continue helping. And I did. And so I kind of became an Independent. Then, that fall, a friend of mine from the Kennedy School [of Government at Harvard University] — he was a professor over there — I said to him, “I’d really like to meet Mike Dukakis.” Mike had been a progressive governor, and he got defeated by Ed King in 1979. He was thinking, “Should I run for it again?”

So I took the professor and Mike [Dukakis] to lunch at my country club, Braeburn. And I said to him: “I have never come so alive as doing this politics. It’s really been exciting, and I’d like to be your finance chair if you run again. And I’ve got this network.” And he said, “Well, Bob, thank you very much. I have been in this business 20 years. I’d be very grateful if you’d help. But I don’t know you, and I couldn’t name you as my finance chair.” I said, “Fine.” But I said: “We have only got about 12 weeks before the end of the year. Let me set up some $500-a-person lunches at the Harbor Club downtown. And I’ll have 10 or 12 people at each of them, and that will be some serious money.” So he agreed to that.

And then I was so impressed with him, because these are all strangers. But they are all people who had contributed to John Anderson and they were kind of in the Mike Dukakis mold. And we’d have these lunches. And the people would come in. We would all be standing around, and then they would sit down and then we’d have lunch. And he’d be talking. And then after lunch, they would ask questions. He knew everybody’s name. It’s unbelievable to me, because I can’t remember names worth a damn.

That’s a political gift.

It was a gift. And plus, he was smart and so forth. And I was excited if I met an alderman from the city; now, here I am sitting with a former governor. And with a lot of very interesting people. One of the things I like best about fundraising is the interesting people you meet who have all been successful in one way or the other and have the resources to assist. And they all have a story. And so that’s how I was introduced to Dukakis. And then two months later, he came to me and he said, “Would you serve as my finance chair?” Now when he was an incumbent governor, they raised $645,000 for his race against King. In the ’82 race, when he got reelected, we raised over $4 million.

Wow.

And that’s what got me started as a player on the national scene. And the way we did it, it’s not Bob Farmer. It’s Bob Farmer recruiting finance-committee members. That’s what it’s all about. You recruit finance-committee members. And a lot of people have the capacity to go out and raise $5,000 or $10,000. Very few have the capacity to raise much more than that, because everybody has their Rolodex, but it’s limited and so forth.

In the ’88 primary race, a lot of people gave you and others credit for — because there were multiple candidates in the primary — that Governor Dukakis had the staying power that many of his opponents didn’t have. My recollection of that race was that in the primaries, as you moved along into March and April, that Governor Dukakis just had the financial wherewithal to hang in there while some others were running out of money.

Well, that’s true. I have often said: “Nobody stops running for president. They run out of money.”

And nobody decides that on Tuesday, “Gee, I think I’ll stop running for president.” They run out of money.

What’s Bob Dole say — “Embalming fluid is the only thing that stops a politician from running for president”?

No, the quote was, “The only thing that cures presidential fever is formaldehyde.”

You overlooked the ’84 race.

Well, go back there. Take me back there.

I was national treasurer of John Glenn’s campaign. And what happened was kind of interesting.

Well, when Michael [Dukakis] was elected governor, and I was his finance chair — that is one of the ultimate goals of fundraisers, to be finance chair for an incumbent governor. A lot of people have made a lot of money doing that by introducing New York bond people to different things. There are a lot of things you can do. And I worked for Mike Dukakis. And if I had made one nickel, my relationship with him would have been over.

Now when he got elected governor, I set up a series of luncheons in the governor’s office with people from all over the state. And we’d have 12 people there. We’d serve tuna fish salad sandwiches and sit around a big table in the governor’s office, which you’ve undoubtedly seen, and he’d give a pitch. And then he’d go around the table and ask everybody what their thoughts were or if they had any suggestions. And that’s the way you build relationships. And we had hundreds of people who didn’t know Mike Dukakis, probably hadn’t supported him, probably weren’t in the same party. And that’s how we developed a pretty strong team.

Now he is elected, and I am having some fun with him. And now the campaign is about to begin, for the next cycle, for president. And I remembered riding from Logan Airport to my house in the Secret Service car surrounded by motorcycle cops and everything with John Anderson. And I thought: “Wow, that’s fun. That’s playing at the presidential level,” which most finance chairs would not do. They would be deeply involved in all of the activities in the states where they were fortunate enough to have a good friend as governor. And I am not going to mention any names. You have been around. You know some of those people.

I know.

So I went down to Washington at the invitation of Ted Kennedy to spend the night at his house. And we had dinner at his house, the two of us. And we sat in the living room. And I am having a Scotch and water. And he is sitting there next to me telling me why he should be president of the United States. And I remember, in 1982, or 1983 it was, Ted Kennedy was looked upon as very presidential. And I am sitting there in that living room, wandering around looking at all of the photos of the Kennedys. And I had spent years in Massachusetts where they were — how people felt about the Kennedys.

And I thought, “Geez, what am I doing here? I mean, here am I, just this 40-odd-year-old kid. And I am sitting next to the senator who might be president, and he’s telling me why he should be president. I love this. This is great. So he said: “Bob, I am very interested in you. You have done a good job for Mike. And I would like you to go down to New York and meet Steve Smith,” who is his brother-in-law who ran the family business.

So I went down and interviewed with Steve. And it was announced a week later that Bob Farmer, should Senator Kennedy decide to run, would be the national treasurer. And then a few weeks later he decides not to run and so forth. And so now I get calls from [Walter] Mondale and Glenn. I don’t think I got one from Hart; Hart’s been to my home, so maybe that was for a Senate race. So I interviewed with Mondale. And Mike Berman, who is a very good friend of mine, was his national treasurer.

And there really wasn’t a role for me other than to be the finance chair in Massachusetts in the Mondale campaign. And the other fellow I interviewed with was John Glenn. And The Right Stuff, the movie, was coming out. And he was a national hero and dah, dah, dah. And the résumé was terrific. And he’s a very nice man.

I started talking to him and Bill White, who was his campaign manager. So we are going over to Averell Harriman’s house. And I remember [Washington superlobbyist] Tommy Boggs was there and Averell and [his wife] Pamela. And this was for John Glenn. And I said, “John, on the way home I would like to ride with you and talk about something.”

So the way I heard it later from his daughter is, he thought I was going to ask for an ambassadorship. And he said, “Annie [Glenn, his wife] can come with Bill in the other car.” [I said,] “No, no, I would like Annie to come with us.” So anyhow, she sits in the back seat and I am in the front seat. And he’s driving. And I said, “John, there is one thing about me you ought to know before we take this a further step.” And he said, “Well, what’s that?” And I said, “Well, I happen to be gay.” Well, he got white knuckles from gripping the steering wheel so hard. I think he almost went off the road.

We talked, and he said, “I am going to have to think about that.” He is a conservative and so forth. Well, then later on we talked, and I talked to Bill White. And he then asked me to serve as his national treasurer. It took him about a week. Now his daughter, Lyn, told me this story afterward, that I was first openly gay man that he had ever met that he knew was gay. I mean he had met a lot of gay people. He couldn’t have been nicer to me. He is a wonderful gentleman.

And I remember Time magazine, they were going to out me in the thing. And in those days, that was something. So they went to him and said, “We understand Farmer is gay.” And he said: “Yes, I know that. And I hired him. And he’s effective. And I am happy to have him.” But they didn’t; they just said a high official of the Glenn campaign is gay. And Senator Glenn said that he is effective, and I am glad to have him. But I was not outed at that point. Or I was not out at that point. So that was kind of an interesting thing.

And the Glenn campaign was very interesting, because I traveled around the country. I’d go to L.A. and San Francisco and Miami and all different places, before he did, to meet with people to encourage them to get involved and serve on the finance committee and do an event. I remember there was one big insurance guy in Cleveland who had a beautiful mansion in Beverly Hills. I went out there, and I couldn’t seem to get much traction there. But he was real rich, and he was going to do 25,000 or 50,000.

So anyhow, I am walking up the driveway with John Glenn. This was the worst experience that I ever had. And he turns to me and he says, “How much do we have in?” And I said, “$2,000.” Well, we go in and the place is filled with people, beautiful people, dah, dah, dah, dah. We had $2,000 out of it. The guy was a total . . .

Those are the lessons you go through. And I can remember Dick Gephardt told me a similar story that happened to him. That’s another story. But that’s what goes on. So the Glenn campaign — he is a terrific human being, but we ran out of money because it just didn’t take off. And Glenn never became a serious . . .

Bill White took a lot of heat, whether it was rightly placed or not, for not being a real strong campaign manager. I can’t speak much to that.

I can speak for about an hour to that, but I am not going to. I make it a point to never say anything ill of anybody. There is always somebody that’s going to take the heat when things don’t go well.

And virtually every campaign I have been in — we could walk through them — the campaign manager who started out didn’t end up as campaign manager.

Particularly when you lose, right?

Yeah. So Bill White is a very nice person. And he wasn’t successful. I think he was replaced at some point by some other people. But he was very loyal to John Glenn.

What has happened to the appeal, now, of direct mail since the Internet has proven to be a major fundraising vehicle? Is direct mail still effective, or has it become too expensive?

It’s much too expensive. They still do it to start building up the list. And then they send them e-mails and do viral marketing — the e-mails asking people to forward it to friends and so forth. And that changed the whole deal. Guys like me are now dinosaurs.

Well, except would you agree that — and we are going to interview him — people like [Richard] Viguerie, who goes after causes more than candidates and can scare the wits out of a huge mailing list of, for lack of a better term, right-wingers and draw money that way, even though it is expensive. Again, for a cause more than for a candidate.

Well, I am involved in a cause now. I am finance chair. We are fighting a constitutional amendment in Florida that’s going to be on the ballot, surprisingly, in ’08, the anti-gay-marriage amendment. And I am kind of an unlikely choice of a finance chair, because at my age I am not particularly concerned about gay marriage. But what I am concerned about is discrimination of any kind.

Is this going to be on the ballot this year or next year?

Next year, the presidential. The Republican Party spent $300,000 to put together signatures for this.

Is [Florida Governor Charlie] Crist for it?

Well, Crist, very interestingly, has said that he thinks the Republican Party has better things to spend their money on.

He has kind of laid out a little more moderate tone than Jeb Bush, hasn’t he?

I like him very much. And a lot of Democrats do. A lot Democrats feel that this guy, he’s had the reform on the ballots in Florida as a priority. So we are not going to have that situation that we had in ’00 with Gore. So that it is what it is, anyhow. But I digress.

Now the interesting thing, though, is that when the Glenn campaign was over, I was invited to serve as president of the John F. Kennedy Library.

You worked with Paul Kirk then, didn’t you?

Paul Kirk and John Cullinane. John was chairman. And I learned a lot about fundraising from that; it was very interesting. I remember Bill Brown. He was [the chairman] of Bank of Boston — which became, subsequently, three other names — but a real player. It was the biggest bank in Boston. So he and I would go into visit, say, Norman Leventhal, who was a big real-estate developer. And he’d say, “Norman, this Kennedy Library is very important in terms of tourism for Boston, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. This is a civic thing that we should support.” And Norman would say, “I agree with you, and I will commit to $60,000 over five years — $12,000 a year.”

And then the next week, Norman Leventhal would come to Bill Brown and say, “I am doing a park in the square down there, and we are trying to raise some money for it.” And then Bill Brown would say, “Oh well, the bank would be happy to support that,” and write a check. So what I found out was, in corporate fundraising, there are people who make the decisions as to all of these big corporations. Unfortunately, Boston has fewer of them today with the home office. But all of the big corporate [operations], they have an item to give money away. And they usually do it in the city in which they are located, for civic affairs. And they all trade. So if somebody comes to me and says, “How do I raise money for this wonderful project?” I say, “You have got to first find what they call an anchor tenant. You have got to find a board member, you have got to find somebody who is of the Bill Brown or Norm Leventhal status and get them to take an interest. And then that’s how you raise money.” It’s not the $25 and $100 checks for fundraisers; it’s the big boys who can direct corporate giving.

Well, now candidates will complain — particularly senators, and about half the Senate seems to be running for president these days — that they have to spend so much time on the phone. And they probably do have to spend some time, but the bulk of it is now done through the web, isn’t it?

Oh, no.

You think you still have to go direct appeal?

Yeah. I am working for [Barack] Obama, and he and I were talking about it. And he had a very successful quarter.

Very.

I think he did, what, $24 million or something? And $6.9 [million] of that was from the Internet.

Oh, so it’s only about a fourth.

Yeah. And I said to him: “This is only going to get bigger. All of those people who gave $10 or $25, it has been my experience that if you bet $2 on a horse, you root for him all the way around the track.” And I said: “All of these people are going to come back with further contributions in subsequent quarters. But if you do your viral marketing properly, you get them to get friends to visit the website, it should increase. So that $6.9 [million] should increase each quarter just as it did for Howard Dean.” And he was the first one to master this deal.

Joe Trippi gets a lot of credit for that. Dean really turned it into a very, very successful vehicle.

I jumped ahead of myself a little bit.

I was president of the Kennedy Library and I was finance chair for Governor Dukakis. And I bought a condominium down in Miami Beach and my partner and I were down there and the phone rings. It’s 7:00 one morning, and it’s Kitty [Dukakis]. Kitty and I are very close friends to this day. And she says, “He is going to run.” That was at 7 a.m.; at 7:05 John Sasso calls. He says, “You have to get back up here immediately.” So I went back up and we started this campaign. And the Dukakis campaign was a fascinating campaign because a lot of the things we learned in that campaign we were able to use in subsequent campaigns. And the first thing I did, obviously, was to talk to our Massachusetts finance committee and say: “This is big. We have got to have a blowout first quarter. We are going to do a thing at the Park Plaza.” Now what I have discovered is that if you have the capacity to do 50 grand, and you do it at your house, you are on the line, because it’s at your house.

And you can call your friends — and I tell people this — and say: “Look, I have never asked you for anything before. And I have been there for you for The Jimmy Fund [a charity for Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute], for the ballet, or whatever. But I need your help.”

I said: “I am having Mike Dukakis to my house, and I can’t embarrass myself in my own home, and you are a good friend, and I need to lean on you to help me out here,” and so forth. And that was the pitch. But what I found is if you would do $50,000 at your house and I do a big thing at the Park Plaza, you may do $25 [thousand] if you don’t have that sense of like, “Oh, my neck’s on the line.” And so for that big event, we had rooms where people would have private parties, and the governor would go around to these rooms.

You would have the Armenian room, and you would have this room and that room, wherever people would gather. And it was a blowout success. We did very well.

But now the second thing is, Mike Dukakis wasn’t at all well-known across the country. And [in] the ’84 campaign, I got to know a guy by the name Nate Landow, from Maryland. He was the state chair and so forth.

Who was for Gore.

Yeah. Well, that’s another thing. So anyhow, he had something called [IMPAC]. I can’t even remember the name of it, but it was an organization of all fundraisers from all over the country. And we came together. And we were all going to try and decide who we were going to support and go as a group. Well, that never works, because everybody has their own candidate.

So anyway, we had all of the candidates agree to come to Washington to make a presentation. So Dukakis came down and gave what I thought was a terrific presentation. Nothing happened. They ended up going with Gore, that group, or a majority of them, Nate Landow did. And I had lunch with Al Gore subsequent to the campaign. And, well, I think he was, let’s put it, say, disappointed in the production of that group and Nate Laudow. But that’s another story. But anyhow, here I am faced with a guy who nobody knows. And we’ve got to raise some national money. And yet we had some things going for us. He was the governor of one of the big states. And Michael is very good. So anyhow, what I did is, I said to myself, “We have got to build up finance committees in the different states.”

So I had a guy from New Bedford. This guy owned a furniture store in New Bedford, a pretty big one. And he went down to North Carolina a lot, to buy furniture. So I said, “I want you to be our ambassador.” I created something called the Ambassador Program. “I want you to be our ambassador to North Carolina.” He said, “Well, what do I do?” I said: “You go down and you find out the top elected Democratic officials in the state, and then you go pay a courtesy call from Governor Dukakis, as you’re his dear friend. And they’ll take the courtesy call. And then, at the courtesy call you say, ‘Obviously, Governor Dukakis would like your support, but who are the top fundraisers in the state that I should be talking too?’ Well, everybody in North Carolina knows who the top fundraisers are. And they can tell you. And then you go to candidates. They all know who the top fundraisers — well, these are the people.”

So then he would go to the top fundraisers. Maybe he would get a list of 10 or 15. And he would say: “Mike Dukakis has heard of you. Your reputation has preceded, and he has asked me to come down and meet with you. We are planning to come to North Carolina. We don’t have a date yet. But we would like you to be one of the hosts of the committee and maybe ride with him from the airport to the event, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and then help with the event and so forth.”

And we did this all over the country. We had one guy, Dick Morningstar, he did Arkansas. And he got to be very close to Bill and Hillary [Clinton], ended up was the number-two guy in OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation]. And the next job he had was the ambassador to the emerging Russian republics, and he is now Ambassador Morningstar. But the way he got know [the Clintons] was as our ambassador to Arkansas. And he’s setting things up down there. You follow me?

And we had that all over the country. We had a great guy, Ron Ansin, [who] went down to New York. And they were there until somebody arose, who was local, who could be the finance chair. And in New York, it was Nadine Hack and Ron Ansin; [they] worked with a lot of people. And then we anointed Nadine, because she was the most effective.

Would an ambassador-type or similar program be as effective now for a candidate who is really not as well-known as the so-called front-runners?

Yeah. I mean if somebody goes to Minnesota from Bill Richardson’s camp, and gets the names of a bunch of fundraisers —Vance Opperman, boom, boom, boom, boom — and then goes to see them and say, “Governor Richardson has heard of you and wanted me to meet with you and see if we could get you to cohost an event,” and so forth. Now, then he goes back to Richardson and says, “I want you to do a thank-you call and say that Bob Farmer was just up here and told me that he met with you, and that you had agreed to help, and [that] I am so excited and I have heard wonderful things about you.” [That] is how you begin a relationship. Now maybe the big shots are already committed to Hillary or Obama. But there is always a second tier of people.

And there is a group of people like Bob Farmer, when he started out, who never did it before, but are willing to jump in because of the rush, the excitement, the fact that you are sitting in a car next to somebody who might change their first name to Mr. President. That’s huge.

It is.

And, particularly, the Secret Service comes on. And you do this and that. It’s a rush. So yeah, that’s how you work it.

Now what struck me about Obama was, you have got guys, and I am not putting anybody down here, but you have got guys like [Joe] Biden, [Chris] Dodd, and Kerry, and Hillary, and bah, bah, bah, everybody else, Richardson. They have spent the last 20 years cultivating relationships, having lunches, having dinners, going to people’s homes, right?

Right.

And I sent out a letter on behalf of Obama to 400 of the top fundraisers in the country, and I said, “I am going with Obama,” and I gave them my reasons. I got 100 responses that said, “We’re interested.” And I sent those to the regional finance directors of his campaign and to the finance chair and to the finance director. And a lot of those people they converted into [fundraisers]. What’s so amazing, these other guys have spent 20 years . . .

And this is just the first run for Obama.

And it’s the first run. No one knows him. And yet there were these sophisticated fundraisers, who are among the best in the country, are willing to sign on over Hillary, who is the presumptive nominee. 

Probably think she can’t win.

By the way, I think she’s doing a fabulous job. I do. I think she’s done well in the debates. I think she’s run a good campaign. And I happen to think she’d make a good president.

The reason I was attracted to Obama is because I think the country might be safer with Barack Hussein Obama as our president. Because he would make all these crazies all around the world who want to kill themselves and hurt Americans think twice. I mean, my god, if somebody with his background and success story could become president of the United States, maybe it isn’t the evil that’s being . . . I don’t know.

Is public financing dead, or is it comatose now? It appears that candidates just are too strapped now with the money they have to spend to even worry about public financing.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. You see, in the first place, when you talk about public financing — Is it dead? — you have rules that the Federal Election Commission promulgates. Now every time they change those rules, it provides a blueprint as to how to get around them. You saw it with those 527s.

There is always a loophole.

There is always a loophole. And every time you pass a law, you are going to do it. Now the second issue that you raise, which is a very good issue, is will a presidential candidate take the $75 million that he’d be entitled to, where you check off a dollar on your income-tax [return] to pay for the campaign. And my very strong opinion is that, absolutely not, they will not take that money. They will not take matching funds, although [John] McCain may be forced to because he’s running out of money.

Because John Kerry gave his speech during the convention, right? During that speech, on the Internet people sent in $7.5 million.

Just while he was talking?

While he was talking. And we had a big discussion about this. How much money can we raise? Should we take the $75 million? And we decided to take the $75 million. My advice. It was bad advice, because I didn’t think we could raise that kind of money. But now, because of the Internet, because of the stakes, whatever, everybody feels that they can make a difference. And they are involved, [but] not through the expensive direct mail and all of this. It’s the Internet. Everybody has a computer today.

They all get involved. And they visit a website of some candidate they’re interested in. And they send it $10 or $20. So I guess I am saying John McCain probably won’t be the nominee. No. I don’t think any nominee of either party will ever take the federal matching funds again.

A lot fewer taxpayers are checking that box with the mistaken notion that it’s going to add a dollar or two to their taxes, or they just don’t want politicians to get the money. I don’t know how much money is left in the fund. I checked a couple of months ago, but there isn’t a lot.

No.

After we took those matching funds, I was moved over to the DNC, and I was called chairman of what I called the Trustee Program. This was in the Kerry campaign. I jumped ahead. And I remember Terry McAuliffe [the DNC’s chairman] saying: “Look, why don’t we sit down? And we’ll do a telethon, the five of us. And we’ll call everybody and ask them for $25,000. We’ll do a telethon.” And I said, “Terry, that’s not the way it’s done.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean?” And I said: “Let me tell you a story. I said to Mike Dukakis one time, ‘Why do you think people give you money?’ He said, ‘Well, they like me.’ I said, ‘Well, with all respect, I don’t think that’s the reason.’ He said, ‘Well, they like my issues.’ I said, ‘No. I don’t think that’s the reason.’ He said, ‘They are trying to get influence.’ I said, ‘No, that’s not the reason.’ He said: ‘I don’t need a goddamn primer. Well, why do you think they give me money?’ I said, ‘It’s very simple, Mike. They don’t want to say no to the person who asks.’”

That’s very interesting.

They don’t want to say no. If you look at your checkbook, all of the things that you wrote to nonprofits over the past couple of years, it isn’t because you cared about gun control, but it’s because somebody you care about asked you to help them, because they were sponsoring or being honored or whatever it is.

You are absolutely right. You don’t want to say no. You don’t want to say no.

Well, it’s interesting. I’ll tell you a story. I served as treasurer of the Democratic Governors Association for seven years, from ’84 to ’91. And Booth Gardner was the governor of Washington, nice guy. And I had met with all of the governors and worked with them and with their top fundraisers to raise money for the governors association. And so Booth asked me to come out to Washington and have dinner with him and talk about fundraising. His wife was the heir to the Weyerhaeuser fortune. She had funded his first campaign for governor. And she thought it would be nice in his reelection campaign if it was more publicly funded. And he didn’t know a lot about fundraising. So we had a dinner. It took about three hours. And we were up on top of some thing looking out all over Seattle. It’s very nice. And I told him my insights on fundraising.

I ran into him a year later and said, “How’s it going?” He said, “Bob, it’s going sensational.” He said, “I remember one thing from that dinner that we had,” which kind of irritated me, because we had spent three hours together. But I am always willing to learn. So I said, “What was the one thing you learned?” And he said, “Well, before, if I went to Tacoma and I walked into someone’s home and there was this big crowd — 100, 200 people — I’d say, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize how popular I was in Tacoma.’” He said, “After I had dinner with you, I said to myself, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize how popular the host of the party is in Tacoma.’”

He’s the one who brought the crowd in.

The host brought the crowd in. And [Gardner] said, “That was a very insightful lesson for me to learn.”

There are a lot of stories like that. At some point I’d like to write a book and talk about fundraising.