The Jim Bunning Guide to Campaign Finance

Well, the moment we've all been waiting for has finally come and gone, and here we are still wondering what the hell our boy Jim Bunning--KY GOP Senator-cum-crazyman (or is it "crazyman-cum-Senator"?) extraordinaire--was talking about last week when he bragged that his campaign finance report would "show him with more cash on hand for his 2010 race than any other Kentucky Republican candidates or potential candidates." (As reported in KY's Courier-Journal on July 8th by reporter James R. Carroll) Well, that report was due out on July 15th...so do you suppose our boy Jimbo was right about his predictions of PAC champagne wishes and caviar dreams?

As you may have supposed, it actually has gone quite the other way for our Man in the Trenches. Beleaguered by the usual crowd of political enemies on the Democratic side, he's also had a very entertaining feud with the leaders of his own party, engaging in a beef with minority leader Mitch McConnell so epic it borders on Fiddy Cent-esque (although I suppose you could also make the usual degrading Hatfield V McCoy comments so popular when describing catty Kentucky political bickering. Hint: when choosing between hillbilly and gangsta rapper analogies, the savvier Kentuckian will usually go the gangsta route). So basically this was Jim's way of trying to say "F you" to everybody, but of course everyone knew he was making an impossible bluff--there's no way he could've had more money than anyone else, especially since most of the big money types have been scared well clear of Mr. Bunning by all the petulant GOP infighting and wackier-than-usual Bunning crazy talk.

So let's take a look at the official numbers:

So far, from April through June of this year, Jimbo has on hand $302,466. Republican Trey Grayson has about twice that: $603,164. Ky's attorney general and resident pretty boy, Dem Jack Conway, has outdone both by raising $1.3 million in the same amount of time.

Nowadays it seems that elections are getting pretty expensive in KY. Mitch raised a staggering 20.9 MILLION DOLLARS for his 2008 reelection campagn (compare that with the paltry $5.7 million he raised and spent on his 2002 campaign), but get this: he SPENT $21.3 million (for that kinda dough I was expecting his tv spots to be produced by Lucasfilm, Ltd.). Mitch is still paying off that million dollar debt, from what I hear, and he only narrowly defeated opponent Bruce Lunsford, who rose and spent only half what McConnell did. If Republicans are going to have the same kind of trouble in 2010 over Bunning's Senate seat, then I'd say things don't look good, especially considering Conway's numbers. In light of that, it may be time for Jimbo to really up the crazy ante if he truly wants to keep his job.

So, in the spirit of pushing our hip hop analogy to its inevitable conclusion, I'd like to offer my own suggestion for Bunning's next shrewd political move: since he already seems to be channeling the afore-mentioned gangsta rappers and their own lyrical rivalries (in certain hip hop circles McConnell would surely be called out for the "sucker MC" he is), I think Bunning should consider non-chalantly--yet conspicuously, and in front of a pack of hungry-eyed Courier-Journal reporters--openning his briefcase and flashing a wad of Euros. Hey, it worked for Jay-Z.