Rep. Dan Maffei swamps opponent Ann Marie Buerkle in cash

With more than $2.2 million, incumbent Maffei is on track to break 2008 record.

Washington -- If success at raising money translates into votes on Election Day, U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei would win his first re-election campaign by an overwhelming landslide.

More than three months before the election, Maffei is about to shatter his own record for the most money ever raised by a candidate for a Syracuse-area congressional seat.

Maffei, D-DeWitt, raked in more than $2.2 million by June 30, opening up a lopsided advantage over Republican Ann Marie Buerkle, who raised $245,000 since announcing her candidacy, new Federal Election Commission disclosure reports show.

At this rate, Maffei will easily surpass the $2.4 million he raised for the 2008 campaign, in which he won an open seat formerly held by Republican James Walsh.

Despite his status as a freshman member of Congress, Maffei continues to show that he is one of Capitol Hill’s most successful fundraisers. He ranks 34th out of 435 House members and his $2.2 million total is more than twice the average ($1.08 million) of his colleagues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group in Washington, D.C., that tracks money in politics.

Buerkle seemed stunned when told of Maffei’s financial advantage.

“That is an obscene amount of money,” Buerkle said. “It really is why Washington is broken and why so many people in this district are upset. The people who live here get lost and are out of the equation because of all of the outside money involved.”

Maffei’s financial lead over Buerkle is already shaping the battle for the 25th District seat, even though most serious campaigning begins after Labor Day. Consider:

• Maffei has amassed a full-time, paid campaign staff of nine people — a campaign manager, four field workers, three finance workers and a press assistant. Buerkle has no full-time, salaried staffers, and relies heavily on volunteers.

• Maffei has already spent $805,000 assembling his campaign organization and fundraising apparatus, compared to about $89,000 for Buerkle. With the extra money, Maffei hosted expensive fundraisers, including one in a private suite at the Verizon Center in Washington during a Syracuse University-Georgetown basketball game this winter. He also has a full-time fundraising consultant on retainer in Washington for more than $6,000 per month, according to the disclosure reports.

• With little money for advertising, Buerkle has taken her message directly to district residents. She has already made appearances in all 43 towns in the district, which covers all of Onondaga and Wayne counties, northern Cayuga County and part of Monroe County.

Maffei has declined for the past year to discuss his fundraising efforts, and campaign officials would not detail specifics of their strategy. Dan McNally, Maffei’s Syracuse-based campaign manager, offered a general overview of the strategy.

“We plan to maintain a voter outreach program that continues the conversation that was started in 2008,” McNally said. “It will focus on the difficult choices that we’ve had to make as a community and a country over the past two years, and that if we do nothing, we cannot move forward.”

He added, “We think the voters of Central and Western New York believe strongly that we can’t afford to take a step back to the failed policies of the past, and that conversation about choice is the foundation of our campaign.”

Buerkle said her campaign strategy will be a simple, grass roots appeal to people who think Democrats in Washington have taken the country on the wrong path. She said Maffei’s money does not intimidate her.

“Absolutely it does not make him unbeatable,” she said. “My strategy has always been grass roots. That’s how I’m going to win. I’m going to go to the people and get my message to them.”

Buerkle displayed that strategy in the past two weeks, even as she won endorsements from the Independence Party (with the state’s largest third-party enrollment) and former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

On Tuesday, for example, Buerkle attended six events in Monroe County. Some of the events were simple neighborhood gatherings for coffee. On Wednesday, she hosted a town hall meeting attended by about 100 people in Pompey. She relied on modest newspaper ads and social media such as Facebook to spread the word.

“In each town we are going to run the campaign like it was a local town supervisor’s race,” Buerkle said. “Rather than top-down, we’re going to run a bottom-up campaign.”

In the meantime, Maffei is likely to expand his overwhelming financial edge as members of Congress head toward a record year in fundraising, according to Dave Levinthal, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics.

Levinthal said it is still early in the election season, “but what we see is an unbridled increase in campaign contributions and spending. With the economy where it is, it’s a real head-scratcher for some people. But we see no evidence of a recession when it comes to campaign spending.”

Kristi Andersen, a political science professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said such large flows of money into political campaigns highlight a disturbing trend.

“It’s a definitely a trend that campaigns are more and more expensive,” Andersen said. “It’s really interesting that Maffei has not ever stopped raising money (since his 2008 election). We’ve produced this situation ... where it is the ever-present constant campaign, which I would argue distracts from the business of government.”

Buerkle said she hopes to prove that when it comes to modern-day American politics, money isn’t everything. “While the money is always important, I really believe this year it is the message and not the money that is going to win this election,” she said.

--Contact Washington correspondent Mark Weiner at mweiner@syracuse.com or 571-970-3751.