According to this MSN article, John Kerry is considering delaying his official acceptance of the Democratic Presidential Nomination for financial reasons. (Once he is officially the nominee, he gets campaign funding from the government and can no longer use money from private donors. His budget would be set at the exact same amount that President Bush will also receive, but since the Democratic National Convention is being held earlier than the Republican National Convention (traditionally, the incumbent party holds it convention second), Kerry would be at a disadvantage because his spending caps would kick in well before the President’s.
The article goes on to point out some of the problems with this idea: is Kerry the nominee as soon as he is voted the nominee, or when he officially accepts the nomination? And there’s a nice quote from a Bush campaign spokesperson: “Maybe they’ve found a way to manipulate the federal law in such a way as to avoid that, but fundamentally this is about John Kerry thinking the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to him.”
Interesting thing, that quote — since the article makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of the not-insignificant fact that the Republicans are holding their convention not in the traditional middle of August, but over the last two days of August and the first two days of September. Thus, President Bush gets to use private funding until September, and only then will he be faced with the regulations that come with full Federal funding of his campaign.
I can’t believe that this wasn’t part of the tactical plan when the Republicans scheduled their convention later than any major party convention has ever been held before (the other obvious reason being so they could more easily lay a political claim to the 9-11-01 anniversary nine days after their convention ends). Nope, all the scheming is on Kerry’s part, the article suggests. That whacky liberal media.