Hatch selling $500 tickets to dinner with Bush
Hatch's U.S. Senate campaign is now selling tickets at $500 a person for a fund-raiser featuring President Bush, who will be in town next week to address the national convention of the American Legion.
Hatch campaign manager Dave Hansen said the president will address a noon luncheon for the senator's supporters in the Grand America Hotel on Aug. 31.
Utah is one of only four states where most residents give the president a favorable job-approval rating — around 55 percent at the last measurement by pollster Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV.
Tickets to the fund-raiser are selling briskly, said Hansen. He expects more than 200 people to attend — at least another $100,000 for Hatch's campaign war chest.
Pete Ashdown, Hatch's Democratic opponent, said Tuesday he thinks it is great that Bush is coming to town.
"I wish more U.S. presidents would come here," he said. "Maybe then we could get some policy adjustments to help the Western United States."
Ashdown said he's decided to hold his own dinner in honor of Bush's visit.
Ashdown's dinner will be on Aug. 29. The first 150 people who call his campaign at 983-7383 or RSVP on his campaign's e-mail — pete@peteashdown.org — will get the invites, the candidate said.
"It would be great if the president would come, Rumsfeld, Condi e — all those folks," Ashdown said. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are accompanying Bush to Utah.)
Considering Hatch already has $2.5 million in cash in his campaign account — the most he has ever had for one of his five U.S. Senate campaigns — why even try to raise more?
"You never know what will happen in any campaign," said Hansen, who has run a number of GOP races both in Utah and across the nation. "You would rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."
"As the top of the (GOP) ticket here, we also have a responsibility to help other Republican candidates and the state party," said Hansen.
For example, it is expected Hatch will run an aggressive turn-out-the-vote effort statewide which will, of course, help other GOP candidates down the ballot.
And you also never turn down the chance to have the president of your own party come to an event for your candidate, said Hansen. Although any number of other incumbent Republicans, in states where the president may have an especially poor job-approval rating, are not asking Bush to campaign for them.
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