Rick Perry will mine California donors on debate trip

A just-released schedule from Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign indicates he will be able to leave Texas’ wildfires for a day to make his way to California for the GOP presidential debate -- and use the occasion to fan another kind of wildfire.

Perhaps more than any other candidate, the Texas governor will use the upcoming trip to raise money for his presidential campaign. As the late arrival in the race, Perry has already proved his bona fides as a world-class fundraiser. Members of his finance team says “it is going like wildfire” and their California schedule backs up the claim.

A draft schedule obtained last week showed the potential for half a dozen events in California for Perry. Other presidential candidates, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have had Southern California events planned but their campaigns did not respond to requests for detailed information.

After the debate, Perry will meet potential donors at Landmark Aviation terminal in San Diego, according to one campaign finance team member. The following morning he will attend another event at the Hyatt Aventine in La Jolla. He has other fundraising events on the schedule in Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Bakersfield, Fresno and in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley.

An advance planning document from the governor’s California fundraising team shows tickets available for $1,000 -- though donors are encouraged to bundle $20,000 to $50,000 each to co-host events. Perry has been emphasizing the need for bundlers, and his backers say their effort is going well, so far.

Perry has an impressive steering committee of supporters in the state, including Michael and Dean Spanos of the Spanos development companies and owners of the San Diego Chargers, and Steve Chazen, president and chief financial officer of Occidental Petroleum.

San Diego real estate executive Fred Maas has been working the phones for Perry in Austin and San Diego and reports today that he is seeing an overwhelming early response. An experienced strategist who worked for the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole and John McCain, Maas says of the enthusiasm for Perry, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Maas said the California finance team working for Perry has already put together a list of more than 200 people in the state who had expressed interest in becoming bundlers for the Perry presidential campaign.

Bundlers are necessary to the official candidate campaigns because contributions are limited by federal election law to $2,500 per individual. Checks of an unlimited amount can be collected by “Super PACs,” the new entities created after recent court decisions knocked down limits to fundraising by independent political committees.

All of the major campaigns have such independent organizations that raise and spend money without coordinating with the candidate and the official campaign.

Perry supporters have set up several of these Super PACs, which can collect unlimited sums from individuals and corporations. The biggest of the Perry Super PACs, “Make Us Great Again,” is looking to raise $55 million during the primary season, according to an internal planning document obtained by MSNBC.

A spokesman for the Super PAC, Jason Miller, said the figure was included in “an early planning document. It is now outdated.”

Miller declined to elaborate but other members of the fundraising team said the Super PAC was likely to exceed early expectations. That means the Super PAC could raise more than the campaign itself during the primary period.

Another Perry Super PAC, Americans for Rick Perry, has just hired a team of experienced fundraisers to help build its grass-roots presence in key states, including Iowa and Virginia. Scott Cottington, a veteran GOP fundraiser based in the Twin Cities, said his Voyageurs Company would take the lead in national fundraising for the group.

The organization’s founder, Bob Schuman of San Diego, said his SuperPAC had a fundraising goal of about $5 million.

Another candidate, Bachmann, had planned to meet with California donors on Thursday, one day after the GOP debate. Instead, she’ll be back at the Capitol, attending President Obama’s jobs address to the joint session of Congress that evening.

Campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said most of Bachmann’s planned Los Angeles fundraising events had been rescheduled for the following week. The schedule was “still fluid,” Stewart said, but the confirmed events would be held at private homes.

Meanwhile, she said, Bachmann was continuing her outreach to West Coast contributors by phone, placing fundraising calls to those she had planned to meet with this week.