Posted by Mark Silva 9:30 am CST
The Republican National Committee’s 2006 campaign fundraising is off to a mighty start, thanks to a stop that President Bush made in Palm Beach, Florida, on his way home to Washington from the scene of the lingering devastation of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.
At the Palm Beach home of Dwight Schar, part owner of the Washington Redskins and CEO of Virginia-based NVR, a major homebuilder, Bush greeted about 150 guests Thursday evening who together provided $2.2 million for the Republican National Committee and $1.8 million for its Joint Campaign Committee, according to the RNC.
Some setting for a fundraiser: According to the local newspaper, Schar bought the place on Palm Beach for $70 million last year.
If the day ended on a profitable note, it started on a very sober one.
Bush attempted to make the most of progress along the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina. Yet, nearly five months after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, it appears, in places, as if the storm struck only yesterday.
“I was in (Hurricane) Camille in 1969, said Don Breland, owner of an outboard motor supply business in Waveland, Miss. “Camille was like a spring shower (compared) to a tornado. I’m 62 years old, and I’ve never seen destruction like I’ve seen here. We were the hardest hit. If it had hit New Orleans like it hit us, there would be no New Orleans.”
Andrew Card, the president’s chief of staff, is a veteran of these storms. As transportation secretary for the former President Bush, Card took charge of disjointed federal recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in South Florida. The parallels are important: In the aftermath of both storms, the federal government was faulted for an initially sluggish response.
“I was such a disaster when I was in the government that they named a storm after me, Hurricane Andrew,” Card joked in an address to the US Chamber of Commerce this week. He said he thought he’d never see another storm like Andrew and its $20 billion of destruction. “Yet that represented a very small percentage of what we are facing under Hurricane Katrina.”
