From today’s front-page story on how Thompson is poaching fundraisers from McCain:
“I am very sorry to see what’s happened to John,” Dowd said in an interview. “I don’t think his campaign is being well run. It’s been over-managed. He blew through $8 1/2 million. It’s a difficult thing to leave a friend and go to another friend. But we lost the John McCain I knew.”
From PoliticalMoneyLine:
I guess that it must be some comfort to Dowd that very, very little of that $8.5 mil was his….
UPDATE: It’s true that Dowd did “bundle” for McCain in previous cycles, but the point is that he turned his back on McCain long before Thompson entered the race — and he didn’t even bundle that much. He told the Post that he raised around $7K for McCain this cycle. In modern campaign math (and remembering the $2600 max), that’s three phone calls. Yawn.
And, fwiw, Dowd split with the Senator over torture. As in, Dowd is for it, McCain is ag’in it. I don’t know why Dowd didn’t tell that to the Post, as I’m sure it would have hurt McCain with the GOP base even more.