More Bad News for Michael Steele: RNC Loses March Fundraising Race To DNC

Michael Steele, the embattled chairman of the Republican National Committee, had some rare good news to report Wednesday: The committee raised $11.4 million last month, "a record high for a mid-cycle March." The bad news: That's not enough to match the Democratic National Committee. "The DNC will do at least $13 million for March," DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse told Politics Daily. He said passage of the new health care reform law sparked Democratic contributions toward the end of the month.

Bad news, bad press, bad reviews and outright desertions continue to dog Steele, who has been under siege since revelations late last month of luxury-level RNC spending and reimbursement for a $1,900 bill at a Los Angeles strip club.

This week, Steele's media consultants began to flee. On Message, the firm that's been with him for years and produced edgy ads for his 2006 Senate race in Maryland, severed its ties to the RNC. So did Alex Castellanos, a fixture in national campaigns, who advised Mitt Romney in the 2008 presidential race.

Castellanos went further and said Steele should step down. Steele has lost the support of major donors and GOP members of Congress, Castellanos said on CNN. Asked if Steele should resign, he replied, "I think that a change in direction . . . would do the party good."

RNC member Sean Mahoney of New Hampshire resigned from the committee himself and shared his blistering resignation letter with the New Hampshire Union Leader. "Not only has the out-of-touch, free-spending culture of Washington come to completely dominate the United States Congress, but I have watched with growing unease as the same mentality has seeped into our own national party," Mahoney wrote.

On Wednesday, the DNC signaled it will make Steele an issue in the Maryland governor's rematch between Democratic incumbent Martin O'Malley and former GOP Gov. Bob Ehrlich. Ehrlich had chosen Steele as his lieutenant governor for his first term. Hours before Ehrlich's official entry into the 2010 race, DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan circulated a memo asking, "Does Bob Ehrlich still feel that Michael Steele's management is sound enough to run the state?" Sevugan said Ehrlich's answer will "speak to his own judgment."

In other news this week, RNC chief of staff Ken McKay was forced out; top fundraiser Sam Fox abandoned ship; Steele hired a fundraiser who was fined for misusing $70,000; two former party chairmen formed the American Crossroads PAC to raise $50 million apart from the RNC; and Steele told ABC he was being held to a higher standard because he is black.

Steele's two-year term ends in January. The 168 members of the RNC could remove him by a two-thirds vote, but are considered unlikely to do so. Some Republicans, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have defended him, pointing to recent GOP victories in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.