McCollum said she helped recruit Walz to run in the district back in 2006 after seeing how aptly he communicated with different groups across southern Minnesota.Rahm was particularly obsessed with recruiting candidates who could self fund to some extent, who came with a bunch of money in the bank. But of course most of these rich guy candidates have limits. They'll buy their way into the first election cycle and then start raising money by tapping the same network of rich donors that every other rich guy candidate is trying to extract money from. It isn't a good "financial model" over even the medium term.
“Being a football coach and a teacher, he knew a lot of people in town, and he went out and talked to farmers and just talked to people and really listened — that’s how he took that district,” she said.
McCollum recalled being met with exasperation by Rahm Emanuel, who as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at that time, was in charge of overseeing the party’s efforts to take back control of the House.
“I came back to Rahm, and I said, ‘I met this fabulous guy. He’s in a red district, and I think he’s going to win,’” McCollum recalled. “And Rahm looked at me like I was crazy. He said, ‘No, he has no money, no nothing.’”
There are lots of other problems with focusing on recruiting rich guys, of course.