Ben Quayle, son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, and congressional candidate in Arizona's third district, announced last night that his campaign has exceeded its fund-raising goals this quarter.
It may come as no shock to anyone, the dude's got a shit-load of money.
According to the campaign, Quayle's raised $560,000 this quarter, which exceeds the roughly $500,000 the campaign raised last quarter.
That gives Quayle about $1.1 million, with roughly $680,000 of that being cash on hand.
Because his last name is Quayle, the candidate has been getting a lot of heat lately that his pops is trying to buy him a congressional seat.
In fact, former state Senator Pam Gorman said exactly that to the Arizona Republic earlier this week.
"There's 10 people in this race, and there's nine of us that may not agree on anything, but we all agree that it is completely offensive that Dan Quayle is trying to buy his little boy a seat in Congress," Gorman told the Republic.
That being the case, we called Quayle's campaign spokesman, Damon Moley, to see if he thought bragging about how much cash the candidate was rakin' in was a good idea or an invitation for even more criticism about him being a daddy's boy.
"Name-recognition obviously helps," Moley says. "It gets people to campaign events, but it doesn't convince them to reach in their pockets and write a check."
Moley says Quayle, currently leading the race in the polls, just has a better depth of knowledge when it comes to the issues and can convey his message better than the other candidates.
"[Having the last name Quayle is] a double-edged sword," Moley says. "Nobody's asking any other candidates about their dads."
No shit, dude. None of the other candidates' dads are Dan Quayle. He may have great ideas, but it's still gonna be brought up.
Moley then jokingly encouraged New Times to write a "vicious hit-piece" about candidate Quayle -- implying it might help his chances in the Republican primary because of the perception that we're left-leaning.
That said, we'll just say: Ben Quayle's a remarkable young man and deserves a seat in Congress. In no way is his father buying him the seat -- it's his bright ideas and high, moral fiber that will propel him to political success.
