D.C. conservatives raising money for Webber

Jay Webber heads to Washington tonight to raise money for his campaign to succeed Rodney Frelinghuysen in Congress.  U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) will be the featured guest at the event at an event that highlights Webber’s connections to top national GOP fundraisers – one of his strengths as a candidate for the open seat in New Jersey’s 11th district.

Weber has assembled an strong list of conservative insiders to raise money for his campaign, including: Gene Scalia, whose father was a Trenton native who served on the U.S. Supreme Court; former top Reagan White House staffer Frank Donatelli; Young America’s Foundation president Ron Robinson; hedge fund manager Paul Packer; Charles Cooper, who was Reagan’s Assistant U.S. Attorney General; John O’Quinn, a Bush Justice Department official who was special counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts; and Leonard Leo, a former Bush campaign advisor who played a role in the Senate confirmations of three Supreme Court Justices.

The fundraiser will help Webber strengthen his bid for the Republican nomination, but also offers some fodder for Democrats in the general election.  Cotton was one of the Republican congressmen who opposed relief funding for New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy.  Still, Cotton is widely viewed as one of the GOP’s rising national stars; he was mentioned as a candidate for several top Trump administration posts, including CIA director.

The event will be held at the law offices of Baker Hostetler, where his campaign finance Chair, former Rep. Michael Ferguson, is a senior advisor in the government relations area.

For extreme political junkies: Baker Hostetler was founded by Newton Baker, a former Democratic mayor of Cleveland who served as Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Secretary of War. He was an unannounced candidate for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination, prepared to enter the race as a compromise candidate at the convention if Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign fizzled.  Roosevelt won it the nomination on the fourth ballot.