by Tina Grazier
Whenever politics comes up in a discussion the question of money in politics soon follows. Large sums of cash poured into campaigns seems to drive people crazy. It taints the process, according to those who believe there’s a need to control or regulate it. But does the past record of cash contribution reflect an advantage either by class (1% vs 99&) or party and group? And if money does impact elections does the amount matter or is it how the money is used?
When the Supreme Court ruled that “money is speech” in the Citizens United case the frustration about money in politics ratcheted up a few notches. The issue is a cause for concern for people of all political persuasions but as is almost always the case, the loudest most organized voices seem to come from the union left. They despise the fact that people in corporations are now able to contribute just as can people associated with unions, or religiously based groups, or environmental groups, or groups like Citizens United. The loudest voices want the Supreme Court ruling overturned because they say it has fowled the process (read advantage) for the little guys. The real reason is that it leveled a playing field and foweled the advantage unions once had over “powerful corporations”. But recent campaign contribution statistics don’t support these hyped claims. For instance, John Hinderocker of Powerline cites a Minneapolis Star article and notes the overwhelming cash advantage that unions and the Democrat Party have had in one state in the last three election cycles:
Since 2007, Democrats and their supporters consistently raised and distributed more money than their opponents. Even with the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed businesses to give money directly to political action committees, business interests and Republicans have not kept up. …
…In the last six years, union contributions dominated donations to state political action committees. State and national unions spent $17 million in Minnesota between 2007 and 2012. Businesses, newly empowered to spend after the Citizens United decision, directly donated about $3 million.
Open Secrets points out a profound change in contribution levels by outside groups for conservative vs. liberal candidates. This national shift follows the the 2010 Supreme Court decision (Scroll down for chart) but does it mean corporations and rich people now overwhelm unions and leftist organizations or does it simply mean the people of the United States have soured on liberal politics and policy?
According to Open Secrets, here, Liberal are surging in the 2014 campaign cycle so far with conservative spending at $9.3 million as opposed to $18.4 million by liberal groups. Some of this spending can be attributed to defensive efforts to overcome low approval ratings for the president and his (bombing) signature legislation and some of it to early efforts to boost Hillary to the prominent Democrat position.
It’s difficult to evaluate how Tea Party (conservative) contributions would have impacted the last election spending numbers since the efforts of several groups were successfully blunted by IRS targeting. Clearly they are being targeted in the 2014 election by the establishment Republicans as well as by liberal groups. Their case makes it clear that politics is a rough competitive game.
Money is the tool candidates and parties use to deliver their message and present candidates for consideration. It is also a tool used in unscrupulous ways to defeat or destroy the competition. There is little evidence to support the idea that the Citizens United decision has created an advantage for any group in the political spectrum. Voters would be wise to worry less about the amount of cash donated and instead focus attention on methods and messages. Fundamental transformation sounded wonderful to a lot of people in the 2008 election. The splashy presentation and rock star flash added to the appeal of the messengers. Five years of high unemployment, a health insurance fiasco, foreign policy disasters and a sluggish economy featuring rising prices have given fundamental transformation and it’s messengers a very bad name. Have voters learned anything about phony messaging? It’s hard to say. Clearly a lot of money can deliver a big fancy campaign. But the money didn’t buy or guarantee a good result even when it helped deliver a political win.
Voters donate money and in doing so they are taking a risk just as they are with any investment. The risk becomes greater the more we donate but large sums don’t come with guarantees. Money doesn’t always give the advantage to the group or person that spends the most. George Soros money could not stop the reelection of George Bush in 2004. More money, even from the unfairly maligned Koch Brothers, didn’t award the presidency to Mitt Romney. So is it the money that makes elections? Or is it the methods used by the parties and candidates…and is it the conditions in our everyday lives that make the biggest difference in elections?
Where two fairly equal candidates square off, money is almost always the deciding factor. Money is that important.
Where one side has the best message, but the opposition has the most money, it can turn what should be a lopsided race into a squeaker. Money buys influence, no doubt about it. But, if you don’t have the right message and good candidates, money has a hard time buying the election.
So money isn’t always the answer to winning. We’ve seen a few examples of this to give us hope, but the sad truth is it may take a lot of money to overcome a good message by a good candidate, but it can be done! That’s wrong and we’ve seen many, many more examples of this happening.
When it takes $1,000,000 to run for an election for an Assembly position that pays $160k a year, you know something stinks in Sacramento. So if it’s not the money, it’s the power they are after. Power equals money – money equals power. This is simply the way the world works, like it or not and personally I don’t like it. I’m sure most of us don’t and there ought to be some way to fix it.
The FPPC (CA) and FEC (Feds) both have stats that show the candidate that spends the most wins about 92% of time, and has for many years. This is not by coincidence. And as elections evolve and they become more and more choreographed by pros using every psychological trick in the book, elections cost more. In fact the costs are skyrocketing. A little guy can’t play this game without a huge amount of support and that brings back in influence buying.
Almost everything about a candidate for high office gets tweaked, reshaped and designed to appeal to the most voters. We rarely know who we are really voting for, if it’s a high office. The excuse for all this creativity… you have to win anyway you can in order to be the leader! Another way of saying this is the ends justify the means. We’ve seen once too often that a candidate desperate to raise money allows himself to be virtually owned and forever in debt to those behind the scene people that supplied the money and brought him into high office. It’s an absolute travesty that this can happen. Even worse are politicians that pass legislation for money…this used to be called a bribe, now it’s called a generous campaign contribution.
Elections are so expensive it simply forces candidates to do things they shouldn’t to get the cash. The candidate doing this is eventually compromised and if he doesn’t sell out…chances are he will lose. Not much of a choice is it? But, at least his integrity will be in tact.
When it comes to politics, the guy who said, money is the root of all evil, pretty much had it right. Money doesn’t belong in politics, people do.
Hopefully, we will get candidates who reflect what the people want and who can win, like Reagan did and not lose like McCain and Romney.
We’re tired of holding our nose when voting because the RNC and Carl Rove keep pushing progressive Republicans. Anyone who sends them money is getting the RINO that will continue to let Democrats have their way with transforming this country into a socialist state.
The Tea Party IRS House hearings have gone no where because the Republicans in charge don’t want the TP organizations funded for 2014. Daryl Issa could have issued subpoenas to get to the bottom of this, but he hasn’t. Why not? He’s limiting the playing field by restricting the funding to conservative candidates who run against the established progressive Republicans.
20,000 million conservative evangelicals republicans stayed home in 2012, instead of voting for another progressive democrat-lite.
Chamber of Commerce aims $50M salvo at Tea Party to ensure “no fools on the ticket”
http://allenbwest.com/2013/12/chamber-commerce-aims-50m-salvo-tea-party-ensure-fools-ticket/
Jack you wrote: “but the sad truth is it may take a lot of money to overcome a good message by a good candidate…” and then went on to say it was “wrong”.
I’d use the word unfortunate rather than wrong. The little guy has always had a more difficult time competing against the bigger guy. I doubt that will ever change. But there isn’t any reason that big money should be the reason the voters are fooled by a well funded unscrupulous candidate and that was the point of this article.
We voters need to learn to question the purpose and message behind those expensive campaign ads and events. (See efforts by the New York Times to wipe clean the records of Hillary and Susan Rice on Benghazi prior to the next election as an example).
There isn’t anything we can do about the gullibility and naivete of the public at large but there are voters who think of themselves as informed who need to step up their games and not let themselves be fooled by hype. It’s unfortunate that so many of us can be swayed easily by “the sell”.
Jack you often write about situational awareness when advising people how to stay safe in a dangerous world. I’m simply saying voters need to employ the same kind of skills when evaluating candidates and campaigns. Money can buy all kinds of campaign Tom foolery, drive by swindles, fraudulent images, and fake credentials. We voters can overcome the impact of big cash by being more aware. We can avoid buyers remorse by being more aware, more responsible, and better informed.
This is an important skill that is necessary in other aspects of our lives. The swindle game is everywhere. As long as the people can be easily fooled politicians will use campaign cash to that (evil) end.
Saying money doesn’t belong in politics is like saying money doesn’t belong in the world. While I understand the frustration you have I can’t see it changing. As long as it isn’t going to change we need to find ways to make the evil use of it less likely to work. The “fundamental transformation” of America phrase should have created mass suspicion…instead it was met with loud fawning applause and women with cases of the vapors. The claims about what Obamacare would do were grossly overstated and it was sold using tricks and lies. Claims about what Medicare and Social Security could do were questioned initially and have been revealed to be unsustainable but money was spent over decades to scare people away from reforms.
There are other instances and examples of corruption within political parties that involve money. There may be ways to address these problems and I defer to you and your experience in local and state politics to address these problems.
#1 Post Scripts, the pay of a CA Legislator is basically $95,000 per year with no retirement not $160,000. (http://tinyurl.com/myx9xg4)
In my experience, limited to local and state elections the impact of the Citizens United decision has not been a positive impact on elections. Voters have over the past 20 years learned to ignore PACs. In the elections I have been a party to, PACs have had a major negative impact on the candidates they support with voters. PACs almost always run slick negative ads that the voters blame on their candidates.
There is a threshold of campaign spending that a candidate must do under their own name or they have no chance of winning. Once that is reached there tends to be an enormous amount of waste that loses votes and enriches political consultants.
Cut to the quick a candidate must reach the voters with his message at least 3 times. The way to accomplish that outreach is by direct mail. Most voters in CA use Vote by Mail Ballots. So to run a successful campaign you figure out the number of voters that you must contact multiply by three and then by 50 cents. Then add consultant fees, fund raising cost, campaign management and signs. That’s what a campaign cost. Spending 4 or 5 times that amount doesn’t add to the victory.
An outside group with a message that the candidate cannot control is not helpful. Look at the spending for the CA 1st District Assembly race in the 2012 Primary. Dahle raised the necessary threshold for campaign spending in his race. His opponent did not but was supported by $500k in PAC money. Dahle won in June by a commanding majority that could not be overcome in November. The PAC consultant went ludicrously negative and turned the race into a 3 to 1 rout.
~ pypr
Thank you Pypr, your insiders insight into the polical game is most helpful to understanding what is going on.
We may be a tad high on the $160k salary package, but here’s how we arrived at that figure: The California Citizens Compensation Commission (CCCC) voted in May 2009 to reduce the salaries of California’s state legislators by 18%, from $116,208 to $95,291. In June, the compensation commission voted on legislative pay again, this time to reduce the fringe benefits received by state legislators by 18%.
The fringe benefit reduction applies to per-diem payments which is now about $141.86 per day, $30,000 car allowances, and medical insurance of at least $1500 a month. And what are their perks worth? (See below)
As of 2009, perks available to California state legislators include:
BP America, a gas and petroleum company, sponsors an automated hotline just for California state legislators and their staff that allows them to call the company for free tickets to concerts, shows and sports events. The message on the automated service says that legislators may “ask a member of their own staff to call on their behalf. AT&T sponsors a dedicated, private email service that allows state legislators and their staffs use to request tickets to shows such as Britney Spears concerts and Lakers playoffs. Michael Duvall, who resigned from the California State Assembly in September when a videotape was made public in which he discussed his sexual adventures with lobbyists, also reported on his mandatory lobbying disclosures that in 2008, he had received gifts of meals, drinks, concert tickets and “a Bluetooth headset”.
We made an estimate of all the perks, salary, medical insurance, car allowance and per diem pay to arrive at our figure.
Peggy I think Tea party and conservative voters need to let the national Chamber of Commerce to let them know they aren’t pleased and will be pulling their membership! It’s what I would do if I were a member.
I wonder if the Republican elites and their supporters have any idea how many Tea Party types are responsible for the outcome in the duck Dynasty flap? It didn’t take A&E or Cracker Barrel long to catch on.
Republicans are just so used to loosing they don’t know a win when it’s right in front of their face. And the “leadership” doesn’t know how to organize a Junior Prom.
What happened with DD and A&E is just the tip of the iceberg. Just look at the other shows on TV that have prayer as a part of every show.
Bakersfield is the most conservative city in Calif. and the fifth in the nation, at least it was just a couple of years ago. It’s also full of churches. Why, because it’s full of bible reading, God fearing, fiscal conservative Hispanics.
The fifth most conservative city in the nation in one of the most liberal states with a huge population. What’s wrong with this picture?
Conservative and libertarians need to stop supporting the CofC and other RINO groups too. No money, no power.
If the RNC would support a Reagan-type candidate instead of another McCain-type we’d be in the Oval Office again.
“No fools on our ticket.” How’s that for a quote. That CoC spokesperson was imprudent, I have to say.
On the other hand, he’s right. Foolishness abounds. Even Mitt came off as an oblivious dweeb. And it’s true Cruz and Lee have put themselves beyond the pale. Their colleagues ignore them.
You keep saying that some conservative messiah is going to arise and lead you to victory … but if you were thinking Michelle Bachmann … well … I just don’t think it’s very likely. She is a fool.
Michelle Bachmann is a tax attorney and no fool. I’ll put her intelligence and experience up against Obama’s lies, Biden’s foot in mouth disease and their never holding a private sector job any time.
The bigger fools are the ones who voted them in not just once, but twice.
Libby: ” Even Mitt came off as an oblivious dweeb.”
Yeah and Obama came across, to those who swooned, as a brilliant man who would/could solve everything.
Thousands of women likewise found Bill Clinton to be sexy and worthy of their support even after revelations of his dreadful scummy womanizing were made public…feminists in particular have a lot to answer for on this.
People continue to support Hillary even after she stood by her man like a beaten wifey.
So much for flashy surface impressions and phony presentation.
At this point I’d settle for anyone who is committed to the job and can make a decision, who reveres the Constitution as written, and has the experience and training to lead.
Peggy we know who on our side is smart and capable. They are the ones that liberals fear, loath, and target for personal destruction.
Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Pallin, Ted Cruz…you name a prominent conservative that’s smart and effective and there will be a considerable record of extremely harsh personal attacks.
Tina, good point. Guess that’s why they went after Palin and left McCain alone. They knew he was one of them.
Funny how they’re still going after her. Oh yeah, she supported Cruz, Lee and Tim Scott and helped get them elected. Can’t wait to see who else she supports for 2014. Saving my dollars to send to them directly. Not another penny to the RNC.