When it comes to facing voters, it seems as though politicians live by the words of Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford’s unforgettable song “Money (That’s What I Want)”:
Your love give me such a thrill
But your love don’t pay my bills
I need money! That’s what I want!
Despite record spending across the board this year — in Senate general election advertising alone, Republicans outspent Democrats by $250 million — Republicans lost big. The old assumption that big money always wins elections was smashed just as thoroughly as the Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate.
Money does count; have no doubt. What is easy to miss but political consultants in both parties know and quietly whisper to one another is that while tons of money can powerfully amplify a great campaign message, it cannot alone create one.
All campaigns are starved for resources; there is never enough time, funding or, usually, luck. Campaigns are expensive. Paid advertising is costly. Staff members need to get at least starvation wages. Experienced consultants don’t work for cheap.
Think for a minute like a campaign manager. Here’s the kind of daily team discussion you will hear in a major race: “Should the candidate do a live six-minute interview tonight on the top Detroit station and reach over 100,000 viewers — but it would mean canceling the first of the three fund-raising events we have planned? A new tracking poll shows we’re in trouble in Grand Rapids; get the candidate there and blow up tomorrow in Flint … but that means blowing off a long-promised live interview with the touchy supreme podcaster Liberty Gazoo, and Gazoo will be really angry. OK, then we’ll just charter a plane to Grand Rapids! A charter is $9,000, but we are low on cash and the media buy has to go out by noon today?”
That is why campaign teams crave ever more money: Almost every decision involves a painful allocation of scare resources, so the obvious problem-solving tool is to get more funding.
This psychological factor — the campaign finance version of FOMO — cannot be overstated. It’s why no campaign team has ever lost sleep after spending more money. In those fearful, last days of a campaign who can say no to that last 116 thousand in get-out-the-vote spend?
Since federal candidates are limited to $3,500 per donor for each race — in both primaries and general elections — the fund-raising hack is super PAC independent expenditures. Why? They can take unlimited money and use it to run “independent” campaigns. Both parties have them, and use them to raise their own money and spend it to help their candidates by praising them and beating the tar out of their opponents.
There are rules. It’s illegal with a few exceptions for super PACs to coordinate strategy with the candidates they support. (Though the telepathy can be amazing, and many campaigns have special pages on their websites full of hints.)
Take Kansas this year: Paid for Politics reports that 45 different super PACs conducted independent expenditures in the Senate race, 19 helping the Republican incumbent, Roger Marshall, and 25 helping Adam Hamilton, the Democrat. (Another, which backed a primary candidate, had some of its spending recorded under general election filing rules.) The total spend was over $95 million.
But why do candidates, parties, interest groups and wealthy zillionaires push so much money into campaigns? Because they can.
There is even a new twist in the super PAC game I call the superego PAC. Wealthy donors who set up their own private super PACs can do pretty much whatever they want regarding messaging, often more about the donor’s political whims and appetite for becoming a cosplay political consultant. Their spending can be huge, and their ads are not always helpful.
Another new trick is the hijack attention PAC. Their caper is to drop a noisy ad into a high-profile race to garner tons of free press attention and hopefully raise more money for their outfit — even if the ad is a clumsy disaster. We saw an example of that this year with an idiotic Michigan spot (which never aired on TV and had limited digital exposure) featuring a pair of actors in a grocery store blaming U.S. spending on aid to Israel for their inability to purchase eggs.
As super PACs on each side claw for pricey advertising space (they do not get the candidate discount, so they must pay a much higher commercial rate for ads), they bid up ad costs, which leads them to desperately need a lot more money. So saber-toothed professional fund-raisers rush out and get it. The upward spiral continues, and that’s how you get to over $500 million in campaign spending. In Ohio alone.
This year, the gross levels of campaign spending created a message of their own: selfish and corrupt billionaires allied with President Trump, versus regular Americans struggling to afford a decent life. (The Democratic billionaires got more of a commentariat pass this time, despite funding their own big super PACs.) Although this week the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, submitted a complaint to the Federal Election Commission stating that United Futures Inc., a corporate entity that contributed over $20 million to Democratic super PACs, was actually a dark money scheme to hide the names of its major donors.
My guess is we’ll see even more money in politics as the presidential primaries heat up.
But would-be candidates should remember a question I always ask campaign managers: What hurts more, having one grand piano dropped on your head from a sixth-story window or three?
My guess is the second and third piano wouldn’t make much of a difference. This year, Republicans may have dropped a lot more pianos, but Democrats only needed one: Enough! Fire Mr. Trump.
Mike Murphy is a former Republican who is now a registered independent.
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