She had only token opposition, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton still spent more on her re-election — upward of $30 million — than any other candidate for Senate this year. So where did all the money go?
It helped Mrs. Clinton win a margin of victory of more than 30 points. It helped her build a new set of campaign contributors. And it allowed her to begin assembling the nuts and bolts needed to run a presidential campaign.
But that was not all. Mrs. Clinton also bought more than $13,000 worth of flowers, mostly for fund-raising events and as thank-yous for donors. She laid out $27,000 for valet parking, paid as much as $800 in a single month in credit card interest and — above all — paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to an assortment of consultants and aides.
Throw in $17 million in advertising and fund-raising mailings, and what had been one of the most formidable war chests in politics was depleted to a level that leaves Mrs. Clinton with little financial advantage over her potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination — and perhaps even trailing some of them.
The campaign’s financial record has fueled some criticism among Democratic activists and prompted concern among Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, including complaints from some of her fund-raisers that her top aides exercised a lack of discipline.
You see where this is going, right? I can hear the sonorous tones of the Trailer Guy, or whomever the Saints Johnny and Rudy, patron saints of Adultery and Fascism select to do their television ads, intoning: "If she can't exercise restraint in campaign spending, how can you trust her with YOUR money?"
Now, I have no great love for Hillary Clinton. In fact, I've already stated publicly that if she is the Democratic nominee, she will not get my vote. It's not that she's a woman, or that she's abrasive, or any of the usual reasons people don't like her. It's because a) I have had quite enough triangulation (read: selling out) by Democrats for one lifetime; and b) she voted for the Iraq war, supported it wholeheartedly until it became unpopular, and was smart enough to know better. But while I'm skeptical of the motives behind spilling so much proverbial ink on one Senator's campaign spending, there are valid points raised here, especially in the context of James Carville's recent hysteria at the prospect of losing some of that oh-so-delicious campaign cash.
Why on earth are campaigns so expensive? I understand about the high cost of media buys, and I have first-hand experience with printing costs, but let's get real here: why do you need to spend $30 million on a campaign where you have only token opposition? And just so it doesn't seem as if I'm joining the piling-on of poor Hillary, Chuck Schumer spent $15 million in his 2004 campaign.
Perhaps I'm naive, but I remember being in high school, and even working on Gary Hart's 1984 campaign (which was run in my county by an up-and-coming young Democrat (at the time) named Bret Schundler -- I am not kidding), when it seemed that the lifeblood of campaigns was the foot soldiers -- the true-believer volunteers who devoted their evenings and weekends to stuffing envelopes and phone banking. I remember working for a Congressional campaign in high school that had (I think) one paid staff person. The phones were answered often as not by volunteers.
Perhaps the greatest potential benefit from Howard Dean's 50-state strategy would be a return to that foot-soldier-based mode of campaigning. In 2004, Dean became the front-runner for the presidential nomination through $20-$50 donations by individuals getting on board the "bat" bandwagon, donating online to reach short-term daily goals, then donating again two days later. People gathered at Meetups to HAND-WRITE letters to voters in decisive primary states. It wasn't so much a new mode of campaigning as a return to the notion of PEOPLE -- ordinary voters -- working to get "their guy" elected.
In the age of the Washington consultant, the entire electoral process has been removed from the people, and perhaps that's one reason why only 40% of Americans show up to vote, and as a result, we have elected officials who were put into office by barely a quarter of their constituents. But if the parties would just field candidates who resonate with ordinary voters, instead of just major campaign donors, it might not be as difficult to find the foot soldiers.
The article excerpted above mentions $51,000 spent on professional photographers to take pictures of Hillary Clinton with guests at fundraisers. If your donors are teachers and accountants and plumbers and soccer moms and truck drivers and IT analysts kicking in fifty bucks a pop, they'll be happy with a photograph taken by a friend with a $150 Fuji Finepix, which they will then upload to their blog, along with a nice blog entry that provides publicity for free.
I'm not saying that campaigns should be run entirely on this kind of romanticized spit and glue, skin-of-your-teeth adorably chaotic true believers model. We saw in Iowa in 2004 what happens when "Hey, kids, let's put on a show" runs up against two well-financed opponents (*cough* John Kerry *cough* Dick Gephardt *cough*) deciding to pool their resources to knock you out of the race. But if Americans stop responding to these kinds of expensive campaigns; if they DEMAND candidates who refuse to give expensive gifts in return for big campaign donations, if they get involved in the process, perhaps we can wrest the electoral process away from the James Carvilles and the Karl Roves and the other assorted talking heads that have turned politics into blood sport instead of a means to an end, that end being representation of the people of this country.
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