The Herald’s Monday briefing points to a remarkable true fact:
Politics by the Numbers
$2,075,000 – Amount of campaign contributions to Democratic hopeful Chris Gabrieli that came from his own pocket. Total amount donated by others: $11,225.
I make the total amount from “donors who are not Chris Gabrieli” to be $11,475 (look it up yourself), but the point is the same: Chris Gabrieli has leapt into contention as a serious candidate for Governor, has pulled himself nearly even with the other candidates in some polls – and has done it while raising about the same amount of money from the public as Lt. Gov. candidate Sam Kelley raises in a typical month.
All of which raises the question: does it really matter whether a candidate has support in the form of financial contributions from the public? After all, money is money regardless of where it comes from. If a candidate like Gabrieli can self-fund, why shouldn’t he do so with wild abandon, saving himself the tiresome necessity of pitching supporters for money? Sure, there may be an “optics” issue that other candidates can try to use, but that generally doesn’t work very well (*cough* Governor Corzine *cough*). Extreme self-funding allows the candidate to spend time talking about issues rather than money, and it allows his campaign staff to spend time drumming up voters rather than donors. Is there any reason why a candidate like Gabrieli (or Kerry Healey, or Christy Mihos, for that matter) should spend any time at all trying to drum up the paltry $500 contributions allowed by state law?
The amount you’ve raised is a proxy for how popular. Sure, there’s income inequity problems, so look at number of donors.
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The reality is that if someone writes a $10, $50, or $200 check, they’ve taken another step in “buying in” to the campaign. This means that they’ll feel more ownership — they’re more likely to talk their candidate up with their friends, more likely to volunteer, and more likely to actually vote.
and that’s really my question: is the conventional wisdom accurate?
In fact, I suggest we create a constitutional amendment saying only the wealthiest 1% of the country should be allowed to run for office. That way, we won’t have to worry about average people getting in office and spending some time on convincing voters that they’re solid enough candidates that the voters should be willing to put their money where their mouth is.
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In fact, let’s just do away with elections all together and give Gabrieli the job because he’s the wealthiest man in the race.
Will I ever recover? Methinks…methinks…the wound is mortal, good sir!
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Now, will you please answer the question?
Tom reilly could possibly be the last candidate to ever run for the Governors office who is not a multi millionaire. He can do this now because he has been raising money for 3 years, day in day out. The tab for this current race will be in the neighborhood of $10,000,000 before it is all over. Whether you support him or not it , has taken lierally hundreds of fund raisers for Tom to get to where he is today. I doubt that many other people would want to sacrifice as much. Patrick has also done a great job also with fund raisers and especially using the internet as a source but he still needs $7-$8 million to get where he wants to be.
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Unfortunately, it is a said state of affairs when only the wealthiest can afford to run for high office in this state. For all those “do gooders “who capped the maximum contribution limit to $500 per person in the last campaign reform act….. thank you for eliminating the average person from running for elective office. The liberals basically slit their own throats.
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As a finale to my rant, Deb Goldberg just plunked down $1,000,000 out of her petty cash account .The other LT Gov candidates will soon be history as she does a replay of the Gabrielli routine.
Like the Beatles Said “Money Can’t Buy You Love”, However I had suggested after (Life long Republican)Mehos and Gabrieli entered the race, that we should put the Goveror’s Office on EBAY and let them all bid for it.
We could use the proceeds for Local Aid
I think it was a recent posting on Jon “The Big Problem is Race” Keller “blog” that posited with Gabrieli doing so well in recent polling, party leaders would be wrong to deny him a spot on the ballot should he fail to make his 15% – which is still a real possibility.
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This ties in with the discussion here because:
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1. He is doing well in the recent polls because he is on TV a lot (as Jon “Deval Patrick is Unhinged” Keller even admits).
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2. He is on TV a lot because he is spending a lot of money on it.
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3. He is spending his own money on it, not donors or supporters (well, except for about $11,000 – I’ll give him that for stationary and bumper stickers).
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4. Therefore: he is buying support. Fine and dandy, but to use that bump in support as an argument to keep him on the ballot if he doesn’t meet the rules at the convention is flawed in two ways. (a) His support is manufactured by his own wallet, not by voters, which is the measure of qualifying for the ballot via a convention model; and (b) there are no mulligans in politics – that is, he shoulda got into the race months before if he really wanted to make a difference in Massachusetts and “get results” with “new ideas” – if he can’t raise the support in a month to get 15%, he only has himself to blame for waiting for Tom Reilly to slam the door in his face.
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Speaking of new ideas and results and leadership and political buzzwords… what the hell is Gabrieli’s campaign theme/message? I’ve counted at least four slogans from him. Guess this is what happens when you are rushed to make a campaign and make a case.
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CHRIS: do all of us true blue Democrats a favor. Drop out now and endorse Deval. This ego/retribution thing is gone far enough. I’m sure you’d be a fine Secretary of A&F.
As a strategy, David, you’re probably right — Gabrieli will spend less time worrying about fundraising because he doesn’t have too as much (as will other wealthy candidates). In the long term, though, I think it does matter, and I think the effects of wealth in politics are corrosive and negative. I know Deval is a wealthy candidate, and I’m a Deval delegate and supporter, but I worry that we are moving more towards a situation when only independtly wealthy people can run for office. It’s why I don’t like the logic used by Romney, Corzine, Philly mayoral candidate Tom Knox, and others that being wealthy makes you “unbought” and somehow a better candidate. If the whole ideal of civic life means anything, it should mean that anyone with smarts and dedication should be able to run for office. When you look at wealth and politics today, that’s not the case.
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IMHO, the root of the whole problem is the Supreme Court’s equation of money with speech and our refusal to have publicly-financed elections.
Honestly, because Massachusetts’ donation limits are so low, there’s very limited value in fundraising for the top offices. As long as it’s a $500 limit, we’re practically begging for the Corzine model of elections to take over. We actually need a higher limit to make it worth a politician’s while to fundraise, but then you run into the problem of truly buying politicians.
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I’ve heard lots of talk about how publically funded elections would solve this problem, but that leaves the question of how you prevent people from spending money to advertise your candidate and whether the inevitable silencing of message is a good thing for electoral politics. I’m not saying it has to be either/or, but public elections as a cure-all seems a little too simplistic as a solution. After all, we voted them in already and found out first-hand that it didn’t end up meaning anything.
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Gabrieli has short-circuited the system and avoided being beat up for nine months. Mitt Romney didn’t enter the race until March four years ago. Honestly, if I had nine-digits of net worth and wanted to run for Governor, I wouldn’t enter the field until March or April in this state unless I didn’t have a friend in the world in this state. (Of course, if you have no friends, running for Governor is probably not a good idea.) It’s impossible to fundraise enough for it to be worth canvassing the state. Unless our electoral finance laws change considerably, I think this is going to eventually be the model that gets followed regardless of Gabrieli’s showing this time out.
Hokun accurately describes the current problem with campaign finance: with our low contribution limits, it’s impossible for non-incumbents to raise sufficient funds so you end up with two types of candidates — wealthy, self-funders, and the career politicians who build war chests over the years.
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Publicly funded campaigns is an even worse idea than the current sclerotic campaign finance system. The last people I want determining who gets what funding from the public coffers are … politicians. Besides, I don’t want some insider, government bureaucrat directing my money to someone I don’t support.
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The appeal of political ideas, right or left, is what should attract campaign funding. McCarthy’s ’68 presidential bid was initially funded by 6 wealthy supporters who believed in McCarthy’s politics. Much wider and general support followed once McCarty got his message out. Financial support like that today is impermissible.
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Why not eliminate ALL campaign contribution restrictions? All of them. No limits. Just full disclosure. Only individuals may contribute. No 527s, no 501(c)3’s, no PACs, no corporations, and no unions. Just individuals.
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Why not let Barbra Streisand contribute $10,000,000 to, say, Deval Patrick, if she liked what Patrick stands for? As long as there’s full disclosure (instant on-line reporting of who gives what to whom) I cannot see how her money is corrupting in any way. I’ll judge whether or not the candidate, if elected, follows through on his platfrom and promises, or simply ends up carrying water for his benefactors.
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That’s what elections are for — it’s a self-correcting political mechanism.
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But money is it’s lubricant, and there’s not enough of it in the political system to keep the gears turning smoothly and efficiently.
I’d like to see what happened in a system like the one you describe. Combine no contribution limits and shutting out corporations etc. with free air time, and you might have something that, if it didn’t work perfectly, might at least work better than the mess we’ve got now.
On broadcasters. If you want “free” air time, pay for it directly from general revenues. If you think broadcasters are taxed too little, increase spectrum fees (or impose them). Advocating special subsidies to the political process from broadcasters — or other media outlets that benefit from public investment and regulation, like for example the internet — just confuses the discussion, I think.
Your question is: “Does it really matter whether a candidate has support in the form of financial contributions from the public?” The answer is: public support is worth about twice as much as personal support in my own personal completely unscientific and anecdotal opinion. Which is to say, $1 of self-funded money is worth about as much as $0.50 in raised money because the latter brings volunteers and connections. Thus, if you are a self-funder, plan to spend 2X your personally impoverished opponent to have an equal shot. Spend 3X and you might win. Just ask Corzine. Incidentally, I might add, this system is exactly the one the founding fathers intended, in MHO. Let us not forget they didn’t even think people should be able to vote — let alone run for office — unless they had property. After all, the primary purpose of the state was to protect property.