Have at it…
GOLDBERG SETS L.G. PRIMARY SPENDING LIMIT AT $4 MILLION: Lieutenant governor candidate Deborah Goldberg declared today that she plans to spend up to $4 million between now and the Sept. 19, setting the cap the field, her spokeswoman said this afternoon. Goldberg, who inherited part of the Stop & Shop fortune and chaired the Brookline Board of Selectmen, is matched against Worcester Mayor Timothy Murray and Andrea Silbert, who founded a non-profit that helped trained entrepreneurs, both of whom have opted into the state’s public financing system. Goldberg has pumped $1 million into her campaign so far this year, and put in $50,000 last year, spokeswoman Jennifer Kritz said. Both gubernatorial candidate Christopher Gabrieli and Secretary of State William Galvin, running for re-election, are due to file their self-imposed primary spending limits by 5 pm. Any spending above the declared cap results in a personal penalty twice the overage, said Dennis Kennedy, a spokesman for the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
that Murry or Silbert would even be able to spend $4M before mid-September? In other words, if Goldberg is primed to outspend the other two, why not make the cap arbitrarily high, like $10M?
was it just under 5?
If Goldberg did that it would look, well, absurd.
or another attepmt at humor? I did find it funny, if so.
Gabrieli spent just shy of $3.6 million in the primary, Pines spent $418K, Slattery checked in at $359K.
Gabrieli- 306,043 (46%)
Pines- 205,208 (31%)
Slattery- 150,313 (25%)
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Right now, Goldberg has a little north of a million in the bank, so it’s pretty reasonable to assume that most of her money will be self funded, allowing her to not have to fund raise. It’s also reasonable to expect both Silbert and Murray to be better funded than Pines and Slattery.
I don’t care how much she has in her account, she isn’t spending it well. Anybody see her shtick at the convention? It was like a bad Benny Hill episode with boxes falling on her, her getting carried away, etc.
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If she’s spending her money on that kind of shlock she ain’t going to be able to buy many votes.
And I’m not saying this as a Deval supporter, but as somebody interested in politics, that he spent several times more money than any of the other candidates but couldn’t rise above 50%?
There’s a point of diminishing returns. Spending a lot can get you closer and closer to the precentage of the vote your message can get, but it’s not linear. It might be that you have a message that, in an ideal campaign, would get you 45% of the vote. Assuming your opponents don’t change what they do, maybe if you spend $1 million you get 30%, if you spend $2 million you get 40%, and if you spend 5 million you get 44%.
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What all this spending does, though, is move the whole campaign further and further from the voters. It pushes all the candidates to have to raise more, which means much less time spent on communicating with voters. It pushes more of the campaign communications to high-priced TV ads, and away from more personal communications avenues like community groups and canvassing. It dirties the waters and makes the whole system worse.
As we recover from the “shock and awe” of governor and LG race, I want to make sure SoS does not fall through the cracks. Does anyone have a number for that race?
Adam Reilly just reported it. $2.9 million for a Secretary race. Insanity!