Jun. 11, 2007
America's Love Affair with Presidential Fundraising
By Chris Heagarty
RALEIGH - No other nation spends as much money as the United States in electing its political leaders, so it should be no surprise that no other nation makes campaign fundraising more important than the actual issues candidates debate. It is not only something the political class finds shameless, it’s actually a source of pride and an indicator of success.
For example, consider the upcoming presidential primaries. Who do you read about in your newspaper or see in national television coverage? Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani lead the Republican contenders. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, and former Sen. John Edwards claim the Democratic spotlight. But why do they seem to be getting the spotlight all to themselves?
The answer of course is fundraising. And that’s a problem. We are told that successful fundraising is considered a prime indicator of a candidate’s viability, so journalists obsess over monitoring the money the candidates take in. Then they declare those with the most success as the leaders. And since those candidates get more media attention they are seen as more viable, and they are able to raise even more money. It’s a vicious cycle that promotes those with early success at the expense of the public’s access to information about all the qualified candidates.
Consider New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on the Democratic side and former Govs. Mike Huckabee and Jim Gilmore, of Arkansas and Virginia, respectively, on the Republican side. When you consider the success that former governors have had in presidential politics over candidates from the U.S. Senate, why aren’t these names given equal press coverage? In fact, shouldn’t anyone who has proven they can be elected statewide, like a governor or U.S. senator, be presented to the voters by the media as a viable candidate?
To be fair, newspapers have only so many column inches for stories and television news is restricted to a cramped block of time, so how much space can editors devote to stories about presidential candidates? How do you prioritize and manage limited resources?
But these gatekeepers of information would be well served to remember that the top early fundraisers are not necessarily the same candidates crossing the finish line ahead of everyone else. Often the leading early fundraiser can falter and candidates can emerge from the back of the pack.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean led all of his rivals in fundraising late in 2003, yet he was all but eliminated after the first few primaries. Wealth gave millionaire candidates like Ross Perot and Steve Forbes a platform to broadcast their ideas in the 1990s, but their number of supporters never came close to the number of people who voted against them.
The year before the election of 1992, no one gave Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton any chance to win his party’s primary, let alone defeat popular incumbent President George H.W. Bush. And Bush the elder was himself outspent significantly by his 1988 primary rivals, Sen. Bob Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson, during the Super Tuesday primaries, yet clobbered each of them.
Money makes a huge difference, and is one key factor in determining which candidate ultimately wins. But money is not the only factor, and early fundraising success doesn’t necessarily equate to how much money a candidate will have been able to raise and spend when the dust clears. Therefore we all ought to be focusing on more than just early fundraising in determining who the next leader of our nation will be.
Today’s technology makes it possible for there to be a “tipping point” where a hot candidate can suddenly catch fundraising lightning in a bottle via the Internet. Much of Dean’s 2004 fundraising success was attributed to his organizing on-line and to floods of small-dollar contributions made by donors from their computers. While the bulk of campaign money still comes in large contributions from the elite, Internet giving may transform campaigns as small-dollar, Internet-based contributions explode. A hot candidate could surge forward on the strength of millions of small donations.
All it takes for that process to catch fire is a spark to ignite the imagination of the voters. But that will never happen so long as the media douses the chances of these other candidates by excluding them and their views from the news.
Chris Heagarty is the executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education, a Raleigh-based nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving elections in North Carolina.
743 W. Johnson St.
Suite E
Raleigh, NC 27603
919.839.1200