Campaign-Finance Stories That Don’t Get Written: Consultants and Insiders Feed the Fundraising Frenzy. How Much Do They Make?
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There was something comically self-evident about the headline on the story that led the April 13 print edition of The New York Times: “Campaigns Plan Maximum Push to Raise Money.” Unless the political world is struck by a wave of Gandhian self-abnegation, it is nearly impossible to imagine a scenario that would justify the opposite headline: “Campaigns Languid About Money in White House Race.”
The actual story, by Nicholas Confessore, was standard-issue money-in-politics journalism. It offered vague estimates that as much as $1 billion each could be spent on behalf of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney; it predicted the final breakdown of the federal public financing system; it included the obligatory ain’t-it-terrible quote from the president of Common Cause; and it detailed the role that super PACs and state party committees will play in the upcoming presidential race.
What makes the article relevant for our purposes was both its placement on the Timesfront page and the generic qualities that make it almost certain to be replicated in the weeks ahead. The next day, April 14, Politico featured a story by Kenneth P. Vogel and Robin Bravender headlined, “Democratic super PACs gain ground but still trail GOP in fundraising.” Confessore returned to the topic April 16 in a widely quoted blog post for theTimes detailing an internal Romney memo that put the campaign’s fundraising goals (in conjunction with the Republican Party) at $800 million, with an estimated additional $200 million slated to come from super PACs.
Money in presidential politics is a worthy topic covering everything from the contortions that candidates go through to raise it (Obama, according to Confessore, has already held more than 100 major fund-raisers) to the presidential access major donors receive in all administrations (remember Bill Clinton’s White House coffees and Lincoln Bedroom sleep-overs?). But the problem with most campaign spending coverage (and I am not trying to single out either Confessore or the Times) is what it leaves out. The stories almost invariably reflect the narrow world view of campaign consultants and politics insiders, which holds that more money always equals more votes in presidential politics.