Everyone agrees that US elections are incredibly expensive. Now that the dust has settled on the midterms and we’ve had time to add up the numbers, let’s put that into perspective.
In 2014, US election spending was $3.7B (including SuperPACs and other outside groups). That’s a big number. It’s over twice the size of the $1.5B adult diaper industry.
And this was just a mid-term. The 2012 elections were $6.3B. If you blend that in with 2014 you get an average of $2.5B annually over the last 4 years. About the size of:
Halloween candy sales — $2.5B annually
Designer Shoe Warehouse’s revenue — $2.4B annually
King.com’s revenue (they make Candy Crush Saga) — $2.4B annually
My point is that money in politics is a big problem, but the US economy is a big, big engine. We put a lot of resources into areas that matter far less than our elections.
As a country we are great at many things. Technology, entertainment, and design. We solve problems and get things done. We give people lots of great ways to buy shoes, eat treats, and play games.
And I’m proud that to say that we also lead the world in effective products for people who suffer from incontinence.
So why do we do such a crappy job at keeping corruption out of our elections?
Why do our leaders have to spend half their time raising money? Why is a former cable company lobbyist running the FCC? Why has Wall Street largely returned to risky business as usual after the taxpayers bailed them out?
I think it’s because the power of the private sector is on the wrong side. Innovative startups are not fixing this problem. In fact the innovative startups are growing up to join trade associations and lobby Congress, just like every Fortune 500 company does. It’s understandable. Companies have opinions about their issues. But it’s gotten out of control.
Is it possible for a nimble, well-funded group to improve the way our elections are run? Can we do it without going through the broken process of passing new legislation?
I think we can.
This summer marked the debut of our new reform group: CounterPAC. Mayday.US and other groups are fighting for tougher laws around money in politics. We’re not doing that — we’re getting individual members to take personal responsibility for their own campaigns. We get them to make binding commitments to reform. And, being a SuperPAC ourselves, we hold them accountable if they don’t.
We’re new, but we’re building momentum. Mark McKinnon likes what we’re doing and he knows what he’s talking about — he got George W. Bush and Ann Richards elected, among many others. In a recent Daily Beast piece titled “How to Fight Corruption With Game Theory” he wrote that we’re:
“fighting dysfunction in politics by changing the rules of the game [to make] running cleaner, better campaigns in the candidates’ self-interest.”
In Alaska’s Senate race — the most expensive in the state’s history — our advocacy literally forced Mark Begich to say that he would agree to sign our “no dark money” pledge.
In West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, it was our campaign that caused Evan Jenkins to challenge his opponent Nick Rahall to take a pledge rejecting outside money, and led to Rahall penning an op-ed calling for his own proposed “no dark money” pledge. We then continued to push the dialogue by orchestrating a high-profile public meeting between the candidates to finalize an agreement.
When Nick Rahall failed to show up, we held him accountable through our campaign advertising and earned media. The substantial negative attention that we drew to Rahall’s betrayal of democracy played a critical role in highlighting for West Virginia voters that they deserve better leadership than this.
With the 19-term incumbent now unseated, and Jenkins, a Republican, winning the tightest House race in the country thanks in part to his position on dark money, we’re proud to call our campaign a success — both in the result that it achieved and the message that it sent.
We did that on a budget of $500,000. We’d like to triple that for 2015 and beyond.
If you think it’s an interesting project, we’d appreciate your support. Paypal donations accepted here.
America leads the world in innovation. We’ll fix this together.
And that’s something you can Depend on.
Follow @jimgreer or @counterpac on Twitter
Thanks to Daphne Keller, Debra Solomon, Jay Costa, Jim Meenan, Josh Silver, Peter Moskos, Ron Carmel, Ryan Golec, and Sarahjoy Van Boven for their feedback on drafts of this.
