Campaign Costs

Campaign Costs
Madison Roderick
JCOM 1130
Is the presidency for sale?
President Elect, Barack Obama’s campaign raised eyebrows last month when he bought three primetime, 30-minute spots on major networks to broadcast his “closing statements” before the November 4 election.
A purchase which the Associated Press estimates would cost from 3 to 5 million dollars.
But this leaves hardly a dent in the deep pockets of the Obama campaign. From the beginning of the race, he has been the clear leader in fundraising, sometimes raising up to 150 million in one month.
Obama’s media coverage has built such a case as makes people eager to cast their die (and cash) in with him.
His campaign is the first in approximately 16 years to refuse public funding but it has loosed government restrictions on both fundraising and spending allowing him to raise a total of 605 million dollars.
McCain is limited-- by public funding regulations-- to a mere 84 million dollar budget between the RNC and Election Day.
Obama didn’t have to face those regulations and ended up raising over 7 times more money than McCain to use at his leisure.
According to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, Obama spent 1.6 million dollars more than McCain in swing states between September 28 and October 4.
People might ask whether advantages like this could color the outcome of previous elections. The 2004 election, like this year’s, hosted a record-breaking fundraising effort on the behalf of George W. Bush that ended with him being elected to a second term.
This growing emphasis on advertisements should cause the American people to wonder whether the campaigning process might be compromised.
If a candidate can afford to advertise their message more so than their opponent, do they have a better chance of getting elected?
Patrick Ruffini, former director of the Republican National Committee’s internet campaigns, says that nearly unlimited resources offer Obama a decided upper hand in the campaign.
Ruffini said, “I found 5 states (Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia) in which a massive Obama spending edge correlated with an above average shift since September 28.”
According to him, in states where Obama made above average ad investments, he was rewarded with a 1.17 percent jump in preliminary polling.
With new forms of advertising making more demands on candidates’ funds, the overall cost of running for office is amounting to more than the average American could afford.
Tonnie Dixon, a senior in the Journalism and Communication major at USU thinks that this will hurt the election process. “It’s going to limit the variety of people who can run because the average person can’t afford to pay 10 million dollars for advertising… People who really want to change the country won’t be able to without selling their soul.”