TJ Walker explains how super PACs are reshaping campaigns, using Jeb Bush's outsourcing as an example. He argues money helps only if a candidate can actually communicate, and that unlimited spending removes the pressure that normally forces weak candidates out of primaries early.
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Big news in the political world. Jeb Bush is allegedly outsourcing his entire campaign, or most of his campaign, to his super PACs. What does that mean? So, folks, if you follow politics closely, you know, there's been a lot of attention given to all the super PACs, wealthy donors who are giving money not directly to campaigns, but to super PACs where it's unlimited. Even a market candidate like Ted Cruz has raised tens of millions of dollars already, thus making him instantly viable as a candidate. What does all this mean? Now, the revelations coming out this week are that Jeb Bush is essentially going to outsource vast, vast categories of traditional campaign work to his, to his super PACs. How you do that legally is still a little bit uncertain. But I guess in theory a candidate could do polling, do a political put it up on a website, make it available for free download, and then just type on a blog available to everyone. Anyone who wants to place this ad on TV commercials in certain key states is welcome to it, wink, wink. And that, according to my reading of campaign laws, would be perfectly legal. And so a candidate wouldn't have to spend all of his time raising money, $1,000, $2,700 at a time, when a super PAC can just go ahead and raise $20 million at a time from a candidate. Here's the thing that everyone is forgetting. Yes, money in politics is important. Yes, if you wildly outspend a candidate in almost any race, certainly for senator or governor, you're going to win. If you're spending $10 million for a Senate race, a gubernatorial race, and your opponent spends 800,000, well, yeah, pretty much 100% of the time you're going to win. But here's the thing people forget. Money only helps to a certain degree, especially if the other candidate has enough money to communicate his or her message. There have been numerous, numerous examples in the last 30 years of major Senate gubernatorial races where one candidate spends 6 million, another candidate spends 10 million, the 6 million dollar candidate wins, or a candidate spends 14 million, the other candidate spends 24 million, the candidate who spends 14 million wins. What you need in politics is enough money to communicate the message as to why someone should vote for you. That is what you need. And if you have that, you can not always, but you can often beat a candidate who has a lot more money. So we're in a situation where in theory, a candidate, let's say in the Republican primary, since there really is no Democratic fight yet, but a Republican candidate could raise a billion dollars for the primary and you could have 10 other candidates who each raise $50 million and maybe one of them has enough money to communicate a message successfully to win and beat the candidate with a billion dollars. The other thing that I've mentioned this before that people are forgetting about is traditionally candidates drop out after the first caucus, the first or second primary, if they don't do well because they can't raise any more money and they don't want to go bankrupt and they don't want to mortgage their house. Well, if you can raise $50 million for your super PAC, there's no reason for you to get out of the race. So we really could have a situation where 10, 11, perhaps even 12 candidates on the GOP side of things run in every single primary and don't get out of the race until convention time. Doesn't mean there will be a brokered convention. But there's no real financial reason for candidates to drop out, which has been the historical reason for doing so. The other situation is you can have one general election candidate spend $3 billion and the other party only spend 1 billion, and, and the person who spends 2/3 less could still win because in a general election, each candidate is going to be able to communicate their basic core messages to their followers on undecided voters. And campaign advertising tends not to be as big of an issue because there's so much news coverage, there's so much conversation on Facebook, Twitter, social media, and everyplace else. So to me, that's what's interesting about the new dynamic of all this money in campaigns. And by the way, the long term solution for this, regardless your feelings, is we've got to figure out a way for viable, legitimate candidates to communicate with voters, whether that means free TV time, direct cash infusions to help them with digital ads. But that's really the only solution.
